Phantom Pain is my lifestyle game. At this point, almost a decade after release, I don't think I'll ever stop playing it.

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This game has unexaggerably THE best third person player locomotion system in the industry, not topped since 2015, and you simply will not find any other game that gives you more movement freedom and such a rock solid, slick yet precise and robust feel to it. All options are always to your disposal, and once you learn the controls, your character will always do exactly as you say, and you can even learn to command every singular step.

That's not all for freedom, of course, since this game also gives you one of the widest and deepest arrays of possibilities to interact with enemy characters. As a war game, you can expect to be clicking on their heads with many weapon types, sure; but then there's also CQC, you can 5 string combo them unconscious, pointing your gun to interrogate them, or stealing their weapon to interrogate them with it, also grabbing them with a choke-hold, and drag them around with your pistol pulled out for scouting, or use them as a meat shield when in combat, make them trip with a leg swipe, or pushing them to the ground with a dive to their stomach, and so much more. Let's not even get started with the amount of stealth gadgets, you can't even imagine.

But primarily, what really kept me playing this game for all these years were 2 things: the FOB endgame, and the modding community.

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To briefly explain this game's endgame; as you can imagine, sh*t's not over after the credits roll; not even after 100% completion, because of this game's multiplayer PvP mode, FOB invasions. Many people think of it as merely an opportunity for random players to pillage one's own base and opt out of it, but this is a common misconception. Maintaining an FOB risks it being invaded, sure, but FOB soldiers and materials can't affect your single-player experience in any other way than positively, since it will give you more material storage AND personnel capacity, and anything you could lose due to invasions is strictly limited to FOB bases and capacity. Multiplayer brings over the winnings to single-player, and keeps all the losses to itself.

Even if you don't ever interact, it will provide a net positive to your base economy overall, and if you do interact, you'll quickly be convinced that the winnings always far outweigh the losses. Sure, when invading you risk being detected and so opening up a revenge invasion, but until you get to the higher ranks, most bases you'll invade will be abandoned, owned by one-time players that left them there vulnerable forever. Even if you do get the weird invasion, recouping would at most take 2 invasions. FOB invasions are really fun and also really short, and the fact that you only have 1 shot gives it real stakes, and then the even weirder defence PvP encounters are really fun, and it's very rewarding to master the possible strategies and get into the meta.

Lastly, there is an entire aspect of the game that locks a huge part of it behind FOB base capacity, and that is the R&D higher grades of weapon and item upgrading; a great way to give endgame players one last long term checklist to complete. It's genius, since you can't really see the tree much further away from where you've so far made it, so you never really feel like you're missing out on the possibility of that much higher grade levels. But even if you did know, those levels would realistically only serve to be more effective at FOB PvP, since using such high gadgets on the single-player only makes the game way easier, which is the last thing you'd want at a point when you've dominated the game enough to unlock power levels that high, paradoxically. In fact, at that point you'll naturally try to challenge yourself, by limiting the equipment you bring to missions, or outright playing OSP, and perhaps even going the extra mile: modding.

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MGSV has one of the best modding communities on the internet, and I mean that on many levels. The game has been cracked open in so many incredible ways, to the point there's an entire community of people pumping out content that pretty much feels like official free DLC. New missions, new Side-ops, and even new entire maps, with someone currently working on a full re-implementation of Ground Zero's Camp Omega, which is already out and available for download, with frequent upgrades and a really high quality catalogue of Side-ops.

Many dreams left over by this game's troubled development are becoming true thanks to its modding scene, which found ways to add content to the game that doesn't need to replace any existing assets; for now these are maps, missions, side-ops, textured models for NPCs and soldier characters, and we're soon to be able to add new player costumes, vehicles, weapons and items. It's wild, and it's gonna get wilder.

You can mod your game to make it the experience you want. Tune up the difficulty by increasing enemy cone distance, reducing player health, removing NPC overhead markers and heat auras, and you can even download a mod that disables health regen, and another that adds a First-Aid Spray for healing (I made that one rawr). You can also enable random item drops when incapacitating enemies, random skull invasions on free roam, and even random landing events that force you out of your routine and mixes up the experience. And if you have your own mod idea, you can probably make it yourself rather easily.

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And here's the other side of the coin; not the mods, the makers. Modders' Heaven is one of the most welcoming places I've ever found on the internet, and I'm not saying that just because I'm a part of it, I promise. Modders are really open to dumb newbie questions about what's currently possible and what stands on our way, and that's precisely how I interacted with them at first, and it was because of their hospitality that I got into making my first ever mod.

Whenever you come up with a new mod idea, you can share it with the community and enough people will give you the assistance you need all the way until you have everything you need to carry it out. And even if you're shy, there's great effort in maintaining good documentation about the community's findings and useful tools. Though there are figureheads, there's no elitism; it's just good vibes all around. Hopefully, I've convinced you to come around!

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Metal Gear Solid V quickly became one of my favourite games the first time I played it; player freedom, base building, army recruitment and its thought provoking story about race & language, dissociative identity disorder and the fruitlessness of revenge really grabbed me and kept me engaged all the way to the credits, then its great endgame experience, PvP meta and the drive for a "true" 100% completion turned it into my comfort game and kept me playing way afterwards, and it's now been the community of those like me, who enjoyed the game so much to make new content for it and urged me to do the same, what's made me stick around for so long and feel like I'm part of something greater.

Sorry for the gayness, and thanks for reading.