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Venom Snake’s
mercenary
company, Diamond
Dogs, has it all:
loyal soldiers,
an offshore base
in the sunny
Seychelles and DD, a one-eyed
wolfhound that will melt your heart
as easily as he’ll chew on your throat.
You first encounter this fluffy friend as
a puppy out in the Afghan wilderness.
After you Fulton airlift him back to
your base, your buddy Revolver Ocelot
suggests training him to help you out
in the field of battle.
Once DD’s mission-ready, I decide
there’s no better way to celebrate
than a big old dog walk. As Ocelot likes
to remind me, Afghanistan is a big
place, and surely an excursion would
be an excellent bonding exercise.
My helicopter drops us in just
outside the Yakho Oboo Supply
Outpost, amidst a flock of sheep. I
make a waypoint on the other side of
the Afghanistan map at Da Smasei
Laman and we start wandering around
the sun-bleached rocks before DD
decides that he’s hungry. So far so
good. We come across an enemy
outpost, and the location of a
side-mission to rescue a prisoner. In
the time it takes me to hold up a
guard and interrogate them
on where the POW is, DD’s
already located him and
marked him on my map.
Good boy! I sneak in,
grab the guy and Fulton
him to safety.
The next outpost we
encounter has a skilled
guard that my XO Miller wants
to kidnap and woo over to Diamond
Dogs. Again, DD spots him and even
manages to somehow lure him around
the back of a shed I’m hiding behind.
Good boy! I Fulton the guard back to
HQ. Miller doesn’t say thanks.
At this point I realise Da Smasei
Laman is pretty far away, and I’ve
burned eight hours of daylight and all
of my tranquiliser rounds. I steal a jeep- stop looking at me like that, this is
definitely not cheating – and pass
the time by cracking on some ’80s
power ballads using Snake’s in-game
cassette player.Face the music
We dump the jeep at another outpost:
the guards would surely spot it
rumbling by, and I don’t want
DD catching bullets like
frisbees, so we try to
sneak past. The guards
immediately spot me,
and I realise that my
music, specifically
a tune by prog rock
hitmakers Asia, has been
playing on loudspeaker.
What ensues will surely go
down as the ‘Only Time Will Tell’
Massacre Of 1984. Still, DD pokes his
head inside a nearby building and
points out a cassette of ‘The Final
Countdown’ which I add to Snake’s
music collection. GOOD BOY!
Finally, we reach our destination,
which I realise is a heavily guarded
stronghold. I flashback to making the
waypoint, seeing the warning ‘DANGER:
HOT ZONE’ and thinking to myself,
‘What could possibly go wrong?’A guard’s spotlight falls on me. It’s
game time, and DD runs off in the
opposite direction. I turn into a bullet
magnet while I try to fumble an order
to my helicopter to pick us up, but
to also blare out Europe’s greatest
hit while doing so. I finally pick up my
assault rifle and fight back, shooting
at every explosive barrel I find. DD runs
back but he’s not confident enough
to fight, so I dive into the crossfire to
sponge the bullets heading his way.
Then I hear it. That beautiful
synth intro and a hail of gunfire from
the helicopter that’s come to save us.
My pilot massacres our attackers and
urges us to jump aboard. We finally
made it. Bonding exercise complete. Qextra
“What ensues will surely go down
as the ‘Only Time Will Tell’
Massacre Of 1984”
OXM takes gaming’s best boy for a walk out in the wilderness
in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain DREW SLEEP
PUBLISHER KONAMI / DEVELOPER KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS / FORMAT XBOX ONE, XBOX 360 / RELEASE DATE SEPTEMBER 2015WHAT IS IT?
A stealth-action sequel
set in 1984. You play
as Venom Snake, an
incarnation of Big
Boss, as he tries to get
revenge on those who
put him in a coma.More Xbox news at gamesradar.com/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 101