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Obviously none of this would mean anything if the act of skulking through a base wasn't brilliant, but it is. MGSV's stealth takes camouflage, distraction, light and shadow, and line of sight, and blends them all together to create something incredible. You can use the topography to crawl unseen mere meters from an enemy, hide in foliage, shoot out lights, and dive behind cover. It's constantly tense—when creeping through an enemy compound you're like a coiled spring, ready to roll onto your back and fire at any sentry that makes a sudden movement.Perhaps MGSV's best quality is how the spacing of its checkpoints encourages you to live with your mistakes and adapt, rather than reach for the restart button. It helps that there are as many combat options, and you can evade and slip back into the darkness or use the chaos as a distraction. MGSV is an anecdote generator, each mission creating a set piece through interacting systems. I've always been keen on stealth as a gameplay mechanic, with the original Metal Gear Solid on the PlayStation giving me my first taste as I entered my teens. It's fitting that this series' creator, Hideo Kojima, after so much iteration and experimentation with the core gameplay, would finally perfect the stealth formula with what is, presumably, his final Metal Gear release.Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is released for PlayStation 4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC on September 1.Follow Kirk McKeand on Twitter.New on Motherboard: Will 5G Kill Free WiFi?