The Biggest and the Bossiest

At long last, I have finally finished the first level of Metal Gear Solid V! For those of you who don't get the joke, Ground Zeroes was intended as the first level of what would be released as The Phantom Pain, but when it became obvious that MGSV wasn't going to be finished on schedule, it was split off, had some more content added, and was released as a standalone game.

Sixteen achievements. One level. 

In order to justify the sticker price without requiring more expensive content to be created, the game consists of seven missions that all take place in the same location, a fictionalized version of Guantanamo Bay in the mid-1970s. Unfortunately for my completionist playthrough, this means sitting through lots and lots of padding. Particularly offensive is the "Unlocked" achievement ("Unlock all trials"). Although it sounds simple enough, it requires the player to complete all missions on Normal and Hard difficulties, then mark all the enemies in all of the missions on Normal difficulty (except "Intel Operative Rescue"), then complete all the missions (again excepting "Intel Operative Rescue") again on Hard difficulty. To sum up, that's a total of 26 mission playthroughs. Keep in mind that there's only 7 different missions! Marking all of the enemies is an exercise in tedium, especially in missions where an enemy likes to lurk at a guard post on the edge of the map and there's no way near him except by getting into visual range of all his buddies. Of course, if you get spotted and the enemies call in reinforcements, you have to mark all of those enemies before killing them, or you'll fail the trial. However, even this pales in comparison to the pointlessness of having to complete the Hard missions twice for no real reason. There's no additional challenge to it: you just do the exact same mission again.

Speaking of "Intel Operative Rescue", that mission has an associated achievement that poses a real challenge: "Pacifist" ("Clear the "Intel Operative Rescue" Side Op without killing a single enemy"). If you want it, you'll need to complete the mission using nothing but the stun pistol and somehow restrain yourself from succumbing to the temptation to bust out the infinite-ammo grenade launcher you're supposed to be using. This will require you to quickly and repeatedly shoot the driver of a moving vehicle from another moving vehicle with a pistol. Good luck, have fun.

I'm Metal Gear-ed out for a while, but I'll eventually circle around to go achievement hunting in The Phantom Pain as well. Watch this space for the next video game I decide to take far too seriously!