Continuing with their strong showing for Games with Gold, Microsoft have prepared a rather good lineup of games available to Xbox gamers for October for free, as long as they are subscribed to the Games with Gold program. Xbox One owners get their hands on the excellent Valiant Hearts, a beautifully drawn and stylized story about the first World War, that Ubisoft released on the UbiArt engine last year; they also get the complete first season of The Walking Dead for free.

Xbox 360 owners also get the complete first season of The Walking Dead for free, and they also get Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes as well. Ground Zeroes was previously already available with Games with Gold for the Xbox One, so this is the first time that the Xbox 360 version of the game has been offered.

It’s not as strong a showing as Microsoft have had in the last couple of months, but it is still overall a good selection, and not something that I can find any reason to find complaint with.

Microsoft promised us last month that going forward, they would try better and harder with their Games with Gold initiative, and if this month’s offerings are any indication, they seem to be going by their word. This month’s Games with Gold offerings are pretty damn good, and it doesn’t matter what Xbox system you own- you’re probably going to end up getting a major game either way.

Xbox 360 owners get the excellent Metro Redux, as well as Metro: Last Light this month, meaning that they can play through the entire series for absolutely free, should they so wish to (on the flip side, if you don’t like Metro, and you’re a Xbox 360 owner, you’re sort of out of luck). Xbox One owners get one dud in How to Survive, but more importantly, they also get Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. This is especially relevant, given that The Phantom Pain launches in September- it’s a good time to get caught up on your MGS5 lore.

Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more coverage.

While last year’s Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, and this year’s upcoming Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom pain have enjoyed some incredible press and acclaim for everyone, there was one controversial change made that rubbed everyone off the wrong way, and that people have still not been able to reconcile themselves with- Kojima replacing David Hayter, the voice of the saga, with Keifer Sutherland. Sutherland delivered a good performance, all said and done, but it lacked the panache of Hayter’s Snake.

Since then, everyone has been trying to figure out if there was more to this than meets the eye, if maybe Kojima, who is known to be a legendary troll, is just stringing players along; now, Hayter himself is adding fuel to the fire, with his newest tweet that seems to hint at an appearance (or something) in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

I wish they would stop yanking our chains and just tell us already. The Phantom Pain launches this year. Stay tuned.

Subjectively, choosing the best looking game is always tough. Do you look at what the game should be capable of looking like, given the hardware running it? Do you give points for realism or simply opt for the best aesthetic that fits the tone of the game? Do you account for games that look good but often faced graphical glitches and frame rate issues? What about remastered games with reworked textures, higher resolutions and many more effects and elements?

In the end, we decided to opt for the game that currently looks and runs the best, effects and everything taken together, along with how graphically detailed a game is. If it’s a game like Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes, we focus on just how detailed the open world is, the quality of the lighting, facial and character animations, and much more. Metro Redux is tougher to judge since 4A Games is essentially further sprucing up the excellent template that Metro: Last Light provided but doing so to an absurd degree. inFamous: Second Son impressed us with its downplayed but realistic weather effects, draw distance and particle effects.

Make no mistake – all of the above are extremely good looking games. But there was only one that truly stood out in terms of next gen visuals.

Nominees:

• Metro Redux
• DriveClub
• Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
• inFamous: Second Son

Winner: DriveClub

Evolution Studios’ DriveClub has had a number of issues since launch but the developer redeemed itself in the past few months thanks to tons of support and updates. One area where it never seemingly suffered was in the visuals department – and a recent update made sure to add real time weather to the equation.

However, DriveClub is best described as a good looking game filled with tons of little nuances that you can’t help but stop and notice. Aside from the extremely detailed and realistic cars, the lighting interacts realistically – employing both hard and soft light sources intelligently – while droplets of rain individually trickle down one’s door or hood. It’s simply amazing to view the game in 1080p resolution and note the lack of frame rate drops.

It may all be subjective but even if DriveClub wasn’t trying to be the most realistic looking racing simulator ever made, it comes across as one of the most graphically impressive games available.

Note: GamingBolt’s Game of the Year categories, nominations and awards are selected via an internal nomination, voting and debate process. You can check the rest of categories and the respective winners here.

A few weeks ago, Hideo Kojima had revealed the entire map size of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. One look at the map and it’s not hard to make out the portion below is land and the white portion above it is the sky. However that does not seem to be the case. A Reddit user has uncovered that the white portion is actually made up of roads, terrains and buildings.

To further study the map, the user applied white balance correction to show the details more clearly and was able to pinpoint where the trailers of the game took place on the map. This information is of course debatable but given that the user proves it by using image correction, we won’t be surprised if this turns out to be true in the final game.

