Why Peace Walker is Awful

[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.