[Post 1 of 2]
I decided to play the games because I wanted to play Revengeance after seeing some GIFs from it. It certainly helped that the series has a good reputation but yeah, that's the reason. Don't judge me!
I am going to write about the games in the order I played them, but I waited till I completed the whole series to write the reviews due to my asynchronous play order and because the games rely on a lot of internal references. GIFs are ripped from yt playthroughs.
=============================================
METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER
=============================================
Original Platform: Playstation 2
My Platform: Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, Playstation 3
Playtime: 17 hours
=============================================
"Real spies are nothing like James Bond. It's pure fantasy!"
The Metal Gear Solid series byline is TACTICAL ESPIONAGE ACTION, which is a way of saying you should avoid your enemies when possible, but that at any time you may be plunged into a firefight and you must be prepared for that eventuality too. In MGS3, you play a soldier codenamed Naked Snake who conducts stealth missions in an alternate history starting around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This alternate history embraces conspiracy theories, sci-fi elements, and a little bit of the supernatural.
Naked Snake procures most of his weapons and equipment on-site, hence the codename. The left and right back triggers open up a quick inventory menu for accessing items he's gathered. If this sounds a little unwieldy don't worry, the game acknowledges the time you may spend flipping through items by pausing when the quick inventory opens. You can also quickly equip or unequip your currently selected item by tapping the appropriate back trigger, useful for switching in and out of thermal vision when facing a camouflaging enemy, or running to a sniping position then quickly dropping and deploying your rifle.
The game features a primitive auto-cover system: run too close to a wall and Snake will automatically nudge up against it to take cover. I found this to cause more problems than it solved. Another punishing feature with cover is the camera behavior when Snake is crawling. If you crawl into a ditch or hollow log, the camera zooms in to first person, eliminating your peripheral view just as if you were really inside your hidey hole. The problem is the camera does not differentiate between an enclosed cover location like a log, and when Snake just happens to brush too close to a tree or wall while crawling. Snake gets "stuck" in this viewing position until you move him away, which sometimes deprives you of crucial seconds trying to get around a patrol. At best it simply disrupts the gameplay and disorients the player.
The HD Collection version of MGS3 offers two camera angles, "Normal" (top-down) and "3rd Person". Normal is the original camera presentation of MGS3 and enhances the utility of certain items like the Motion Detector and Anti-Personnel Sensor. Unfortunately, once you go 3rd Person you will not go back, it prevents frustrations like entering an enemy's view before they enter yours, and makes the camera experience a bit more cohesive. I found the game would sometimes switch back to Normal camera on its own, and I had to switch between the two perspectives in the options menu a couple times to get it back on 3rd Person.
Its vision is based on movement
R1 is the first person viewing key in either camera mode, but on some weapons you enter the first person scope by pressing L1, and adjust the scope with the triangle key while trying to control the scope view with the right stick below. You need a lot of fingers to pull this off, but using scoped weapons is not too necessary throughout the game. Free-aiming (aiming without using iron sights or a scope) on the other hand was a recipe for failure for me, so I had to stage in the game's 3rd person or top-down camera mode, then switch to first person and hope I was pointing the right way to take out the guard coming around the corner.
There are also some control elements the game will not tell you about, so if Snake's mentor starts talking about CQC (close-quarters combat) and you're sitting there wondering why you can only flail at a guard when he spots you, read through the game's instruction manual. The CQC controls are touchy though. To grab a guard you have snuck up on, you press O. However if you keep holding O, you will kill the guard. If you do not press O firmly enough when trying to grab the guard, you will simply punch him in the back of the head. Like I said, touchy.
A first-time player will absolutely have to practice with the controls. You might want to try a bit of play on Very Easy before you switch to Normal difficulty, but be warned you cannot change difficulties mid-game, you will have to start a new one. Most cutscenes can be skipped if you need to replay a section, there are a few occasions where they can't and I'm not sure what the deciding factor is.
So I have spent six paragraphs talking about the game's controls, and the reason I did that is because I spent more time fighting the controls than the enemies. I actually gave up on the series for a couple months after completing the first mission in MGS3, but I eventually went back and read the manual and powered through the rest of the game. I also replayed the game after I completed the others and had a much easier time because I knew where the controls were deviating from the more standardized controls of modern MGS games, and where the particular quirks of the series were still present. I also figured out the 3rd Person camera existed on my second playthrough, which was like finding Jesus.
