A Story About My Uncle

A Story About My Uncle is a first-person platformer for explorers. Run, jump, swing and rocket your way through a fantastic world. Search for clues as to what happened to your missing Uncle and follow his footsteps.

Pros

The graphics are not the best in the world, but the environments look beautiful. The motions of your hands and of the world around you are also very well animated.

A Story About My Uncle is quite a quiet game. There is music and the sound effects reflect what is happening with you and around you, but it is still quiet. The quietness of the game really creates a great atmosphere.

The level designs make full use of the vast expanse of far and wide spaces. They make you not only use your skills to traverse effectively over the huge spaces, but also force you to observe where and how to connect your grappling swings. You must think in all three dimensions by figuring out how to go over, around and also under obstacles to reach the next platform.

The combination of the graphics, sound and level designs make for a very engrossing experience. The game made me move in my chair as if leaning more would make me travel further in the game. I cannot remember the last game that made me move in my chair.

The game is very easy to learn. Step-by-step instructions are displayed as you play the game.

The story is touching. There is nothing fancy, no dramatic twist, just a simple heart-warming story. The ending does not explain a lot of things, but I still found it very satisfying.

Cons

A Story About my Uncle is a very short game. It only took me 5 hours and 21 minutes to reach the end and that includes all the falling and retrying. I only managed to collect 11/25 collectibles, and I did not spend a lot of time examining everything, so there is some replay value. The fact remains, it is a very short game. Not the shortest game I have played, but still short.

I found it disappointing that your hands are so well animated, but you cannot see your own legs or feet.

Some sections only allow you to walk around and zoom in on things. I managed to get stuck exploring because the jump function was disabled.

I encountered a few bugs where the events did not trigger properly if I continued from some checkpoints. They were not game breaking bugs, but they did ruin the immersion. The bugs also made their affected sections easier, which was okay by me.

Other Points

The game uses checkpoint saves and has only one profile to save the progress. As you play through the game, the checkpoints get further and further apart which contributes to increasing the difficulty. As you complete each level, you can also start from the beginning of the level without going through the whole game.

There is a lot to explore with lots of running, jumping and grappling to be performed. For budding investigators, finding hidden things and taking a closer look can reveal some interesting stuff. There are also collectibles to gather which unlocks stuff for the game. Other than that, there is not much else to do. There are very few things to interact with.

The game looks like it would be a tremendous VR experience. But it does not look like it supports VR at the moment. I do not have a VR headset, but experiencing the game on a normal screen is already so engrossing, a VR version would truly be out of this world.

A Story About My Uncle is promoted as a non-violent game. The developers should put a disclaimer saying the game may cause players to be violent towards their computers. More than a few times I have rage quit the game out of frustration.

Biases

A Story About My Uncle reminded me of Quake 2 and Just Cause 2. They were the only games I remember playing that had grappling hooks. Of course they were nothing like A Story About My Uncle.

The frustration also reminded me of platform jumping in Half-Life 2. Another game that is nothing like A Story About My Uncle.

Played version BUILD v. 5188.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Be stealthy. Sneak in, complete your mission and sneak out without anyone realising you were there. Be crazy. Launch some rockets, blow-up stuff and run in guns blazing to get the job done. Be your own “Boss” and do things how you see fit in The Phantom Pain. This feature presentation of Metal Gear Solid V, continues where Ground Zeroes left off and with more of everything.

Pros

The following pro points from Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes also applies to The Phantom Pain: the audio, the AI, the on-rails shooting and the ability to replay completed missions.

The Phantom Pain takes the open world-ness of Ground Zeroes and expands it to gigantic proportions. It might not be Skyrim or Just Cause 2, but there are still very large areas to explore. Main missions have an area that you cannot leave, but outside of missions, can free roam a region and do whatever you want, including completing side-ops.

The introduction is really something. All the cutscenes being skippable can save time if you start again, but you must still play through some very slow moving parts. It is very long, but makes for a very good beginning for the game.

The graphics have improved since Ground Zeroes. Not sure what they did, but everything looks more realistic.

The ultimate in stealth technology returns in Metal Gear Solid V; the cardboard box! I absolutely loved the cardboard box in Metal Gear Solid 2, for the humour and for its effectiveness. The weird thing about The Phantom Pain is, rather than having boxes lying around, you summon them and they drop from the sky, even indoors!

Time flows continually unless you pause the game. Be careful where you check your map or information. A patrolling enemy may bump into you. On the plus side, waiting for nightfall to sneak around in the dark is a workable tactic.

Sneaking around is fun, but stealing a rocket truck to launch rockets at the enemy and rushing in to extract a prisoner makes for more creative fun. Vehicles and fixed weapons provides for more ways to get jobs done.

Learning to play The Phantom Pain is much easier than Ground Zeroes. Everything is explained as you play the game and with greater clarity. For people new to Metal Gear Solid, I recommend learning the ropes with The Phantom Pain before going back to Ground Zeroes.

