

One result of that is that Big Boss's array of gadgets grows hugely, as does your ability to upgrade your favourites. You can assign individuals to particular teams in charge of research and development, intel-gathering, base management and so on. There are also vast amounts of resources, including medicinal plants, to collect when you upgrade the Fulton Recovery System, you can even use it to send gun emplacements and containers full of resources back to Mother Base. Thus (after some unseen indoctrination) you can build an army of your own.

From whence he helicopters back and forth to Afghanistan, enacting a vast array of (predominantly anti-Russian) missions and side-missions, as an increasingly gothic storyline develops involving the hideous Skull Face and his band of almost otherworldly super-soldiers, The Skulls, as well as various other outlandish beings. Making up for lost time, Big Boss establishes a private military organisation called Diamond Dogs, after rescuing his associate Kazuhira Miller from captivity in Afghanistan and establishing a Mother Base on an oil platform in the Seychelles. One that, but of course, includes a mysterious flaming super-being who can absorb bullets and send them back with interest in fiery bursts (although he can be neutralised with a judiciously administered cold shower). A gloriously bonkers prologue sees your character, Big Boss (now codenamed Venom Snake), escaping from the Cypriot hospital in which he has been in a coma for the past nine years, and which has come under attack from both a military force. In the pantheon of the Metal Gear universe, The Phantom Pain is an origins story, set in Afghanistan in 1984, which has been overrun by invading Russians. Pocket-Lint Recommendation: Nintendo Switch.Pocket-Lint Recommendations: Xbox Console.Pocket-Lint Recommendation: Google Nest.Pocket-Lint Recommendation: Amazon Echo Devices.Pocket-Lint Recommendations: Fire TV Stick.
