You can play it like a classic third-person shooter almost the entire way through if you want. Its weapons handle well and have a real sense of heft and impact about them, while its guards are a genuine threat if there’s more than two of them shooting at you. Perhaps you’ve been spotted during a stealthy infiltration, or perhaps you made a conscious decision to start the mission loaded for bear – either way, MGS V handles firefights almost as adeptly as it does stealth. The second MGS V is the game where you go loud.

You spend a lot of your time in MGS V crawling on your belly through high grass and behind obstacles, hoping the guard who caught a glimpse of you loses interest, and with your silenced tranquiliser pistol prepped as a backup in case he doesn’t.

The key gameplay element of the MGS series has always been stealth, and it’s true that MGS V has the single most finely-tuned stealth system since the inception of the genre. The first game is the one in the screenshot below. Metal Gear Solid V is several AAA titles’ worth of game, all improbably rolled into one product.

Metal gear solid v review pc 2019