ThunderPeel2001

Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker

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Yeah, Ground Zeroes looks pretty sweet. The sweetest part is that it continues the Big Boss story, though. I'm SO glad, as Big Boss is the only interesting character in the whole MGS universe.

The original Snake didn't really have a character, he was just a "cool dude". Raiden was deliberately void of personality because MGS 2 was all about how the world around influences who you are, and Raiden was the logical extreme of that. (A companion piece to MGS1, which was all about how your genes influence who you are.)

But Big Boss was actually really interesting: The hero that becomes the villain. What's amazing is that you can totally see it from his point of view. After what his country did to him in MGS3, you can totally see why he'd go "rogue".

Anyways, more MGS3 story is always gonna equal :tup: for me :)

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Not sure what exactly I missed in Peace Walker (I'll probably play it to find out), but it looks like the mighty 'Outer Heaven' army and base(s) described in MGS1, etc became a reality and this game may deal with how things go sour from there — the fall of Big Boss, if you will. Will be very interesting and exciting to see and I totally agree that Big Boss is one of the more interesting MGS characters (alongside Ocelot). :tup:

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I have had Peacewalker for PSP for maybe 1,5 years now, but the horrible controlling options put me off from this game and I really haven't bothered to play it that much.

I should get back to it someday I suppose.

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Yeah I'm sure the console HD ports work better when you have two analog sticks. This kind of game just seems like it needs two.

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So I started this a few weeks ago with a friend of mine and so far it's gold. Peacewalker is very obviously built from the Portable Ops engine (which I fucking hated, see earlier part of thread) but all tedium is removed, level design is no longer a disaster, excessive controls are refined and simplified (in a good way) to an extent no Metal Gear has done before, and YOU DON'T HAVE TO FUCKING DRAG A GOD DAMN BODY TO A FUCKING TRUCK EVER AGAIN.

 

I don't think anyone here played Portable Ops, but collecting soldiers for your army and getting your stats up was the worst chore ever because gathering soldiers during missions was just a tedious mess of slowly moving all guards to the one fucking truck halfway across the huge open map filled with almost nothing. In Peacewalker, I just hilarious strap a balloon on everyone, prisoners and enemies alike. It never gets old. The soldier collecting got kind of useless after a while in Peacewalker because really all you were trying to do was get the stats up high enough to get stealth camo among other items, Peacewalker has added an upgrade system for all weapons and items, making it much more interesting. Oh and the auto assign function, such a life saver when you have a bunch of useless E ranks where you just need to round out the stats on the team quickly.

 

It's weird because I've been approaching Peacewalker with anticipating tedium as conditioned by previous Metal Gears. I sit and wait between patting soldiers down for items until recently I realized I could just spam the pat really fast. I also realized you can also stick someone up the second they wake up, instead of waiting for them to stand up so you can shout, "Freeze!" It's really convenient to do it this way, if not really fucking goofy. This game is feels more silly and weird than usual as well, I love it. Just odd touches like 12 different colors of pants for when you're half naked, doing R&D on doritos, shocking your friend over and over with the stun gun, POWs shouting "Woohoo!" when they have a balloon strapped to them, getting a trophy for shooting a guard right in the center of his butt (like yes, the exact center), airstrikes, CQCing guards into a wall, multiple weird conversations focusing on the Sony Walkman cassette player, the cardboard box being called a "love box" and you co-op walk around in it with your friend for useless results, manual supply call ins where you have a cardboard box dropped on your head and are knocked out while you must wait for a friend to revive you (after this you move and never do that again), sending a friend a gift box that plays a stupid song of your choice, and also spamming all of these preset phrases that Snake yells to both players in game much to everyone's annoyance. I haven't even gotten close to the bizarre Monster Hunter missions yet.

 

It kind of all just makes me sad knowing how stupid and dark MGSV is going to get, when it's all of the silly touches that attracts me to the series.

 

As usual I love the Ashley Wood art and this style of cutscenes, the only high point of Portable Ops. I love the Big Boss storyline, so no complaints there. I'm probably only a fourth to a third through so I can't comment much on the story yet. I don't really understand why almost everyone in this game is fucking white and blonde. Is this what Kojima Productions think people born in Costa Rica look like? There is not a dark skinned person to be found anywhere. Paz is not from Costa Rica so that makes sense, but for everyone else, what gives?

 

I do like that every codec conversation is on a tape between missions and is marked on whether you have listened to it or not. Finally this series does away with spamming calls to one particular person to hear every piece of dialogue (although this is probably something only OCD me does).

 

Also I was really skeptical on how well co-op would work out in this game. Metal Gear doesn't seem like a series that would ever work in co-op, but I've had a blast with my friend so far. Perhaps the only tedium is watching cutscenes or listening to codecs when you have a friend around and you want to get to the next level. Usually it's only on main missions though. Also the HD collection on PS3 doesn't have a way to stay in voice chat with your friend between missions. Every time you end a mission and mess with your troops and items inbetween, you can't voice chat until you start the next. This doesn't matter on 360 where you can just make a party chat outside of the game, but there's no way to do that on PS3, so we just use Skype chat on something else while playing instead.

 

But yeah, co-op of course works very well on killing bosses quickly and getting those S-ranks, but the levels are also designed in such a way where there is usually two or three paths to take so that you can split up and clear out areas efficiently. Plus you can mix your supplies per mission and take something the other can't. So while I figured you'd just enter into a mess of someone constantly getting caught because of one path like single player MGS, instead it's a very streamlined and addicting experience that makes you feel like a well oiled machine. Like if you miss your shot and a guard is about to call in an alert and suddenly you have to reload, you're friend is probably there to deal the final headshot and put the guy to sleep just in time. Luring is much easier as well as you can follow someone who is checking out what your buddy is doing and knock 'em out with CQC. Also this game has more incentive than any Metal Gear to not perform kills, as you might need your enemy in your ranks, plus they removed lethal CQC moves like neck snapping and throat cutting. The stungun is now in place of the knife.

 

Anyway, thought I'd gush for a bit. Who knows, I might hate this game as I get close to completing all of the missions and slogging through those S ranks, but no problem so far and I've finished 30 of the 160.

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