Much as I loved it, 'The Phantom Pain' really is the perfect subtitle to Metal Gear Solid 5. It's a game where you can feel that things were cut back. Beyond that, sometimes it could feel Frankensteined together, like a sack of loosely connected great ideas that never quite connect as you'd think. It seems that modder 'mohtal gear' agrees, as for the last year they've been working on Definitive Subsistence, a mod that takes the game apart and reassembles it so all those parts move together for the first time. Better yet, they rolled out a major MGS anniversary update just yesterday, along with the gameplay trailer below.

I tinkered around with the mod before, when it first surfaced, and it's transformative. Definitive Subsistence makes every mission a tense, thrilling experience all over again, and more replayable than ever. The mod expands the Subsistence mode (seen in a few rare bonus missions) to cover the entire game, sending Big Boss into the field under On-Site Procurement rules, armed with only the very bare minimum of gear and forcing you to scavenge for supplies. That doesn't sound too impressive, but the mod also reworks the entire game around this concept.

Every enemy drops semi-random loot, with their equipment and loot pools determined by what faction or sub-faction they belong to. The barely-used revenge system is overhauled to work on a per-mission basis. Silently sneak through several camps, knocking out every enemy? The next camp you hit will probably have extra scouts posted with night-vision or binoculars. Go guns-blazing? Expect to see more enemies with heavy armor and riot shields. Every mission has you improvising and adapting to a rolling situation that your actions have caused. You might even back yourself into a nearly-unwinnable corner, but if you really need to push back against heavy arms, just find an EMN stun mine so you can hijack any vehicle in the game.

Almost every piece of gear and tech you could normally research can be found out in the open world, and due to the unpredictable nature of the loot drops, you'll get to use and improvise with stuff you'd never tried before. There's some all-new stuff too! Wear a riot shield on your back, and your dives now deal heavy concussive damage. Hypnotherapy tapes allow you to become different characters with all their special abilities. And outside of the core mod, there are a few optional plugins enabling new, higher difficulty modes for veterans. Or if you just want a power trip, you can deploy a (slightly janky, work-in-progress) drivable, customizable version of Battle Gear, the high-tech future tank you could only research and look at in the original game.

There's so much more to it than that. Enemies send in an armored division to kill you after you've set off every alarm? Take it out, and nearby infantry will just surrender automatically. Just one of many new mechanics. I'd be here all day if I were to list everything the mod does. I will say that it has made me fall in love with MGS5 all over again. Of course, this mod is meant for single-player and locks out many of the game's more esoteric online features, but all the tech and upgrades you could get from online are out there to be found in the game's massive open world. You've just got to shake someone down for it.

You'll of course need Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain for this mod, which costs £25/$30 for the Definitive Edition bundle. Once you have that, you can get one of two versions of Definitive Subsistence: The Standalone version (if you've got no other mods active) is most recommended by the developer, but if you also use Infinite Heaven (a modding framework used to create custom side ops, among other things), there's a test version of Definitive Subsistence available that should play nice with it. Happy sneaking.