For a while before it's release, I was very stoked for this game. Even
though a ton of other people were going so far as to buy the the
Japanese version of this game (Or pirate it) just to get their hands on
it, I waited until June to enjoy the title. Hideo never cuts content
from his games on the American releases, after all.
This game has been met with a lot of joy, praise, and overall strong
love, but it is in my sincerest opinion that most of it is unfounded and
just bandwagon jumping. It isn't a bad game though, it's the kind of
game that you wish there was more focus on certain things.
This is one of the few PSP games that uses an "Install Data" feature,
which is similar to how most PS3 games install to the HDD to shorten
load times. The only other game that I know on the PSP that does this is
"Monster Hunter Freedom Unite". For a full install, which is the most
recommended, you need 880MB of free Memory Stick space, and it IS worth
it.
Without it, well, load times in this game are just downright unacceptable.
It is one of the biggest PSP games, and they did cram a lot of good content into it. Let's begin.
The story is told through, mainly, comic cut-scenes. Hand-drawn,
animated scenes that also incorporate elements of quick-time events.
Only very few scenes are actually rendered outside of this comic style,
but they aren't all that exemplary. You play as Big Boss and must
figured out who the invaders to a country without an army are up to at
the request of a girl who loves peace.
Peace Walker Similar to "Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops" which was
released a few years ago, aside from sneaking around and finishing
missions, you must also capture enemy soldiers to come and work your
Mother Base, which is also Outer Heaven.
In Mother Base, you have 9 options available to you (Which come as you play the game).
~~Recruit~~ - If there are wireless LAN Spots, you can get powerful
soldiers if you knock them all out in time during unique little, custom
missions.
~~Outer Ops~~ - Send your own Metal Gear, captured mechs, and soldiers
from the Combat Unit out into the world to fight wars for countries that
don't have armies. They can bring back other soldiers and items to use.
~~Delivery~~ - Send troops and other items to friends through an internet connection of some sort. Or local things.
~~Versus Ops~~ - Use Ad-Hoc Party to do simple death match...*yawn*
~~Staff~~ - Manage the five teams of Outer Heaven here. Will get to the teams in a bit.
~~R&D~~ - Plan developments and upgrades here, assuming you meet the requirements.
~~Metal Gear~~ - Yup, you can make your own Metal Gear. You don't pilot
it, you just use it to get a big advantage in Outer Ops. You get the
parts and AI boards by defeating the AI weapons in the story mode or the
Extra Ops.
~~Database~~ - View your stats.
~~Trade~~ - Same as Delivery, but this isn't such a gift-minded option. Self explanatory.
To expand Outer Heaven (Mother Base), you must find and recruit new
people. You need to fill five units and hope to get to Lv99 in each
place.
You have:
Combat Unit: Selectable troops for Outer Ops, and you can use them in
the Campaign when you beat the game. Until then, you have to use Snake
(Big Boss). Funny thing is, if you work at it enough, the soldiers you
recruit can have even better stats than he does. Their bonus towards the
Mother Base is that they bring in money for you to spend on R&D.
The soldiers in the Combat Unit get stronger, but sending them to Outer
Ops does better for their training.
You then have the R&D team. You need to upgrade them and the other
three Teams to develop strong equipment which will make your life
easier. Even if you reach Level 99 in all teams, you won't be able to
get all the items in the game from just that, you'll, sadly, have to
grind and hunt down for people who have the right skills to develop
things such as Stealth Camo.
The Mess Hall team is also important. With high percentages on food, you
can increase the stats of your other soldiers. They also help develop
better healing items. Also, what is funny, is that most of the UNIQUE
Female personnel you get in this game are very good at Cooking.
Hideo is a big sexist here, because most of the Female soldiers I've
gotten in this game have been good at three things: Cooking, nursing,
and gossiping. Mess Hall, Medical Team, and Intel team respectively.
Well, don't worry about it.
You have the Medical unit, and they keep your people from being taken out of action due to a disease or what not.
Then finally you have, arguably, the most useless of the units and that
is the Intel team. All they do is just give you a pre-mission report of
how many soldiers are in the area. Only difference is, stats on those
soldiers are randomized every time so they help you pick missions with
high rank soldiers to recruit.