I'm haunted by controls from 2004!
In addition to TACTICAL ESPIONAGE ACTION, MGS3 integrates a bit of START menu diving to serve three survival mechanisms. The first is camouflage, you can hide better from enemies wearing a green shirt in the forest and a brick-colored shirt in an industrial area. Next is food, you need to eat random animals and rations to maintain your stamina.
And then there's the cure menu, where you get an image of Snake and have to heal all his booboos with the correct medical supplies. All three of these mechanics felt like stopping the main gameplay to fiddle around in menus, not very rewarding or well-integrated. My most inspired experience with them was after the fact, visiting the cure menu and realizing the reason my screen got all dark and blurry was because the boss I was fighting shot me with a tranq dart. The creators of MGS apparently didn't feel very attached to these systems either: the food and cure menus were eliminated completely in subsequent titles, and the camouflage system in Peace Walker and MGS5 can be readily ignored.
Whew. So, bad controls, esoteric mechanics, we're on the path to oblivion right? Fortunately as with many things Metal Gear, the entire picture is more complicated than that. If you can learn to live in peace with the controls, MGS3 offers a fun story with carefully conceived characters: almost every action in a cutscene has meaning, and the facial animations are top-notch (the only exception being that the game is originally Japanese dubbed, so the English dub doesn't match the lip synch). In fact the game starts off by setting the standards so high for developed characters that when you finally start running into the four sub-bosses, members of the elite Cobra unit, you come away a bit disappointed that all of them are little more than a concept sketch.
You don't need lipsynch to tell you this guy hates barrels
The Cobras are pretty fun to fight, with the highlight sequence of the game being when Snake is tasked to hunt down a Cobra sniper across three forest zones. Not every sequence is perfect: the on-rails chases get overplayed, and you have one hell of a time in a dark cave. But the bulk of the game is conceived on careful and rewarding exploration of various indoor and outdoor areas, with the outdoors being especially challenging because of enemy camouflage, limited views, and occasionally dangerous animals. You can breeze through with the minimum of effort if you want, but explorers will discover extra items that don't just make them stronger, but offer alternate ways to play the game.
Because of this variety in approaches and victory conditions, I feel MGS3 offers something for every kind of player. Snake is definitely his own man, and one of the more likable protagonists you will ever encounter, but his technique is all up to you. The thing you are going to remember first about MGS3 is its characters and their stories, but the gameplay is still good enough that those stories remain best served by that gameplay, and not by a miniseries or movie. The aesthetic of the game is very consistent, and the integration of game and cutscenes is such that the gameplay helps tell the story, it's not just filler on the way to the next cinematic. This should be an objective of all games, and it is very well-realized here.
The environments are nothing to write home about, but serviceable for a PS2 game. The HD Collection version is very crisp and clean. I appreciate that the indoor and industrial settings have simplified textures, it's much easier to find your way around than out in the forest. The character animations are stellar. I'm an animation-centric person. If you show me a screenshot of a pretty game, I'm going to ask "but how does it look when it moves?" And I can comfortably say MGS3 impressed me, the movements of the characters are all very particular to them and full of charisma. Theatrics are the name of the game for Metal Gear Solid characters, they don't care about realism, they are here to write their mark across your memory.
=============================================
METAL GEAR SOLID: PEACE WALKER
=============================================
Original Platform: PSP
My Platform: Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, Playstation 3
Completion: All main missions, all side-ops up to [118]
=============================================
"It will bite you unless you kill it."
Don't be fooled by this game's original release on a handheld, it's a complete MGS game with a lot of nice gameplay improvements and elaborations compared to MGS3. The HD Collection version's graphics are very nice, the actual gameplay does not look different from the PS2 games. The only flaw is that cutscenes are now portrayed comic book style, with static or slightly moving images instead of full 3D renders.
Peace Walker sees the agent from MGS3, now titled Big Boss, assembling a gang of mercenaries "without borders". In addition to the sneaking missions and boss battles the series is known for, you are tasked with building up your mercenary base, recruiting soldiers, and dispatching them on missions to collect phat money for you. If you are familiar with the assassin recruits you gather in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, this follows the same lines. Rather than finding all your gear in the wild, you find blueprints (or receive them when your mercenaries complete missions) and then you get to choose if developing the gear is worthwhile to you.
