Metal Gear Solid V
The release of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain has been met with as much excitement and frenzy as you might expect from the latest instalment of a legendary video game franchise. But while most players are preoccupied with riding D. Horse around, frolicking in cardboard boxes and puzzling over the intricate story, it’s a certain voiceover that’s had us scratching our heads. Where on earth have we heard iDroid‘s soothing tones before? Oh, that’s right – on the Shinkansen!
Voice actor and vocalist Donna Burke is a veteran of the video game industry, lending her vocal cords to multiple games including MGSV and Silent Hill, and she ALSO provided the English-language spoken announcement that’s broadcast on the bullet train to help foreign visitors navigate their way around Japan!
With Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain now available, gamers are hunkering down to complete Hideo Kojima’s final Metal Gear outing, and the last couple of days have seen a flurry of uploads to YouTube and gaming sites from players wanting to show off their discoveries in the huge open world.
One such discovery has people lamenting the cancellation of Silent Hills, the horror game that was at one time to be Kojima’s next project, all over again. Despite Konami’s attempts to erase its existence by removing it from the Playstation Store, P.T., the playable teaser for the cancelled game, can’t be wiped from gamers’ minds that easily, and apparently not from the company’s latest hit, either.
The official U.S. PlayStation blog revealed on Tuesday that Sony‘s Little Big Planet 3 game is offering a Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain-themed costume pack for the game’s characters. Buyers who purchase the costumes as a complete set will also receive a Box Costume for the character Toggle. The costumes can also be purchased separately.
For months, there have been rumblings of discord between video game publisher Konami and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain director Hideo Kojima. First Kojima’s name, one of the most respected in the industry, was scrubbed from the game’s packaging, and now the popular opinion seems to be that once The Phantom Pain is a completely done deal, Kojima will pack up and leave the company where he’s worked for decades, meaning someone else would be tasked with carrying on the legacy of Metal Gear, a franchise so ground-breaking and successful it literally changed the industry.
But none of this drama seems to have adversely affected The Phantom Pain’s development, as advance reviews of the title have been glowing. And perhaps even more baffling is that even as this might be the end of an era, the series has in no way lost its sense of humor, as seen in this bizarre yet emotional Metal Gear Solid V TV commercial starring an about-to-be-wed bride and groom, dressed in their finest Metal Gear-style cardboard boxes.
Recently, anime and video game fans have been sharing pictures online of the shoddily produced figurines that merchandisers have been foisting on them. This isn’t something that happens exclusively with low-profile franchises, either, as mega-hit Attack on Titan dropped the second of two plastic duds just last month.
Given the falling out between Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima and long-time employer Konami, you might think the famed game designer is taking a similarly apathetic attitude towards the merchandise for his upcoming Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Kojima is a pro, though, and not about to let his acrimonious situation with the game’s publisher discourage him from making sure the title and all its related products are of the utmost quality.
That’s right, Metal Gear fans, you can breathe easy, because it’s been confirmed that the figure of the game’s female sniper has soft, squishable breasts.
If you have even a passing interest in video games, then you’ll no doubt have heard that Silent Hills, the new, crazy-scary, Daryl-from-The Walking Dead-featuring reboot of long-running survival horror series Silent Hill, has been cancelled.
For many, Silent Hills represented the sole reason to own a PlayStation 4 as it bobs along in a sea of multi-platform titles and high-definition re-releases of last-gen games. But with the removal of its “playable teaser” from the PlayStation Store today, Silent Hills is gone – poof – into dust because director and industry veteran Hideo Kojima is to part ways with parent company Konami the moment he finishes work on his other big project, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
But what exactly is going on over at Konami? And why on earth would the company scrap a game that was already garnering so much praise and generating such excitement? Join us after the jump as we explore the myriad rumours and theories regarding Kojima and Konami’s messy breakup.
Sony’s PlayStation 4 has been on the market for fewer than 18 months, but already we’ve seen about as many special-edition incarnations of the console, from a lacklustre The Evil Within–themed unit, to an undeniably cool metal Dragon Quest model, to one, for some reason, based on Disney’s Frozen.
And now, thanks to a joint venture between Konami and Sony, there’s yet another model joining the special-edition ranks: The Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain PS4.
Never shy of releasing a special edition product or two, Japan’s Konami Corporation has announced a limited “Fox Edition” Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes-themed PlayStation 4 console just for Japanese gamers ahead of the game’s release on March 20.
We’re sure the console will appeal to some people’s tastes and fans will no doubt want to add it to their collection of MGS merch, but quite honestly we’re not entirely bowled over by the design Konami went with.
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