Metal Gear Solid 5's Chicken Hat Is Extremely Powerful

Hideo Kojima really knows how to keep gamers on their toes. His latest antics saw the legendary designer and director unveiling a brand new feature for the highly anticipated Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: a chicken hat.

IGN suffered the long fate of sitting through nearly three hours of a live-stream only to catch a glimmer of something grand at the end of it. Kojima, in all his great and vast wisdom, thought it cheeky to unveil a special fail-safe feature for noobs and skill-invalids.

You see, there's a chicken hat in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain that is unlocked if you frequently and repeatedly fail missions or have difficulty in completing the missions. The point of the chicken hat is to help you become invisible to enemies so you can avoid being detected.

One of the big challenges of Metal Gear Solid has always been the stealth elements, so essentially this chicken hat will remove the hardest challenge: the stealth. Enemies won't be able to spot you as easily, making your missions a heck of a lot easier.

I know this might catch the righteous wrath of some people who will feel as if this strips away the challenge from the game, but I think it does just the opposite. First of all, the chicken hat is optional. You don't have to put on the embarrassing cheat device if you don't want to. Second, the fact that this isn't DLC and actually something optional in the game is a real step up from a lot of the other special features in games these days.

Usually something like the chicken hat would be a DLC add-on released after the fact. In a lot of games we have post-launch DLC or pre-order bonus DLC with special weapons, vehicles or abilities that allow players to “have fun” in the game, similar to the DLC cheats in Saints Row games.

As for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain... it's a true-to-its-roots espionage stealth title. The game sees players taking on the role of Big Boss – or rather, Naked Snake's transition into Big Boss.

This will be the first truly open-world Metal Gear Solid title, enabling players to explore and complete missions in ways that they see fit. The game will have fully operable vehicles for players to commandeer and use as they see fit, as well as a large cache of weapons, plenty of high-tech gadgets, and the cardboard box, of course.

Speaking of the cardboard box... it's undergone some major upgrades. The new upgrades include being able to dive out of the box and shoot, as well as use various images on the box to distract, attract and manipulate the enemy on the battlefield.

The game is shaping up to be pretty big and is already on our list of games in 2015 we can't wait to play. If the story is grounded enough and the action is well paced with fun, replayable missions, I could easily see Metal Gear Solid V taking home the GOTY. Of course, the game will be facing a lot of stiff competition from other hard-hitting AAA titles like The Witcher 3 and Batman Arkham Knight.

But so long as The Phantom Pain has a lot of hidden Easter Eggs like the chicken hat, I wouldn't put it past Kojima to take home an award or two by the end of 2015.