Recruiting soldiers is so much easier in this game. You have the Fulton
Recovery System at your disposal, but it is quite limited in the amount
you are given. All you have to do is subdue them in one of four ways and
attach the balloon to them.
Hold them up, sneak up and tell them to "Freeze!" and they'll surrender.
Tranquilize them.
Stun them. i.e. CQCing them and throwing them into a wall.
Shoot them lethally, but they will enter a near death phase temporarily.
You can use this opportunity to capture them, but it detracts from your
rank.
S-Ranking requires mandatory stealth, which pisses off a certain friend
of mine. You also can't use warcries for boosts, and you can't use
special items like stealth camo to get it easily. You can't get seen
once, you can't kill a single enemy (meaning you have to non-lethally
remove all obstacles), and you have to wait...a lot.
What makes it more demanding is the fact that you can't get certain
blueprints and items unless you S-rank, usually hard, missions.
For AI Missions, you can go all out since they are just unmanned
weapons. What you do just determines if you get parts for your Metal
Gear, or if you get more AI boards.
Completion time is, obviously, important for S rank in all missions.
It's kind of unfair considering how many cool weapons are in this game.
There are many types of assault rifles, shotguns, machine guns and
sniper rifles but almost all of them are lethal and would ruin your S
rank. The only ideal time you can go guns blazing is if you have already
unlocked everything.
I wonder what Hideo Kojima was thinking? I know he bases these games
around stealth mainly, but if you put in all of these honestly very
remarkable weapons, why wouldn't we want to use them? Big Boss is
supposed to be a Big Badass, and he doesn't just use CQC and Stealth.
Regardless, only stealth fans need apply if you care about ranks and completion percentages, and obsessive min/maxing as well.
Moving on, the AI is pretty good. It's certainly better than SOME games I've played...
The enemy AI is remarkable. The enemies can be seen signaling to their
partners as they try to flank you. If one of them goes down, they try to
surround their downed friend while another uses a stim-pack on him to
get him back in action. I've even overheard enemies giving thanks to
each other when this occurs.
Most missions you play will revolve around sneaking from Point A to
Point B, with few missions requiring you to take down a horde of enemy
troops while always on an alert or a caution phase. Along the way, you
can deal with the incredibly amusing and unaware enemy soldiers as you
see fit.
The most enjoyable part of getting an enemy soldier in your hands is
that, if you are standing close to a wall, you can throw them into it
which will instantly knock them out. But what makes it funny is that
when they hit the wall, they get faceplanted on it in a cartoonish way
and they slide down onto the ground headfirst. I can't describe it too
well, but there are surely some videos on the 'Tube if you must know.
But there is just one thing, I think the most fun, cool way to fight enemies wasn't taken seriously enough.
Continuous CQC.
When you have more than one enemy next to you and you grab one of them,
you can throw that guy. When you throw him, a button prompt pops up, and
you can immediately lay into the other person and throw his untrained
ass to the ground for even more stun damage than you'd normally do. I
heard you can do this up to 6 times in a row, but I've never been able
to get past 4 due to the lack of enemies.
Still, it looks very cool and is fun to do even if it gets you spotted.
It's just a shame there weren't many missions that had a lot of enemies
to do it to. Especially considering a key point of MGS3 was the CQC
training Big Boss had under The Boss.
Just be careful not to throw enemies off a high place, because they will die a horrible death.
I'd personally love to get an MGS side story where you play as The Boss
(Big Boss's mentor) and go around trouncing people in hand to hand.
For a PSP game, the animations and graphics are very good. It's a
gorgeous game, and there is no ugly fog or cloud of moisture to hide low
res textures. The animations when you move around, crouch, and other
tasks are fluid, and the controls are responsive.
I find, however, that with this PSP game I strain my eyes sometimes. I
don't usually get that, but it is a word of caution if you look too
close at things.
I laud myself as someone who can easily get used to the controls of any
game in existance, but I'll admit it, Peace Walker had me stumped for a
good few days. It has three control schemes, and it took me a while to
figure out what worked the best for me.
I honestly find no problem in it though, these controls work, despite me
wishing there was a second analog stick at some points. When you get it
down, it becomes very intuitive and simple.
