Why Peace Walker is Awful

[Wayno]

I was going to reply to Departed in his thread, however we need a more active board so this stands on its own as a subject.

The first reason you know this game is terrible is it doesn't have it's own subsection on this board. This isn't an oversight by our glorious leader (who will not be overthrown, he is on vacation not exile..), it's because it's not very good and has zero impact on the landscape of the zeitgeist of the series. It's far more recent than MGS1-4 and gets discussed very little. for good reason. The below is what I wrote on the game 13 years ago and I'm going to bring it up again because I think it's aged pretty well (and I'm lazy and have to rush out for a hair cut in like 15 minutes).

the more detail you look at it the more Peace Walker is almost a blatant rip off of the Monster Hunter games. Even if they included them in the 'Extra Ops' area it doesn't make it any less deliberate.
The more detail you look at it the more Peace Walker is almost a blatant rip off of the Monster Hunter games. Even if they included them in the 'Extra Ops' area it doesn't make it any less deliberate.

In Monster Hunter you fight the same Monsters over and over again at different levels, Low Rank, High Rank, G Rank. In Peace Walker you fight the same Mechs again at different levels, Type I, Type II and Custom, maybe a few variations, I forget.
In Monster Hunter you do Gathering Missions to earn points to upgrade your Farm. In Peace Walker you do Recruiting Missions to get better ranked soldiers to upgrade Mother Base.
In Monster Hunter you have to upgrade your weapons and armour to make the progression easier and the more difficult Monsters beatable, you can't take on a G Rank Tigrex with an Eager Cleaver, you need to upgrade that bad boy . In Peace Walker you have to upgrade your weapons and equipment to make the progression easier and the more difficult mechs beatble, you aint beating no Custom Peace Walker with a rank 2 C.Gustav.
Monster Hunter can be completed on your own (solo'd) but it is in fact designed to encourage multiplayer, especially with the highest level Monsters. Peace Walker can be completed on your own but it is in fact designed to encourage multiplayer, especially with the highest level Mechs.
In Monster Hunter you collect 'carves' from Monsters to upgrade your weapons. In Peace Walker you collect 'AI Boards' from Mechs to upgrade Zeke.
In Monster Hunter you have the choice to kill or capture the Monster you face in a quest. In Peace Walker you can destroy or capture the Mech you face in a mission.


(Also Pupa, Chrysalis, Cacoon and Peace Walker all remind me of the 'Elder Dragons' in MH, the bigger more difficult monsters you face far less often than the smaller mechs and helicopters, which may as well be the 'dromes' and 'fire wyverns', but that's a personal observation, not something I'd 100% say they've lifted too. Although you can't capture Elder Dragons and you can't capture those... Probably lifted that too.)

Now combine all the above and put it in to a story heavy, stealth based action game where fluid story telling is prevelent and you're going to have a bad time.

This one is my own opinion, and it's a bold one but Monster Hunter saved the PSP in Japan and with Capcom not launching a new one for any Sony system this game was the next Monster Hunter it was never going to get. The 3DS and Nintendo have been hugely freakin' lucky with Capcom's exclusivity recently. Peace Walker sales were huge for the PSP, helping shift units too. This game was designed to take what made Monster Hunter games popular and sell to the Japanese market to give the PSP one last huzzah before leaving that system for the now dead GO and the soon to be dead Vita. This game was a blatant cash cow and one of the fundamental reasons it fails as an MGS game is down to the Co-Op. It's not mandatory, but a couple of hundred hours is if you don't use it.

"Oh look, there goes Wayno talking about Monster Hunter again, what a weeb!" 

The reason I bring this up no is because look at Monster Hunter right now. World was smash hit, Rise is in the top 3 Capcom games of all time and Wilds is an absolute behemoth. It will piss all over World as Capcoms most successful game ever this year alone. All based on the mechanics Peace Walker copied without the crack-like game loop that has made Capcom a bajillion monies. I'd be OK with PW being a bad MGS game but it never even tried to be an MGS game. SNAKE couldn't CRAWL. How is that Metal Gear Solid? We could crouch walk which was the same speed as walking with less Camo usage which then broke the game alongside the dumb as fuck AI. BUT WE COULDN'T CRAWL.

I have more but I have to go

(I don't really have much more)

[tr0nic]

Expanded Thoughts:

Was not a good Monster Hunter game. Was an even worse Metal Gear game. Was an ok Mercenary Manager simulator until MGSV came out and made it entirely not worth playing.

It does seem though, from what I have witnessed, that in the wider gaming public PW is regarded as a pretty good game. Further proof that g*mers should be subjugated by the State.

[Wayno]

Expanded Thoughts:

Was not a good Monster Hunter game. Was an even worse Metal Gear game. Was an ok Mercenary Manager simulator until MGSV came out and made it entirely not worth playing.