We have the images below. Check it out and let us know your thoughts in the comments section below. Regardless of whether this turns out to be true or not, one thing is for sure, Metal Gear Solid 5 will boast an absolutely massive world when it releases next year. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is due in 2015 for the PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Xbox 360. For more on the game check out our hub page here.

Source: Reddit 1, 2.

Hideo Kojima is a man that has inspired a generation of artists, gamers, directors, writers and more. This year at Gamescom 2014, Kojima revealed new information about Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

He revealed that Skull Face represents a person having lost their human side. Removing the skin from the face in this context, literally represents a removal of the characters humanity. He also comments on Big Boss becoming like a “skull”, saying that he loses some of his humanity whilst on his quest for vengeance.

In Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, the Militaires Sans Frontieres (Soldiers without Borders) insignia is designed around the hypothesized super continent Pangea of ancient earth which, when viewed at a slight angle, resembles a skull. Meaning that Snake and his allies have literally fought under a skull already before.

Kojima goes on to say that this is all part of a larger, sad subplot. The Phantom Pain is due early 2015 for the PS4, PS4,  Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC. Check out the latest gameplay footage of the game here.

Source.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain remains somewhat of an enigma, even though there is no shortage of snippets and information on the game coming to us courtesy of Hideo Kojima. In his latest webcast, Hideo Kojima finally showed us the map size of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and then compared it to the maps in all the previous games in the series. And, well, it’s pretty massive (as you might be able to see in the image above).

The image also seems to indicate that the game map will be at least 24 square kilometers (and might be even bigger), putting it on par with the maps in games like, say, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. If Kojima is making an open world game, at the very least he seems to be doing it properly.

Meta Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is the fifth installment of the Metal Gear Solid saga; it was released in two parts. The first, Ground Zeroes, was a 40 minute mission released earlier this year, while The Phantom Pain itself is due for release some time later next year. Hopefully, we get to learn more about it at E3, so stay tuned.

Earlier today, Hideo Kojima tweeted there will be some sort of an announcement tomorrow. What is it about? Unfortunately we don’t know the answer yet. But according to Tora Shiro, a Konami employee. who posts quite often on NeoGaf stated that the announcement won’t be earth shattering.

“It’ll be a neat announcement that will be very exciting for a lot of fans,” Tora Shiro stated. “It won’t be earth shattering (no ZOE, no Snatcher, no MGS1 remake), please curtail your hype trains accordingly. I don’t want this to turn into another version of the PS4 release performance.”

So it won’t be an announcement about a MGS remake, Zone of Enders 3 or a new Snatcher game. So is it about Kerotans, a Neogaf member jokingly asked? Kerotans are cartoon frogs that are hidden in previous Metal Gear Solid games.

That is also not a possibility according to Tora Shiro. “Man, now I wish this was the announcement. “Come on, everyone knows about Kerotan.” “… Oh. OK. But what’s this frog thing doing here?””

We think that Hideo Kojima is going to announce free DLC for Ground Zeroes or an announcement of announcement. Whatever it is, we will keep you updated.

Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes is now behind us and the release of The Phantom Pain is still pending. After the prologue nature of Ground Zeroes, it’s expected that The Phantom Pain will have a larger, more traditional MGS approach to its gameplay.

Director Hideo Kojima has more or less confirmed the same. Speaking to SpazioGames, Kojima addressed the open world nature of the game and explained that while it was a concern at the first, “the missions are still very clear, and the player is free to choose how to approach them. In this sense, I don’t think it’s that different from the previous installments.”

As for why Ground Zeroes/The Phantom Pain are much darker in tone than previous games, Kojima stated that, “This episode is the story of how Snake became Big Boss. It is important for me to explain to the players how this hero became an evil threatening the entire world. That’s why it needed to become a very dramatic story.”

The Phantom Pain will also break series’ tradition and offer Ocelot as a radio contact in The Phantom Pain. In conversation with 4Gamer, Kojima confirmed that both Kaz and Ocelot are contacts in The Phantom Pain but there could be more persons of interest yet to be revealed. He also said there will be other functions with the radio in The Phantom Pain.

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is currently rumoured to be releasing in early 2015 for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3 and PS4.

Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes is finally available for North America players across current and next gen platforms, but we’ve known for a good solid month now that it’s the Xbox One and PS4 versions that fully realize Hideo Kojima’s open world vision.

One version is of course superior to the other and while we’ll have a full visual analysis for all platforms this week, check out how the Xbox One and PS4 versions stack up next to each other in the following screenshots. The difference is all the better realized in gameplay footage but even on close inspection, you’ll notice that the PS4 version looks slightly superior to the Xbox One version.

Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes is now available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC. You can read our full review of the game here. Have you picked up the game? Let us know in the comments section below.

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