Voice acting, as always, is top notch. David Hayter needs some cough
drops, though. Some of the voice actors from the old games returned for
new parts, but they still put in an excellent performance and brought
the story up. Even though Hideo Kojima couldn't use the size of a
blu-ray for his stealth action movie on the PSP, the performance of the
voice actors and actresses, and the well-drawn comical art made it an
overall fun experience.
Hideo Kojima is either a mad genius, or he's just mad. But either way,
he's still got the touch when he throws in all of the comedical
references to his previous works, or other things. The most notable
thing was the interactable truck sequence early on in the game, where
you can open up numerous trucks looking for something. Hideo is a
recruitable soldier in his own game.
Yep, you can find Hideo chilling in the back of a supply track. After
Big Boss remarks "Mr. Kojima!" he is available for Mother Base.
I won't spoil them, but if you are a fan of Kojima's work, and MGS, you
should definitely hunt down most of them. It is notable, however, there
are much fewer amounts of these cute little references in the game, so
there isn't much to see outside of the stuff in that truck cinema.
Most of the mechanics of stealth from the previous games are here, but
there are some taken out. You can't lean against walls and move
sideways, and you can't move when crawling, so no more vent infiltration
action. Like MGS3, though, it still uses the Camo Index.
Unlike before, you don't have to equip face paint, and you don't select camo out in the field.
Before every mission, you are given the chance to select a load-out. You
can equip any camo that you've unlocked, and some of them have special
abilities. You cannot switch anything in the load out once you start the
mission, so choose wisely.
The Sneaking Suit eliminates footsteps, which is very useful, but it's
camo index isn't all that great, and it has a low inventory capacity.
The Battle Dress increases defense, but you'll be as visible as a
Japanese otaku. It also has the most capacity for items, and can carry
three weapons.
Everything you develop you will be able to take into the field. Some
items require online partners, and the only way to get Co-OPS partners
is to use Ad-Hoc Party if you don't have local friends.
There are many cool ways to use these items even. You can throw supply
markers and when you call in the box for a drop, you can have the
cardboard box dropped right on top of an enemy's head, which knocks him
out instantly.
What is even cooler, however, is that there are passages in the game
that can be traversed if you have two people to pull each other up.
However, if you don't have a partner, you can still get up there if you
drop one of your cardboard boxes under the ledge.
During the MGS:Peace Walker Torture sequence, you can actually have a
partner there with you. If one person is being electrocuted, your
partner can help you out by going to the control room and decreasing the
voltage. Not only that, they can basically help you make a quick
escape.
It's kind of depressing that the game is very fun with a partner, but it
also becomes way too easy. When you're alone, it IS the full MGS
experience, but with coop there, and since Big Boss has a full army at
his command basically, why not get a partner? However, as Hideo Kojima
said himself, "It ain't Metal Gear Solid if it has Online."
It's a kind of mixed-reactions thing.
After you complete the game, but before getting the Chapter 5 missions,
there are some, *ahem*, certain special missions you can get.
The infamous "Date with Paz".
Metal Gear Solid: Pantsu Walker, lolicon adventures, Boss likes 'em young !! A whole new meaning to the term SOLID SNAKE.
I couldn't resist, ;)
The game does indeed have more than 100 missions, but it would be cool
if most of those missions were not constant rehashes of the last one I
did. Come on, I just captured this mech, why am I fighting a "slightly"
stronger version of it?! And there are a ton of those. Not only that,
the AI weapons you fight all have upgraded and custom versions. There
are only about 80 genuine Extra-OPs missions, including the bonus
Monster Hunter missions.
Also, to Monster Hunter: *yawn*
As I mentioned, you can capture enemy vehicles, but you can only use
them for Outer Ops missions. It's a big pain when it comes to capturing
them, but you can either blow them up, or Fulton all of the enemy troops
guarding it and then tranquilize or kill the commander. It's quite a
head ache this way though.
There really isn't much to say that hasn't already, but it's not a
perfect game. It's not a bad game, it's just "Good". It's plain fun,
highly replayable, and addicting, but there is a distinct lack of some
features that could make it an overall better game.
Overall. it's a good piece of history in the Metal Gear Solid lore. It
gives you more insight into how the very first game came into play, and
some other things.
Also: SUN LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!
