Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

I might as well be talking from my stomach. It's way louder than my voice right now. Late night McDonanald’s has repercussions.

In a twist of planning the SaladCast is coming out early and hot on the heels of the Playstation Meeting. We can be "Pro" when we need to be, we just mostly choose not to be, get off our case!

In this ‘cast: PS4 Pro, Airbuds?, Battlefield 1 Beta, Super Mario 1, EVE Online, Tricky Towers, Mass Effect Andromeda, Overcooked, Dara O’Brien’s Go 8-bit, Overwatch, Metal Gear Solid V, Planet Coaster, Roller Coaster Tycoon and some brief hype shouts.

It's time for the Salad Games 2016. For the first event we must embrace the new tradition of there being at least one interruption Rob has to deal with per episode. We refer to an classic problem maker, the doorbell. How long into the episode do we make it before it rings? The winner is the closest guess and will win a golden delicious apple they must purchase themselves.

This episode contains fridges, No Man’s Sky, DOOM, keyboards and mice, Factorio, XCOM 2, Nano Assault EX, headphones, Overwatch and the aforementioned interruption.

There's Sonic news! There’s Sonic news! For Zac and Rob this is a big deal so let’s chat about the possibilities and the probability of them being crap. There’s a tiny bit of other news, DOOM, escape rooms, Starbound, house grouse, Factorio, Metal Gear Solid V, honey shoes, Rocket League and XCOM 2.

The E3 ship has sailed and taken most of news with it so let's catch up on some game!

This episode serves up some Starfox Guard, MGS, Zelda, Factorio, Quantum Break, Tomb Raider and Mirror’s Edge Catalyst.

Rob is back from Japan and now forced to live in the here and now again. Fortunately the Saladcast is here and a little bit now, so come and live with us in it.

This weeks there's Japan, Disney Infinity, Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, old EA news that sucks, new EA news that might not suck, Factorio, Rocket League, Overwatch, Doom, MGS, The Witness, and fight sticks!

Something something something podcast. Something something hurray!

In this podcast: Zac gets a large mug and new kettle, Rob figures out what he wants from Starfox, Dan Gears on, the point of Early Access is debated, Overwatch is judged, Call of Duty and Battlefield announce new games with bad names, Pizza is mentioned, more of The Witness gets witnessed and Rocket League gets the jam.

This one's for all you marathon runners. Had we put this out ahead of the race we’d have got the average person through around 13 miles. You can call your own cab from Tower Bridge though.

In this episode: Rob goes blind, Zac dislikes Overwatch, betas are not played, Factorio gets modded, Metal Gear sells a car, Starfox divides, puzzles get witnessed and Titanfall gets a sword.

Season 7 is here and so too is our new audio gift. A new theme tune... hold on we don't have one? Well I guess you can have some old jaunty brass instead.

In this episode there’s tragedy, news and reviews! Nintendo Direct, Microsoft’s PC game, Mario, Hand of Fate, Picross, Cities, and not Harvest Moon.

What else did we forget? Oh bugger there’s that Life Is Strange coverage we don’t talk about.

If one person doesn't really know what they are talking about and another person doesn’t have a clue about their own words, do they combine into fact or is this how culture begins? This episode attempts to answer this question with spectacular results.

This week there’s plenty of new Pokémon, Rob finishes Metal Gear, Zac avoids DLC, Dan breaks his stuff and vague news is back. Trust cautiously.

After a week off for Dan to get some surgery we're back and Zac and Rob have colds. Go figure.

Plenty of news this week as the games industry comes out of hibernation featuring Rocket League, money, Peter Molyneux, legal fights, Amazon, poopy PC ports and Nintendo. Welcome back!

What does it mean if you get "Enter Sandman" stuck in your head for a day and you haven't even heard the song in, like, forever? Does it cement it as a badass song? Is it destined to get on my nerves? Am I doomed to cause people to sleep forever? The answer may be found in your reaction to arcane recordings of the SaladCast. I hear there may be talk about the games we can’t quite finish yet, VR pricing, vague news, and not dying in the snow and a hidden message if you listen in reverse.

