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Nvidia Showcase: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is Drop Dead Gorgeous in 4K

Metal Gear Solid 5 system requirements

PCGamesN Nvidia Showcase posts are created in partnership with Nvidia.

September 1st sees the much-anticipated release of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain on both consoles and PC. It’s set to be Hideo Kojima’s final Metal Gear outing and if you’re planning on playing on PC then you’re in for the best version of all. The PC edition of the game boasts a slew of enticing features including larger resolutions, Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR), the possibility of frame uncaps and even the ability to play the game on an NVIDIA SHIELD device via its support for NVIDIA GameStream.

Just to prove the point, Konami has released a trailer for The Phantom Pain, showing the game running on PC at 4K resolution and detailing just how great it looks on a well-specced hunk of PC hardware. Naturally you’ll need a newer GPU if you want to see it running in 4K on your machine, but NVIDIA – which is working with Konami to ensure the game looks top notch – is riding to the rescue with a sweet offer: it’s bundling The Phantom Pain with select GeForce GTX 980 Ti, 980, 970 and 960 graphics cards and systems, as well as select GeForce GTX 980M and 970M notebooks.

If you played Ground Zeroes, its sweet but short prologue, then you’ll have an idea of the sort of action that Phantom Pain has to offer: as befits a Metal Gear game the focus is on stealth, but with vast open areas to play in, presenting you with a dizzying assortment ways to complete any given mission. You can check the lay of the land on your iDroid – an all-in-one map, communication and inventory device that looks a lot more advanced than the game’s 1984 setting would suggest – work out where the guards are and plan your best approach, all from a safe distance.

At roughly 200 times the size of Ground Zeroes it’s absolutely vast, requiring the use of vehicles to get around locations, and it further mixes things up with the addition of a full day/night cycle and changeable weather that can seriously impact your mission strategy.

Following Snake – voiced by 24 star Kiefer Sutherland – on a mission of revenge that takes him from Africa to Afghanistan, The Phantom Pain backs you up with a crew of AI buddies, including mute sniper Ghost, a trained wolfdog called D-Dog, D-Walker the battle mech and D-Horse, who’s a horse (and useful for carrying extra gear). You also have a massive offshore Mother Base at your disposal where you can train your own mercenary army and research new weapons and equipment; subdued enemies and dropped gear can be hooked to a Fulton recovery system and sent straight to Mother Base.

The Metal Gear series has mostly been a stranger to the PC, but Ground Zeroes changed all that and now The Phantom Pain is shaping up to be one of the games of the year.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain launches on PC on September 1. You can score a free copy of the game with purchase of a qualifying new GeForce GTX GPU. Find out if your PC is ready for Snake’s latest adventure by running NVIDIA’s GPU Analyzer for Metal Gear Solid V.