Selfie time

During the prologue, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain asks you to enter your birthday – but why? Well, it turns out that there's a special sequence in the game if you happen to boot it up during your celebrations. There are spoilers within so you may want look away now if you want to keep things fresh. You've been warned.

As spotted on Reddit and Eurogamer, if you play the game on your birthday, Ocelot will call you back to Mother Base to deal with an emergency. However, the well-groomed hero and his band of balaclava clad brethren will simply wheel out a cake and sing a rousing rendition of 'Happy Birthday' – an event arguably more damaging than a full-scale attack.

There's more: if you have a 100 per cent bond rating with sassy sniper Quiet, you'll get an extra scene involving Big Boss' favourite brand of cigar. It's all rather bizarre, but we'd expect nothing less from Hideo Kojima and crew. The only sad news is that this author has already celebrated his birthday, so will have to wait another year.

[source reddit.com, via eurogamer.net]