The newest entry in the Metal Gear Series tries to be the biggest and best, all on the smallest system.
However, the PSP installment, Portable Ops, wasn't really that much like MGS. At it's core it was, but it started to show signs of being a spin-off. Peace Walker comfirms this, the portable games have become very much a spin-off series, and surprisingly enough, I love it.
Let's talk about the story first. The game follows the events of Portable Ops. Snake and Miller are in the middle of training some new recruits for their little army, when they are asked by a young girl who loves peace, and a professor, to help with the current situation in Costa Rica.
The story is similar to many of the previous games, meaning nukes, double-crossings, metal gears, complicated characters, and it's up to you. That's all I'll spoil, for the story is actually quite good. My only complaint about the story would be that the game relies a little too heavily on the third's story, borrowing too much frequently.
One final thing I should mention about the story, or, more appropriately, the cut-scenes. They follow Portable Ops's comic style, there are some engine-rendered cut-scenes, and they look okay, but the comic style still contrasts with the overall game and it feels kind of odd.
But the big deal-breaker with the cut-scenes is now they have quick-time events. Quick-time events suck, that's all there is to it. Optional ones are fine, like what was done in previous entries, but they are usually mandatory now. And there are a LOT of them. Worse yet, they all rely on trial and error, unless you have the reaction time of a robot. But just to ruin it even more, there is one button-mashing cut-scene that is downright painful to your finger, mainly because it's so long. It's not fun, it's EXCRUCIATING. With the exception of 1 instance, in which the QTE felt more like actual gameplay, they could be removed from the game and I would have enjoyed it a lot more.
But what about the gameplay? Well, this being kind of a spin-off, it's got some differences from the main Quadlogy. First off, missions are short, some missions with only a single area in them that could be completed in less than a minute. It works okay for the PSP, but it's certainly not anything anybody would call hardcore. To the game's credit, there are a lot of main missions, but they reuse areas a lot so I can't really give it that there.
The core MGS stealth action is there. The fun in it is trying to get past your enemies either unnoticed, or remove them from the equation. You can remove them by killing them, the easier way, though they may emit a scream costing you a caution phase. However, for less-lethal ways and the game's main hook, you can simply put them to sleep, and still remove them from the game with a process called "Fulton Recovery". This balloons the target out of the map, they are out of play, and now belong to your team, but back on that in a minute.
The odd thing is that while using stealth might sound like the harder and more rewarding way, it's not. It's possible to use lethal force and still obtain soldiers for your team and get through the missions, but why? Stealth is a breeze. You always have a tranquilizer pistol, which has a durable suppressor that can be upgraded, though I never even needed it. Just shooting everybody in the face is easier than ever, as now the game only uses an over-the-shoulder aiming system, so gunplay is cake. Once you sedate them, just fulton recovery them out. It may sound complicated, but it was far easier to just balloon everybody out than try to kill them.
There are other ways to deal with enemies. You can use a stun rod to stun them, which humorously enough, can even work with water to get a distanced stun. You can badly wound them with a silenced weapon to maintain stealth, and balloon them out, or just run and gun. Or maybe just sneak through with a cardboard box, although the series's obsession with them is getting to be a tired joke, this game puts the final bullet in the coffin with box tanks and carepackage cardboard boxes. It's not funny anymore, Kojima.
The amount of weapons in the game is quite staggering. Weapons like the M16 can be upgraded and modified to perform better, some will simply do extra damage or get a laser sight, but there are a few which can get really interesting and crazy. Items like the ration can be upgraded as well. Speaking of rations, they now restore health again, instead of stamina. The entire stamina system from Portable Ops has been removed, and I for one am extremely thankful. You no longer have to worry about constantly finding rations after walking too long. Instead we have psyche, which simply makes you pass out for a moment if it gets too low, but that never really happened until the late boss fights, and wasn't really a problem.
The boss fights are probably the worst part of the gameplay. Some involve simply fighting a tank, some APCs, some helicopters, but they're all annoying. You can fight them 2 ways, stealth or a straight-up murderfest. The problem is, it's literally forced to do the earlier vehicle fights with the latter option, as you can't get smoke grenades till a little too late in the game, which are critical to being able to beat the vehicles through stealth. The problem is, the murderfest option isn't fun at all. Tanks take a ridiculous amount of rockets to put down, literally more than 20, especially the really late game tanks. The enemies in these missions are annoying as well. They often carry rocket launchers or shotguns. These will make you flinch momentarily or fly up in the air. This wouldn't be a problem if tanks didn't think the best way to kill you was to try to run you over, and unfortunately that WOULD be their best way of killing you. When they don't have shotguns, they get machine guns, while not making you flinch, they will drain your health like nobody's buisness and having you call for more rations far more than you would like. Even after you kill them, there are often 20+ of these jerks to kill, all having helmets which prevent you from getting easy headshots. Worst of all, in tank missions these enemies spawn in, just appearing out of nowhere, but not without an annoying stun grenade to white out your screen. There is no cheaper death than getting flashbanged by something you could not possibly have predicted then having a tank run your blinded hide over, often being an instant-kill.
