Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (Solid Douche)

Hideo Kojima is kind of like Michael Corleone in Godfather: Part 3, isn’t he? After every Metal Gear game, he says that this is the last Metal Gear game he’ll work on. But every time, they find a way to pull him back in... And I guess, in a way, that’s kind of like Snake too...

The latest installment in the Metal Gear Solid franchise takes us back to 1974, where a disillusioned Snake, aka Big Boss, has left the world of American espianoge behind and has become the leader of a mercenary group called Militaires Sans Frontieres (translated as Soldiers without Borders... kind of like Doctors without Borders except with more guns.). Soon Snake and his group are hired to stop a CIA deployed military group from taking hold in Costa Rica. Eventually this leads to the discovery of an AI-controlled mech called Peace Walker, (you’ve got to have a mech, right? Otherwise how could it be called Metal Gear?) a machine designed to be the ultimate in nuclear deterrance.

There’s something ambitious about Peace Walker’s story. (Then again, it wouldn’t be a Kojima Metal Gear game if the story weren’t ambitious.) The majority of the cutscenes (some particularly lengthy) are illustrated by Ashley Wood, whose art style you may remember from the Metal Gear Solid comics or the previous Metal Gear PSP installment, Portable Ops. They’re somewhat animated, think more “motion comic� than animation. They’re done slightly better than your average motion comic and some are even interactive. Yes, quick time events make their way into Peace Walker, but luckily for us, most of them aren’t instant fails if you miss hitting the triangle button on time. Unlike most quick time events where it just feels like you need to press the right button to continue, it feels more like you’re playing the cutscene which is a nice touch.

Peace Walker’s campaign is broken down into bite-sized missions. (“Bite-sized� being relative since you may find some missions can take 30+ minutes to complete.) You can choose which weapons to take along with you and which uniform to wear. The uniforms are more than superficial, each of them have different attributes that effect gameplay (the sneaking suit eliminates your footstep noise, the battle armor reduces damage, etc.). Like it’s PSP predecessor, Portable Ops, you can recruit the soldiers you find on these missions into your army and place them in different groups to boost your combat, R&D, food, medical or intel ratings (boosting these ratings allow you to produce different weapons and items). Gone is the mechanic of tranquilizing people and dragging them back to your van like a date rapist. Instead, Peace Walker introduces the Fulton, kind of a reverse parachute that lifts it’s victim into the sky for retrieval. It’s a much quicker (and less creepy) way to recruit soldiers.

You can also recruit soldiers via wifi hotspots using the PSP’s wifi. Instead of recruiting soldiers one at a time, like in Portable Ops, you can recruit handfuls of soldiers (determined at random) per scan. But these volunteers won’t join your army automatically. You’ll have to knock them out in combat first. What you won’t be able to do via wifi is play cooperatively with your friends. Peace Walker does support co-op play for almost all of the missions (and you’ll probably want to bring along a friend for some of the tougher missions) unfortunately, it only supports ad hoc wireless, which means your friend will have to be sitting right next to you to play. Which, considering the lack of headset communication on the PSP, it might be a good thing. The co-op play is a cool addition for those of you who want to sneak with up to three of your friends but the majority of the missions are passable as a single player experience as well.

You’ll also be able to capture enemy vehicles, like tanks and helicopters, and build your own Metal Gear by defeating the bosses. That’s a cool new addition, but it’s a little disappointing that the sometimes quirky boss fights of the previous games have been transformed into fairly straightforward battles with vehicles and AI-controlled mechs. I miss the innovative boss fights that Metal Gear games usually bring, but what these Peace Walker boss fights lack in innovation, they make up for in scale.

If you’re worried about the control scheme, there are three different schemes to choose from, shooter (an MGS4-like scheme using the face buttons as camera control), action (for fans of the Portable Ops style controls) and hunter (those of you familiar with Monster Hunter controls will recognize this). I used almost exclusively the shooter style controls and it took a while to get used to but eventually I got the hang of it. However, I did get confused from time to time when switching out items and weapons, even late in the game. It happened just enough to be a little frustrating, especially when switching to the right weapon or item meant the difference between passing the mission and restarting the mission from the beginning. Those mission-on-the-line item/weapon switching situations were few and far between though.

I, for one, am glad that Kojima and crew were pulled back in to do another Metal Gear Solid game for the PSP. They always seem to get the most out of the hardware and put together an interesting and enjoyable game to boot. It’ll be a sad day in Metal Gear land when Kojima finally decides to let Snake hang up his gun for good.

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