We saw 20 minutes of The Phantom Pain running on a PlayStation 4 at E3 today, and its gorgeous open-world, array of gameplay options and throwback to classic Metal Gear features truly wowed us. Check out Marty and Lucy's impressions below.

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Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain is an open-world Peace Walker sequel with heavy RPG elements, and I couldn’t be happier. The demo shown to us at E3 featured a very brief cinematic introducing Snake’s mission to infiltrate an Afghan village and obtain information regarding the imprisonment of Master Miller, and from there it was pure open-world gameplay.Phantom Pain is an immediately stunning game. The scope of the mountainous landscape littered with canyons, livestock, villages, and creeks is staggering. Riding your horse across the plains brought shades of Red Dead Redemption, even down to the way the music would swell as you neared a dangerous area.The first big surprise of the demo was the ability for Venom Snake (evidently that’s what he’s called now?) to use Peace Walker’s infinitely rad Fulton System to transport stunned enemies back to Mother Base and recruit them as your own personal Diamond Dog army. But humans are just the tip of this iceberg – everything from crates, to vehicles, to sheep can be skyhook-ed out of the world and brought back to your Big Shell-esque base of operations.What’s even better is that you can chopper your way back to your fully-customizable Mother Base at any point in the game and wander around your creation. Seeing the spoils of my actions wandering about your base brought to mind shades of Skies of Arcadia and Suikoden, and I couldn’t be happier about that. Troops were practicing at shooting ranges, Snake could spare with his men to raise their levels, and we even spotted a young Revolver Ocelot gazing off longingly into the sunset.Back on solid ground in Afghanistan, I was really impressed by the emphasis placed on approaching encounters in a non-lethal manner. If you want to build up your base, you can’t be John Rambo. Luckily Snake has a load of new tricks to help complete his mission without getting blood on his hand(s). Thanks to his prosthetic arm, you can attract guards by knocking wherever you are in the world, no wall needed. An active weather system brought a blinding sandstorm through the valley, and while it definitely obstructed the player’s vision, it also allowed Snake to move about under the cover of sand.At one point in the demo, the Kojima Productions representative leading it accidental called the game Peace Walker. It was the best kind of Freudian slip imaginable.

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I echo Marty's sentiments that this feels exactly like a Peace Walker sequel; all the features that were missing from Ground Zeroes are now back, and the game looks to be a much richer experience for it.I love how Kojima's not afraid to learn and grow yet still manages to keep these tried and tested Metal Gear quirks relevant. The cardboard box, for example, has had an upgrade: you can now burst out of it to shoot at enemies then duck back inside. Being spotted while moving around in it is no longer the death sentence it once was, either - you can dive out of the box into cover and leave it there as a decoy. Cue a suspicious soldier, and zip! Tranq to the head. The cigarette is back, too - but this time it's an E-cigar, and is used as a means to speed up the day/night cycle. Hey; a guy's gotta relax some time.The support marker from Peace Walker has had an upgrade, too. As well as air strikes and rations, you can now call in your team to scope out the area before you infiltrate it, allowing you to gain information on the placement of enemies beyond your immediate position.A sense of playfulness makes a welcome return. While Ground Zeroes was a great game, it went for a much heavier tone than in previous instalments. But fultoning animals and waddling around in your tricked out cardboard box in The Phantom Pain is pure comedy, while incidental animations like your horse just casually taking a crap suggest Kojima's toilet humour is back with a welcome (depending on who you talk to) vengeance.Of course, these features and quirks are spliced seamlessly into the fluid, stealth-focused gameplay introduced in Ground Zeroes. Boss is still a remarkably flexible protagonist, rolling and ducking and weaving in the playground of this fictional Afghanistan, and now he's even versatile on a horse; hanging off the side of his saddle in order to remain unseen feels like a hilariously implausible but totally ingenious new form of stealth.The old is meeting the new in spectacular fashion in The Phantom Pain, and the 20 minutes we saw today left me desperate for more. While the demo didn't give us enough of a taste on the game's story to form an opinion, based on gameplay alone The Phantom Pain is undoubtedly a highlight at this year's E3.





Marty Sliva is an Editor at IGN. E3. Yup. Follow him on Twitter @McBiggitty Lucy O'Brien is Entertainment Editor at IGN AU. Follow her ramblings on IGN or Twitter.