The rewards are great, and expanding your base is easy as the game takes care of a lot of the grunt work (it automatically assigns recruited soldiers to the departments they’re best suited for).Īlso, the Mother Base is a place you can actually explore on foot. Expanding your base and recruiting more staff (mostly by extracting them from the open worlds with Fulton balloons) unlocks the ability to research new equipment, a lot of which you’ll need for trickier missions. When doing so, you can find blueprints for weapons, resources for your Mother Base, and you can even cripple enemy areas by taking out their equipment, which can make future missions easier.īesides the open-world gameplay, maintaining your Mother Base is a big part of The Phantom Pain. It has plenty of structured missions, but you can also explore on your own. The open worlds also give you a playground to run in. You can use your binoculars to scout areas, create markers on points of interest, and track enemy movements. This greatly changes your approach, since preparation is more important than ever. The Phantom Pain is completely different, with almost all of the action set in two large, open worlds populated by dozens of smaller bases (most of which house small, single-room buildings). Past Metal Gear Solid games were largely linear and took place in cramped outdoor areas or industrial indoor facilities.

It’s not a total fail-safe, since it won’t help much if multiple enemies notice you or if someone from far away discovers your location. Reflex Mode is a nice safety net, since it lets you save yourself if you get caught by unexpected enemies. If one soldier is off on his own, you can sprint toward him and hope to tackle him before he can snap out of his surprised state. You can even take down a couple of lone enemies this way. If a soldier is alone, you can safely expose yourself to them if you think you’re close enough to land an easy head shot. Not only does this feature make sense (I think most people would be surprised to discover a dude with a gun hiding a few feet away from them), but it gives you more stealth options. The Phantom Pain also has Reflex Mode, which gives you a couple of seconds of slow-motion to react when an enemy spots you.

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