Damn, This is a Long Ogle at ‘Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain’

Another year's E3 extravaganza has come and gone, and this one had all the usual drama: half-assed thirty second namedrop 'reveals,' cinematic trailers with all the melodrama and none of the gameplay, Nintendo generally being a bit wank... you know how E3 goes down.

 In that second category, we had Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. When you see ‘trailer directed by Hideo Kojima,' you know that something pretty damn special and/or nutty is coming at you. It was, as always, brilliantly overblown and as theatrical as a holiday pantomime. But it wasn't enough.

What we wanted was gameplay. More gameplay than you can shake a studly stealthy agent's faithful cardboard box at. And we were in luck, because The Phantom Pain delivered in style. How does a full forty minutes of it sound?

 If it's one of those slacktastic Monday mornings (y'know, like they all are), why not while away a little time the Solid Snake way? The Phantom Pain has already demonstrated its pioneering use of horseshit as a booby trap, so you can imagine the kind of brilliance that awaits you in this extended demo footage: