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Genre: Third-Person Action RPG Publisher: Kojima Developer: Kojima Productions Players: 1-4

By RyanD (9th Jul 2010)

Are you a Metal Gear fanboy? Have you suffered insults from those horrible knuckle-dragging Halo freaks, when you’ve tried to explain that, somewhere beneath the acres of impenetrable bullshit, MGS4 was a really great game? Well suffer no more, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is here to shut the critics down.

I’m a Metal Gear fanboy, I’ll admit that from the get-go. It wasn’t the ridiculously complicated interrelations between hyper-emotional soldiers, or the endless morally ambiguous proselytising that got me into it in the first place, though. I loved Metal Gear, back in the day, because it was a freakin’ crazy-awesome game, the rest was just a peculiar bonus.

Metal Gear Solid blew the lid off the already popular genre of thrid-person-shooters back in 1998, boldly challenging the player to exercise a little patience. It shifted gameplay focus from spastic bullet-showers to skilful infiltration, rewarding the player for avoiding conflict, making use of their surroundings, and taking their enemies alive. It takes a lot of balls to enforce such a policy in an action game, but Kojima knew what he was doing, and the dividends were huge. This new style of ‘tactical shooter’ upped the ante in terms of tension and suspense for action games in general, you have to pick your fights, pick your methods, and pick your moment just right, or you’re boned.

And of course there’s the boss fights, every one of them unique and challenging in a different way, and all deeply, deeply strange. The moment in MGS1 when Psycho Mantis breaks the fourth wall, addresses the player directly, and takes control of the dual-shock’s rumble packs to move the controller around on the floor still stands as one of the most jaw-dropping moments of sheer awesomeness in video game history. Here was a game that could do no wrong, or so it seemed.



MGS2: Sons of Liberty was when the other side of the Metal Gear franchise first really made its presence felt, that being the ludicrously complex, nigh on impenetrable military soap opera. Hideo Kojima established himself once and for all, with MGS2, as not only a visionary game designer, but also as a man who simply refuses to edit. Hour upon hour of back-story poured forth between the high-action set-pieces, more than a few eyebrows were raised, and more than a few gamers opted to leave it there, and turned their attentions to something a little more direct.

Fortunately for those of us who persevered through the seemingly infinite bullshit-generator of Kojima’s script, the gameplay still rocked, and took on a whole new level of customisation and variety. You could complete a mission in so many different ways that the planning stages became as difficult to master as the action. This was the game that had thought of everything. In the back corner of one room in one level, there was a bar, and on the bar an ice bucket, if you shot the ice bucket, little ice cubes tumbled out, and if you decided to stand there and watch, they melted. This is in a PS2 game. Seriously. W. T. F.



It’s that kind of genuinely anal attention to detail that set the Metal Gear games apart. More than any other console game out there, it seemed that if you could think it, you could do it. Solid Snake wasn’t just another roided-up douchebag with a machine gun, either, he was a freakin’ multi-skilled special-ops ninja badass. He was also, it turns out, a bit of a pussy. Those who sat through the eons of back-story came to know Solid Snake as not only a super-duper ultimate ass-kicker, but also as an orphan, and as a clone, from the same DNA as many of his nemesises (nemesi?), and a man wracked by moral indecision, and guilt, entangled in a web of international political intrigue, a pawn in a deadly game, full of unanswered questions (sooooo many questions), and angst. Yes, a freakin’ mega badass, but also a whiney little bitch, it must be said (and don’t get me started on Raiden...).

All of this finally culminated in the world’s most expensive and spectacular piece of pure fan-service, MGS4: Guns of the Patriots. With six entire hours of cutscenes, one of which is 90 minutes long on its own, MGS4 was, for fanboys like me, a massive overdose of our own particular brand of crack, and we crackheads do like our crack. I couldn’t help laughing out loud (I lolled, yes I did) though, when I thought of some poor kid who’d never played a Metal Gear game before, throwing it in his bright new PS3, and wondering what the fuck is going on. It was an exercise in self-indulgent overkill, the story had eclipsed the game, and Kojima was wanking away with absolute impunity. That’s great for us that like to watch him do it (wait, that didn’t come out right), but it seems unfortunate that newcomers to the franchise should be so openly alienated from the experience, because the gameplay still holds as some of the best around.



