Pros* Was only for the PSP, Great opportunity to play on console
* 720p, 60 fps, HD visuals, trophy support
* You get to build your own Metal Gear
Cons
* Multiplayer system was not designed for console
* Weapon development can be slow at times
* Some may not like the anime style drawn cut scenes
Because MGS HD collection has so much content, i have decided to review Peace Walker, MGS2: Sons of Liberty, and MGS 3: Snake Eater individually to be able to give more attention to each game.
Presentation : A
Graphics / Animation / Sound
After selecting Peace Walker from the HD selection title menu, Peace Walker’s title screen fills up your whole TV and is reminiscent of vintage title screens. The game looks great in 720p, and opens up with anime-style drawn sequences. The artwork is exceptional, and provides something different from regular animated cut-scenes.
Graphically you can tell that this is a ported game, as wheels look like Hexagons, and there is less detail in urban areas, but it does a great job of filling out jungle areas and providing realistic looking terrain. Because the game runs at 60 fps the animations are smooth, weapon aiming and combat are seamless.
The Metal Gear Solid series voice work has always been impressive, and David Hayter returns adding a ‘gruff’ sounding effect to distinguish ‘Naked Snake’ from ‘Solid Snake’. Music and sound effects play a fairly important role, as you must listen to birds to find certain areas in the jungle, or use your Walkman (a new technology for the time) to hear certain plot points.
Single Player : A
Game mechanics / Length / difficulty
The game-play is intensely unique in Peace Walker. While i had read the time-line many times about the history of ‘Big Boss, and setting up your own organization (Outer Heaven), I didn’t realize how much of that experience you would actually play through…and you play through everything. The game’s levels are usually pretty small, as it was designed for hand-held players to be able to jump in and out of the game. While you are in missions you literally build an entire army. How do you build an entire army? By knocking out soldiers, strapping balloons to their back and forcing them to design weapons or cook you food. Some times you fight enemies in tanks, or helicopters, and depending on how you take them out you can actually acquire these machines for your army. My favorite part of the army building is the recruitment. The game lets you fight people who want to join to see if they are worthy. Although it’s easy, I think the idea behind it is very cool.
The management is deep. You actually spend half of the game in between missions organizing your army into categories like Combat, R&D, Medical, Mess Hall, Intel, and Sickbay. After organization, its imperative that you keep up with your R&D so they can develop new weapons to use, instead of finding them throughout the game. After you check your R&D, you set up combat teams, then send them out on missions to earn money to finance your army. These missions only carry out while you are playing the main missions, or side missions. Then when you get back you manage the injured, sick, and damaged vehicles.
When you want a break from the main mission, or want to further the advancement of Outer Heaven, there are plenty of side missions to play through. They vary from stealth to retrieval, and combined with combat missions number well over 100. Also, the boss battles are very interesting to replay, because when you defeat them you rip out computer chips, then have your R&D team put them in your Metal Gear that you build and deploy. For any Metal Gear fan, there’s not much more satisfying than custom painting and field testing your own Metal Gear.
The game itself is a little easier than the other games in the series, stealth wise, but the boss battles are pretty difficult. The Peace Walker battle at the end itself might be the hardest Metal Gear boss fight out there.
Multiplayer : B
Game mechanics / features / Online features
There are some multiplayer features here that don’t transition well as a port from a handheld. You can send and receive items to help out other players, but I didn’t ever find this necessary, as playing the game let me eventually get what i needed. You can also trade items, but again, I didn’t find it necessary for console playing, though i should note that as ive never played Peace Walker on PSP this might be a cool feature there.
There is a versus mode that i found very cool. It has your standard online multiplayer features like team death match and death match, but also has base mission, where you defend your base, and capture mission, where you race other players to retrieve objects and return to drop off points. These provide some fun on console play, but I can see where it might be more fun on the PSP.
Replay Value : A
Lasting appeal / Bonus Content / DLC / (If retro does it stand the test of time?)
Going back and replaying missions with newly developed weapons and items, and new fatigues is a blast. There is nothing like only wearing pants and suspenders while crawling through the jungle shirtless.
No DLC, but there you can unlock some cool bonus content. New music for your Walkman, which you can play throughout the game, new battle fatigues, and new AI boss voices provide interesting incentive to replay.
One last interesting thing is the ability to play the game on your PS3, then send your saved data to your PSP, or vice versa. It’s not necessarily a new concept, but i do think it will become more constant with future ports from handhelds to consoles.
Overall : A
