Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker Review

Do not let the handheld release fool you. Peace Walker is a mainline entry directed by Kojima, and its DNA is all over what came five years later. The mission-based structure replaces a continuous world, which suits a portable but also turns out to suit the systems: each deployment is a discrete problem with a rating at the end and a reason to return with a better loadout. Mother Base arrives here first, along with the recovery balloon, so every soldier you knock out becomes a research point somewhere in your organization.

The story is the cleanest telling of Big Boss becoming what he becomes, with Paz and Chico giving it a human scale the later game abandoned. Cutscenes are delivered as animated comic panels, a budget decision that turned into a genuine style. The concessions are real: boss fights against armored vehicles are built for four players and turn spongy alone, and the camera on original hardware asked a great deal of your right thumb. Play the console version. It is one of the best games in the series and it is routinely skipped.