That’s why it’s such a relief to see Metal Gear: Peace Walker on the PSP. A drastic reduction in hardware power was just what the doctor ordered, so it seems. Peace Walker, a prequel to MGS1, takes place in a simpler time (the Cold War, versus those just-plain-evil Ruskies), and stars a simpler character, the original Snake (Naked Snake), whose DNA went on to create such a mess later on. Having already been through his own brain-snappingly entangled journey of self discovery in MGS3: Snake Eater, Naked Snake, now known as Big Boss, does what any decent soldier would do, having been tricked into assassinating his lifelong mentor/strangely-paternal mother-figure in a twisted government plot to cover-up its acts of international terrorism, and lost all faith in the cause he’s fought for all his life: He goes AWOL and forms his own damn army, Hoo-uh! Let’s get killin’!

This more takin-care-of-business story, along with the puny tech-specs of the PSP, opens the door for a seriously dedicated return to form for the series, gameplay-wise. In Peace Walker we see a joyous return to the beautifully considered and contained micro-challenges of older MGS games. Heaps of sneaking missions, tons of tricks and gizmos to employ, and an arsenal of weaponry that’s truly staggering. Don’t think for a second that the smaller console will mean any less complexity in the gameplay, because if anything there’s more than ever before. You’ll still be creeping your way into enemy territory, throwing a porno mag on the ground, and donning a cardboard box to sidle by your distracted, and horny, enemies, scarfing down a bag of chips before leaping out to lay a shed-load of ass-whip on them with your patented CQC (Close Quarters Combat), even stringing together combos on whole groups of unsuspecting Russian minions. This, MGS fans, is what it’s all about.



Oh but that’s not all, no siree. Surrounding the main game is a whole world of micro-management joy. Every enemy you capture alive in-game is transported to your off-shore base (Outer Heaven), where you can choose to train them, put them to work in weapons research, or in the kitchens (a militia’s gotta eat), or in the hospital, or in intelligence, or send them off to fight and recruit more soldiers in a host of A.I. battles that play out Pokemon-style while you’re off fighting giant robots. Speaking of which, you get to build your own Metal Gear (!!!!!) (translation: Metal Gear = wicked giant robot killing machine) out of bits you scrounge from lesser Gears you’ve destroyed, which you can send out to kick even more asses on your behalf.

Added to this, there’s a huge amount of multiplayer content, co-op play in almost every mission, and yes, fanboys, a ton of cutscenes. Not the full six hours of MGS4 (thank god), Peace Walker is content with a meager 162 minutes of cutscenes, the same length, incidentally, as another story that doesn’t know when to shut up: James Cameron’s Avatar. Even the cutscenes have been spiced up for those with itchy trigger fingers, playing out in a beautifully stylish dynamic-comic-book fashion, and loaded with surprising, inventive and fun interactive moments.



Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker loses some of the pretensions (some of them) of the bigger console games, and concentrates on delivering what we all loved about the MGS games in the first place, and then some. It’s a must-own game for PSP owners, the console being second only to the Wii in terms of the sheer amount of bullshit between actually playable material out there, and despite the fact that Big Boss has less polygons in his whole body than the MGS4 Snake has in his moustache, the game still looks great, too. You’ll want to free up some room on the memory stick, though, as Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker installs nearly a gig of data to it, to suck every last drop of power out of the poor little handheld.

MGS fans rejoice, the bang-for-buck ratio has never been higher than in Metal Gear: Peace Walker, and those of you who are new to the series, or gave up when it all got too ridiculous, give this one a go, I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

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