Once again we are graced with a guest in the form of Richard Kemp (DJKippling) to bring his skew to the cast. In this episode some VR and eSports news, injury predictions, PC hardware, Kickstarter backing, caring about achievements and maybe some actual game chat.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy! It's time for the end of year special show: GOTY 2015! We must scrutinize the heck out of 2015 for the good of mankind, for it is written: "Those who podcast, must arbitrarily award." There’s a lot of difficult decisions and few easy answers in one of the busiest gaming years in memory an you can find out exactly how the team arrive at their conclusions (a blog with the results will go up later).

Fair warning: we may talk about story spoilers and mention the Weak Ass Californian Gap.

It's the countdown to the close of the SaladCast for 2015 when we’ll do a countdown to close 2015. Until then have a regular SaladCast.

There are NO Star Wars spoilers here. You’ve all seen it already anyway.

Who likes long podcasts? We like long podcasts! So we made a long podcast! Exclamation marks!!! Rob gets sour over another Rare Replay game but Dan returns from Morocco to lift him up with MGSV. Zac, meanwhile, exposes us all to his lucky glow (it's radiation) by starting Fallout 4 again.

PS. We kinda totally missed that most of PSX had happened the day before recording. It wasn’t that great though.

Aaaaaand in the blue corner; The current console champion of the world, weighing in at over 25 million units sold despite only a few great games and looking to fight dirty; Sony Playstation! This would be the honest introduction in the current generation fight and it's Sony’s time to come out swinging as they dominate Paris Games Week. French it up!

Oh and there was a small release on XBONE called Halo 5. You might have heard of it.

Did you miss last week's super special limited edition SaladCast? If so then you missed the best show we’ve ever done. It had celebrity guests, hot new musical acts, exclusive game reveals and even some "fan fiction". But don’t worry, you can still get your normal edition podcast goodies right here. We’ve brought a pheasant.

Unbeknownst to us, it turns out it has been "totally average game week" here at happysalad. Nothing too terrible, nothing mind-blowing, just good-old “B-tier” games being in the same room offering a lukewarm, vaguely honest handshake of mediocrity. The middle of the road is mildly comfortable... and beige.

So despite it being an episode with a number that coincides with one of Rob's favourite game series, we fail to bring up the connection with John-117, better known as Master Chief. So now the connection has been made Rob can continue his internal monologue that constantly hypes the Halo Master Chief Collection.

In this bumper episode we talk a lot of crap but also mention Gamescom, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Super Time Force, Super Time Force Ultra, Forza Horizon 2, Minimum, Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, Guardians of the Galaxy, FTL, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, Beyond: Two Souls, The Witcher 2, Crimson Dragon, Tiny & Big in Grandpa’s Leftovers, Evolve and other nonsense.

In the wake of the PS4 reveal GDC doesn't have the same gravitas of previous years for video game news. In reality this event isn’t really for us consumers, it’s for the developers. It’s in the name... So while we hold on for E3 we’ll just keep doing what we do: playing games and talking rubbish.

This week we talk about Lucas Arts and their work, Assassin’s Creed Revelations, Bioshock Infinite, Need For Speed: Most Wanted, Guild Wars 2, Planetside 2, new Metal Gear Solid, DiRT 2 and 3, Bit Trip Runner 2, SONY hardware and more.

2012 is drawing to a close and that means it's GOTY time! This might be the one time in the year we carefully consider which games deserve honour and which deserve being locked in a room with a small radio playing Paul McCartney’s Christmas song on repeat forever.

Awards include "Best game that hasn’t really come out yet", “Worst audio thing”, “Biggest surprise” and “Most baffling decision” amongst others and of course the coveted SaladCast GOTY.