Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Video: A Box of All Trades

The cardboard box in the Metal Gear Solid series has grown to iconic status, with only the Weighted Companion Cube from Portal serving as its biggest parallelepiped competition, even though the MGS box did little more than hold a stealthy super soldier and get peed on by a wolf that one time. During Sony's Gamescom 2014 press conference, however, the cardboard box proved its worth during a brief Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain demo, and this box is not one to be messed with.

We had already known that Snake is now able to pop out of the top of the box for surprise attacks or out of the side to sneak away from an enemy who saw him moving around. What we hadn't seen is the new sticker-based tactics the box employs. First we can fool an enemy into thinking a commanding officer is approaching by sticking a saluting soldier on the top and showing it off, where the enemy will salute and keep moving. Even more interesting is the ability to stick an attractive bikini model to the box and show that to a soldier, which will make him come running towards it and completely vulnerable to Snake's wrath. Who knew a cardboard box could be so versatile?

We'll get to try Snake's new box tricks and more for ourselves when Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain launches in early 2015 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.