Why Peace Walker is Awful

[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.