You get a horse and a dog! What’s not to love. There are also other buddies you can call to your aid and each has different abilities. Animals are cooler though!

There is an interesting online mode of play called FOB missions. You build a FOB (Forward Operating Base) and you can try an infiltrate other players’ FOBs to steal stuff (or people). Other players can do the same with your FOBs. Unlike normal missions, there is a 30-minute time limit and you cannot pause. Plus, aborting the mission before completion means failure and there are penalties that go with it.

Cons

It does not look like anyone plays the Metal Gear Online part of the game anymore. I did not try it out many times, so it could be that I look around at the wrong time.

When I have the joystick plugged in, it stops the mouse from working. There is no option to disable the joystick, so I have to unplug it to make the game playable. Annoying!

Other Points

The following other points from Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes also applies to The Phantom Pain: being a points game, having side missions on the same maps, having checkpoint saves with only one save slot and continuing the interesting but confusing story.

Apart from FOB missions, there are also special online tasks and rewards for the single-player component of the game. Unlike HITMAN, if you play The Phantom Pain offline, you still get access to all the single-player missions and side operations.

There is a lot of base management. Research weapons and upgrades, assigning staff to jobs, managing resources. It felt like X-COM. Everything is explained in-game, but I just cannot remember what is what. The system works well and I am sure some people will welcome the extra variety to the game. Personally, I just wanted to quickly get into the action and found the whole management thing a bit in the way.

The Phantom Pain no longer deducts points for kills like in Ground Zeroes. Instead, you get bonus points for not killing anyone.

You can select other people to play missions. It was a bit weird, because all the dialogue still refer to you as Boss or Snake, even when you are not.

There are no difficulty settings for The Phantom Pain. Because of this, I found it to be more difficult than HITMAN 2.

There is no PDF manual for the game. There is an online web manual located here: http://mgstpp-app.konamionline.com/manual/pc/eu/en/index.html

Biases

According to the game, I have only completed 26% of it.

I only played a little bit of the FOB missions component of the game.

I bought Metal Gear Solid V: The Definitive Experience and played Ground Zeroes before starting The Phantom Pain.

HITMAN (2) was the only recent stealth action game I played before MGS V. I did enjoy HITMAN a lot.

A long time ago, I had great fun playing Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is a third-person stealth action game where you play as an exceptionally skilled soldier known as “Snake”/”Big Boss.” Your mission is to sneak into a military base to rescue a couple of people. Ground Zeroes is also a prelude to the much larger Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

Pros

Very nice graphics. Everything looks excellent.

The audio is also excellent. It certainly helps since you need to listen in on conversations and figure out enemy movements by ear.

The map is completely open, similar to HITMAN. Where you go and how you go about completing your missions, is up to you. I don’t remember Metal Gear Solid 2 being open like this.

Cutscenes blend seamlessly with the playing sections and really boosts the atmosphere of the game. Some cutscenes are quite lengthy, but they can be paused, or skipped entirely to get straight into the action.

The AI is excellent. It makes for a difficult game, but not to the point that the enemies have super powers.

There is some on-rails shooting. It sure makes for a good break from all the sneaking around. The only bad thing is, you still lose points for kills.

Completed missions can be replayed. So, if you want to try for a higher score or complete other objectives, you can.

Cons

My favourite action in Metal Gear Solid 2, hiding in boxes, is disappointingly missing from Ground Zeroes.

New players to the world of Metal Gear Solid may find it difficult to learn how to play Ground Zeroes. There are hints on how to play, but there are also things that are not explained. The old fashioned learn the keys and experiment procedure is required to figure out everything. Alternatively, play The Phantom Pain first to learn everything, then return to Ground Zeroes.

It only took me 2 hours to finish the one and only story mission. That is very short considering that I was just bumbling around at the start. Not a surprise though, since Ground Zeroes is only a prologue game.

Other Points

The plot is presented with background reading material, cutscenes, general dialogue and cassette tape recordings. There is a lot to digest and can get confusing at times. Confusing, but interesting, just like Metal Gear Solid 2.

There are side missions that take place on the same map, much like how HITMAN works. Not sure if this makes Ground Zeroes worth buying without The Phantom Pain, but it is still good fun.

Also similar to HITMAN, Ground Zeroes is a points game. You will lose points if you alert the enemy or kill non-targets. Of course, if you don’t care for points, the game does allow you to have fun and just go on a rampage.

The game uses automatic checkpoint saves and there is only one save slot. You can only return to the most recent save slot if you die or want to reload. The checkpoints are at set spots and each time you go to those spots, it saves.

Biases

The only other MGS game I have played is Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. I liked MGS 2 a lot.

HITMAN(2) was the most recent stealth game that I enjoyed before Ground Zeroes. HITMAN kept popping into my head while I was playing Ground Zeroes.

I got Ground Zeroes as part of Metal Gear Solid V: The Definitive Experience. I got through the story mission of Ground Zeroes before starting The Phantom Pain, but then went back and forths for a while, before leaving Ground Zeroes.