This is it. MGS4 has a lot of critics, and rightly so. But I can point to and say yes it's bad, but it's at least it is MGS in some form. I can't do that with Peace Walker.

[Jassassino]

In my limited time playing Peace Walker, it was honestly an inferior experience to Portable Ops, which I would argue is, dare I say it, a good if not great game.

[Blueblob]

Peace Walker is Monster Hunter

Monster Hunter is good

Therefore Peace Walker is good

Spoiler:

That was mainly devil’s advocate lmao. I didn’t think PW was heinously bad and enjoyed playing through it with a friend, although that kinda makes any game good, like RE5. PW was definitely too long though.

[NateDog]

A fantastic thread. Perhaps the best I've ever seen on any forum.

However, you have thoroughly neglected to mention the very worst of Peace Walker. The boring, throwaway cast, all of which is redundant apart from the mind-numbingly irritating Otaclone, and Chico and Paz (who are only utilised as tools of the government or anyone else to move the events of Ground Zeroes forward which is done within minutes); the boring, throwaway plot; one of the greatest soldiers of all time playing hide and seek with Zadornov (not as a side op or mini-game, no, but as the build-up to the finale); and Big Boss moping about The Boss some more culminating in becoming entranced by a talking pod. There's loads more but I cannot allow myself to remember that experience any more than I already do.

[Wayno]

Using my laptop solely to bash a series I love

In my limited time playing Peace Walker, it was honestly an inferior experience to Portable Ops, which I would argue is, dare I say it, a good if not great game.

I have always rated POPS highly not just higher than PW, but there are definite issues with that game and areas PW does improve on.

The fulton is great. I mean, it's broken and trivialises the game but it's still fun. It absolutely beats MPO's dragging the body over to a strategically placed box / solider to recruit. I mean at least there's danger with this mechanic, but unless your character has the Athlete skill and your other soldiers have high SNS stats it's SO tedious.

I loathe how the series transitioned from the levels we had in 1-3 to what we got with POPS, PW and MGS5. It did start with POPS so it gets some of the blame. I like the maps in POPS but I do think PW is better. However I think the POPS maps do suit the deploy game setting far more whereas in PW i genuinely think they could have made an MGS1-3 style game where you progress through the map with traditional zone transitions. GoW showed what the PSP was capable of and those chose to stick with the POPS formula instead.

Other than that I think POPS wins everywhere else. I personally think the depiction of Big Boss in POPS is far superior to PW. If you look at the character in MGS3 and the character we have in MGS5 (yeah yeah that's not really him but it's still clearly the mythos of the man) it makes sense to have a story where he's winning men round to join his rogue nation of mercenaries through not just his acts, but charisma and valor. It's all on display in POPS. In PW he's a whiny Emo and the game shits all over him and every other character by deifying The Boss to such absurd levels the story is now just a surface-level retelling of various religious schisms.

A fantastic thread. Perhaps the best I've ever seen on any forum.

However, you have thoroughly neglected to mention the very worst of Peace Walker. The boring, throwaway cast, all of which is redundant apart from the mind-numbingly irritating Otaclone, and Chico and Paz (who are only utilised as tools of the government or anyone else to move the events of Ground Zeroes forward which is done within minutes); the boring, throwaway plot; one of the greatest soldiers of all time playing hide and seek with Zadornov (not as a side op or mini-game, no, but as the build-up to the finale); and Big Boss moping about The Boss some more culminating in becoming entranced by a talking pod. There's loads more but I cannot allow myself to remember that experience any more than I already do.

No lies here. I didn't mention it here but I do know I did mention on MGSF Huey being the same character model and VA as Otacon is fucking atrociously bad on so many levels. I genuinely don't remember the difference between Zadornov and Hot Coldman and I refuse to look them up now. Also, I don't care for Kaz. I'm not big on Strangelove either, but I liked the VA and she was easily more memorable than Snake's support like the naked teenage girl, preteen boy, generic woman #1 and generic woman #2 who exists to do a bird call in a mission that is almost as bad as the Emma section in MGS2.

POPS doesn't have a stellar cast either. Roy was lackluster. However, Gene is great (Steve Blum for crying out loud), Python could have been good but it was cut short. Johnny (your first recruit) is really good at getting the point over of how Snake wins over his followers and the Elisa / Ursula gimmick was cool which means it shits all over PW.

[Departed]

It's always interesting to see different perspectives. I think that I used to feel largely the same. I didn't hate the game the way a lot of people did but I definitely wasn't in love with it. As time has gone on, I'll be honest, I've really come around to Peace Walker HD.

