Review: Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

Developer: Kojima Productions Publisher: Konami Ever since the genius that is Hideo Kojima revealed two more games to add to the Metal Gear Solid series, there has been a lot of attention to see how the game dubbed "A true MGS sequel" would hold up on the tiny PSP platform. A true sequel the game most certainly is; set in 1974, a whole ten years after the events of my favourite game of the series, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and four years after the event of the previous PSP game, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, Peace Walker chronicles the events that turned Big Boss from the super soldier we know from MGS3 to the big baddie we know in the very first game that started it all, Metal Gear. I'm terribly sorry if that was a little confusing to you, but it is necessary to explain how the game links into the rest of the timeline. A cheap spin-off this is not. Peace Walker has a full-blown story that will move you just as much as any of the other MGS games, providing you've played MGS3. Even if you haven't though, the move to PSP has removed the lengthy cut scenes and replaced them with interactive, to the point events with a beautiful art style. This gives those who were maybe not so much a fan of the lengthy story the opportunity to get involved with the MGS universe. Fans of the marathon cut scenes and constant twists and turns need not despair though, as there are plenty of briefings to hear and lots of twists packed into all those mini-cut scenes. One thing that most certainly hasn't changed from the console games is the stellar soundtrack, employed at the perfect opportunities to build tension, tug at your heart strings or to make your fingers scramble for all the right buttons as an intense action scene is played out. At the start at the game (Don't worry, no spoilers!) you're a given a small place to establish a base for Big Boss' Militaires Sans Frontieres (Army Without Borders). Expanding on the recruitment of soldiers from Portable Ops, the player can knock out enemies and send them back to this base before assigning them to one of the many roles soldiers can take up there. The men and women you recruit will have specialities in five different areas: Combat, Research & Development, The Mess Hall (Food), Medical team and the Intel team. Your combat unit will obviously be participating in combat; this gives you GMP, the currency you use to spend on researching better weapons and equipment, which will be needed against tougher enemies. Your medical team will help you develop better tranquilisers and heal any wounds your brave soldiers receive, and your intel team will provide you with information before your missions. An army is only as strong as its stomach though. If your army isn't fed, their morale will drop and they will eventually leave your base; keep them well-fed and they will perform above their normal parameters and produce better equipment, fight harder, find more out before a mission, and so on. While it sounds complicated, the game explains it perfectly and brings each unit in slowly, making sure you're comfortable with each before moving on and combining them to create some very wacky and elaborate stuff. And this is important, how you co-ordinate your work force around this base will eventually establish how Big Boss goes through the entire game. Do you go research heavy and make sure you're outfitted with the latest gadgets? Do you have your intel team as the highest priority to prepare for all your missions ahead? Or do you make sure your army is well-fed so that they outperform themselves, making your whole system stronger? It is a true credit to the developers that they have managed to make such a huge game element so deep and yet manageable in seconds, giving you an overlay of your whole base and allowing you to adjust it how you wish in no time at all. This isn't the only thing though, you can send out your army to help resolve conflicts elsewhere in the world in a small modified version of ?RISK?, view and research your equipment, use wireless access points to recruit new soldiers and complete a whole host of extra operations ranging from destroying weapon caches to defeating souped up bosses. You can view a whole host of stats, trade your staff with other players and even develop your own super weapon, but I won't spoil that surprise for you. In a bid to try and keep this review concise, I haven't gone too deep into these as they're fairly self-explanatory, but they're important to how your base turns out. So we've got the back story and some of the background gameplay, but how does controlling Snake feel? Well, of the three control schemes on offer, I personally found the shooter type to be the best, but even then not having a right analog stick can make aiming with the face buttons a terrible pain. This alone is enough of an incentive to play stealthily and slowly, how an MGS game is meant to be played, but there are times where action is forced upon you and the flaws in the controls are shown. Even while sneaking, trying to hold the stick in place so that your footsteps remain quiet can also be troublesome. While this is the only major problem the game suffers, it does have a few other minor flaws, like the originality of some of the boss battles. Without spoiling any of them, all of the boss fights are roughly made up of the same type of enemy, so to speak. MGS1 has Psycho Mantis, MGS2 had Fatman and Vamp, MGS3 had The Sorrow and The End, and all of these reeked genius and originality, as well as a keen mind to get around the boss and eventually defeat them. Peace Walker's boss fights are pretty one-dimensional and will only challenge how well you can adapt to the controls to defeat them. This kind of problem will only effect the die-hard fans of the series who have come to expect genius everywhere we look, though. The third and final problem is also another minor one but ironically one of Peace Walker's greatest strengths. Being able to play co-op is great fun and opens up a host of new ways to play the game and ultimately makes the game easier. Peace Walker has no difficulty settings and is designed with co-op in mind, so should you be wanting to play all the way through on your own you may have a tough time, but it certainly isn't impossible. You just may end up replaying a few bits because you don't quite have the right equipment or the right amount of firepower necessary for the mission at hand. Despite these very minor complaints, Peace Walker is a brilliant game that every PSP owner should have. This game could easily be on a home console, and destroy a large majority of the games on any one of those consoles, but the fact it works so wonderfully on the PSP means you'll be taking Big Boss' adventures wherever you go. Whether it's the story, the man management, the strategy of how you build your mercenary group up or just sneaking through brilliant environments, you will love Peace Walker.