The gameplay also seems to have been dumned down a lot. All the interesting CQC moves from the previous games? Gone, replaced by a simple throw them to the ground move, usually followed by a stun rod to the face. Going prone for max camo to hide and sneak around guards? You can't move while prone now. Changing camouflage to blend in best? Nope, you're stuck with whatever you choose at the beginning of the mission. Even something as basic as non-regenerative health is gone. Rations aren't really needed anymore, as you can just find a nice quiet place (usually the inside of a certain building) to lie prone in, take a nice little nap, and be at full strength. And this will become your main method of health regeneration in boss battles, AND IT TAKES FOREVER TOO. Bad design choices like this are what makes me take away from this game.
The simpler 3 side bosses gameplay has been replaced by colossal AI controlled robots you fight. I like this a little more than the weird supernatural people from the previous games. Peace Walker as a whole seems to have a less-supernatural nature. There are supernatural events, yes, but they could be explained as normal. No more people with unexplained electrical powers or magic body controlling hands. While they game is probably overestimating 70s AI technology and the CIA's willingness to make giant totally-not Shagohod nuke launching death machines, it's more down to earth than any of the previous MGSs. And I think I do like it a little.
But now onto the game's main hook. The soldier-collecting thing is back from Portable Ops, and better than ever. It's quite simple, simply knock out or badly wound anybody, place a fulton on his back, and he's at your base. It takes a little while to get them willing to fight for you, but when you do, you can assign them to a variety of teams. For instance, the combat team will earn money you can use to build new weapons, while the intel team can create better radars and send better careboxes.
The system is not too unlike Pokemon, and it's just as addictive to "catch" all the soldiers you come across at first, and find out what they're good at, and put them where they belong. Then you start firing the weaker, lazier soldiers in place for some new ones. It's quite like Pokemon in this way, and it's just a blast overall. You can even send your combat team in small squads to beat other combat teams in a mode called "outer ops". It's a shame there's nothing to really get from this mode, and you can't battle other people with it, so it feels half-baked.
Once you've beaten the main storyline, you still haven't done the main part of the game, which I feel is Peace Walker's greatest triumph. There are 128 extra ops to do. This is a little similar to a mode like Spec Ops from Call of Duty, smaller portions of missions with altered objectives. Some are as simple as killing everybody, or taking out a tank, but some get really crazy and fun like killing an entire road's worth of soldier's with a single bullet and some good timing, or raiding a town full of ghosts for it's treasure. These are the moments in Peace Walker that really shine, they force you to be creative, and use things you never wanted to use before. The only complaint I have is that the game seemed to think that it's vehicle battles were fun, so it included about 50 of them. This wouldn't be so bad, except that they contain all of the frustrations of the normal vehicle battles, but are even worse. They contain MORE soldiers to kill, vehicles which can take even MORE hits, and more aggressive drivers. Needless to say, it's infuriating to whittle down a battalion's worth of soldiers with stealth only to be spotted by one and have to restart all over again.
Not only that, but these 50 vehicle battles take place on only 3 maps. Oh yeah, and they all are just slight variations on the vehicles you just fought. And there's 3 main sorts of vehicle, helicopter, tank, and APC, meaning you're going to have to do the exact same mission about 6 times. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if it paced them a bit more, but the game has you do a bunch of more stealth-oriented missions first, then throws you into 30 vehicle battles, gives you a short breather with a few decent missions, then throws you back into doing 20 more. The worst thing is that only after you do this do you get access to the later missions, which are the only way to get any of the cool stuff.
Oddly enough, this game also gives a pretty heavy emphasis on CO-OP. This is odd, especially considering it only gives AD-HOC support, absolutely no online play is allowed. The main problem with this is that the game sold terribly in America and Britian, so good luck trying to find somebody to play with. In order to play online, you'll need some friends with the game and a PS3, where you could do an AD-HOC party and play online. Or if you're smart, you'll buy the HD collection for the PS3, where there are a few people online willing to play CO-OP.
Though don't worry, despite the game having being quite a bit made for CO-OP, you really aren't missing too much. The game is quite playable in single-player only, and playing CO-OP doesn't really add as much as you might think it would.
As this review winds down, let's talk about the presentation for a little bit. The graphics look decent on the PSP. Nothing award winning, and the textures are pretty low-res and the visual style is bland. The graphic cut-scenes aren't really my thing, but they were tolerable enough to watch. The animations on the characters are good but not superb, and can look odd when carrying certain weapons. In the engine-generated cut-scenes, the lip-syncing looks kind of awkward and forced, though it's not too bad.
The sound effects are one of the better parts. As always, the game contains good music, though not quite up to par with some of previous entries's soundtracks, it's certainly good and gets the point across. The guns sound okay, but weapons share sound effects too much and feel odd because of it. Perhaps they could have cut out the literal hours of cassette tapes explaining some of the plot points we could very well understand for some more diverse gunshots.
That said, the ambiances all sound good, but not anything more, they do give the whole, "now I'm in a jungle" feel.
A game like Peace Walker needs to be interpreted as a whole, as the sum of it's parts. It's a massive game with a ton of content, a great plot, and some pretty cool gameplay. Without any 1 part of that, the game would fall flat, but all together we get Peace Walker. It's difficult to conclude something like this because it's so massive, but we can end it on this: If you're interested in a halfway-decent sneaking-action game, then Peace Walker is for you. Peace Walker may be MGS's last hurrah on the PSP system, but it certainly didn't go out with a dud.