I should note that story doesn't factor in for me personally how much I like or dislike a game, so that should be noted because I know many MGS fans feel very differently. I've long accepted that I'm a fairly off-kilter kind of MGS fan. I agree that the cast of characters is weak, and that the villains were awful. What made up for it to me was the fact that I quite liked the pacing of the games storyline, and genuinely loved the way Snake interacted with the characters. All too often in MGS, the protagonist feels more reactive than anything else. With PW, I felt the real meat of what Snake had to say a lot of the time and with that came a much more human feeling Naked Snake, particularly the genuine give and take he had with the likes of Kaz or Chico. It would've served the game much better to have villains who stood out more the way Gene and FOX Unit did, and to have human bosses, but I still walk away from PW satisfied with the narrative. Its character are the weakest of the series, but the actual story and writing I was actually good with. I liked the intrigue building up to the AI and Coldman's ultimate scheme even if he, himself, was "a dud?!" of a villain. And since I liked Snake's interactions more with this game, I clicked with a lot of cutscenes and bonus tapes more.

That's just the story side. The real reason I've grown to genuinely kind of love PW is the gameplay itself.

I definitely agree with the initial statement that the enemy AI is comically bad. Guards also now have very limited patrol paths compared to other games, especially mainline entries. However, for what the game sets out to do, they get the job done and tend to be positioned in just the right places to have to be mindful of when traversing. That's complemented by what I felt was genuinely great level design. Each corridor has cover spots in all the right places to make zero tracing both viable and deeply gratifying. And in combat, it's fun top just kind of go ham, taking down enemies with your proverbial infinite toy box. It's admittedly more sluggish than the combat of other games, but I have fun with it thanks to the variety of options I have, from smoking enemies long enough to pull off chain CQC combos, blasting them to Belize with a sawed off, or doing hit and run shooting, moving to cover and followups.

I know we can't crawl in PW but with the way the levels were designed, I never really missed it either. I enjoyed crouch-moving from cover to cover in more open spaces, and mainly just evaded enemy line of sight the old fashioned way, to the point where camo was purely cosmetic for me. The only games where camo index felt impactful were always MGS3 and 4, and definitely work for those games, but I never felt them necessary in later games like PW or V.

Everything works for really fun, short-burst stealth action with no sense of commitment or anything like that. You can just pick up and play or replay any segment you might enjoy most and opt to play it a certain way. I always found I had the most fun with the zero trace but also enjoyed waging all out war sometimes.

The bosses are tricky for me. I dislike that none of them are human and that stealth doesn't really factor into any of the bosses. The ambush squads let you use stealth but it's repetitive since you're not using a variety of methods against a specific enemy, but rather, just using the same tactic against one squad and once you screw up, it's essentially back to formula. But I'd be lying if I said that the bosses were outright bad. The mechs had a decent amount of attack variety, the scale of some of them was genuinely impressive, especially for a PSP title. And having a semi-customizable boss is a cool idea I wish more games would use down the road. I also can't help but appreciate the fact that the game does give us 13 completely unique boss fights. Some of them are definitely not necessarily MGS bosses, but I didn't mind monsters any more than I minded the MGS2 VR boss giants.

There's a lot I don't like about PW, and some elements I wish were tweaked. The mech AI bosses could stay but having human Peace Sentinels with unique abilities, thanks to the technology of their suits could've been really cool for classic human bosses with a unique edge, since the whole thing with PW is machines. The QTE cutscenes could've been scrapped completely and the game would've been infinitely better for it. Cold Hot Pants should've been replaced with a more colorful bad guy who gets a boss fight. And Zadornov should've had a one-on-one shootout in the other shooting range that had more cover spots.

For what it is, it's a game that I enjoy just coming back to and replaying a number of segments for some quick and entertaining stealth action. To me, it's still very much Metal Gear, but a game with a lot of extra stuff that I think most of us could've done without, but far as I'm concerned, none of that really ruins the experience.

I can definitely see where a lot of people don't like this game and why, especially when compared to every other game in the series. A lot of the criticisms, I either understand or straight up agree with. At the end of the day though, I still enjoy PW for just being fun to play.

[tr0nic]

Okay so I started up PW HD just to give myself a fresh look at it. Ground through it, just defeated Chrysalis 1. The story is definitely throwaway, it's just Kojima throwing whatever at the wall and hoping something sticks. It's so incredibly clear how done he is with his own creation, but at the same time it feels like he feels that Big Boss wasn't fleshed out enough. Back in 2011-2013 we had this huge chunk of time between MGS3 and MG1 that was barely touched upon, and I can now appreciate PW's ambition to go beyond being just a portable MGS game, even if it didn't pan out 100%.

Honestly though I cannot stand these boss battles, they're the most throwaway part to me, even more so than Nicaraguan Meryl. I think that's really what soured me on PW originally, because the 1/3rd of the game I really enjoyed was the MSF management and forming squads to send on faraway missions, and grinding out these vehicle battles to equip them is so fuckin tedious. It's the lynchpin to PW for me, it's where the translating Monster Hunter into an MG game falls entirely flat. A T-72 tank is not a fucking dragon, it's not interesting to fight like an MH boss.

But yeah. It's not the worst thing in existence I guess. Transfarring was cool when my PSP-1000 was still working.