I enjoyed building my base and customizing my gear, but the "Recruit" option at Mother Base is basically punching people out over and over with a wealth of load screens in between, and not very fun. I quickly gave up on it and stuck to kidnapping my recruits from the field. Yes, that is a thing the game allows you to do - kidnap people and convince them to join your army.
Peace Walker is divided into main ops, which advance the story, and side ops, which help you gather new gear or give you challenges (mostly different kinds of tanks and helicopters) to beat, which in turn will give your mercenaries new assets for their missions. You can even play as one of your mercenaries in most of the side ops, which is nice because some of them end up with much higher health than Big Boss, and they get a money bonus for completing the mission.
While the abundance of load screens and confirmation screens are a little bothersome, Peace Walker has some seriously addictive gameplay in all its ops. You have the option of three different control types, one of which adopts the standard of MGS4 (there's also one that mimics the controls of Monster Hunter...). This means you are no longer subject to the "growing pains" of the experimental controls in MGS1-3.
Goodbye top-down camera, hello x-ray camera
The game is also easier than MGS3 in general, but especially if you focus on developing the right kinds of weapons to suit your playstyle. Ultimately, my base was turning out so much money I could develop everything available all the time, but in the beginning I was able to ignore weapons I don't use (assault rifles, machine guns, SMGs) in favor of hyper-developing my preferred weapons like the tranq pistol and Fulton recovery system, aka the kidnap balloon.
The camouflage system returns, supposedly enhancing your sneaking abilities by selecting the right camo, but since you can't see a battlefield in advance it's sort of moot and can be completely ignored. By the end of the game I used only my custom-developed sneaking suit or the battle suit anyway, depending on the mission. Loadouts throughout the game are tactical: you can only carry a certain number of items and weapons into a given mission. The sneaking suit decreases your item carry limit, but quiets your footsteps. The battle dress lets you carry an extra weapon, but your footstep volume is set to "STAMPEDE".
Most side ops reuse locations visited in the main mission over and over again, so don't expect to see a whole lot new on them. Some of the side ops are main mission bosses with bigger health bars and their voices pitched lower. Side ops are not where the story is located, but they are great for perfecting your technique on bosses while simultaneously gathering rewards to make you and your Mother Base stronger.
Against the might of a man with a tranq gun and a balloon, what could one tank possibly hope to do?
Peace Walker is pretty weak on plot and characters. At the start of the game, Big Boss has a sidekick named Miller who did not appear in MGS3 and is introduced with no explanation of where he came from, but apparently a close relationship to BB. Your competitor agents Eva and Ocelot from MGS3 are nowhere to be found. Most of the character humor goes with them. Ocelot's absence is especially weird, given how he shows up as BB's chum in MGS5.
Big Boss agrees to undertake a mission on behalf of a college student and her professor, which is predictably not what it seems. Halfway through the game the credits roll for some reason, then you play another substantially less interesting half where most of the main ops are "find this guy, again" and end with you fighting a mecha pilot in a bikini. The story cannibalizes MGS3 themes and reintroduces them, playing sound clips from MGS3 over and over again as if there is something new to be garnered from them in Peace Walker's context.
Before there was BB-8, there was...Professor Galvez
This game does introduce your XO Miller, scienceaholics Huey and Strangelove, and kiddos Paz and Chico who are all pretty important characters in MGSV: Ground Zeroes and MGSV proper, and the gameplay of Peace Walker also seems to be the source of MGSV's gameplay. It's definitely a fun little game, and I cannot understate how much the controls improved, it just lacks on character beats and story. If you like any other MGS game, you will like this one.
Peace Walker has an online component, you can complete some missions with others and trade mercenaries with them. I was unable to ring up anyone when I tried it though, probably due to the game's age and the platform split.
=============================================
METAL GEAR SOLID 4: GUNS OF THE PATRIOTS
=============================================
Playstation 3
Playtime: 23 hours
=============================================
"I may have loved you once, but now you're just too damn senile to see the truth."
MGS4 has much nicer controls than any previous entry in the series, but as I discussed in my MGS3 review this does not automatically translate to better gameplay. Something I touched on in that review is how gameplay can work together with cutscenes to better convey a story. Think about it: if a game's cutscenes accomplish the entirety of the story on their own, not just the technical details of the plot but the tone and the entirety of the experience, why have the "game" part at all? You could just make a movie, or a miniseries.
As the sun rises on the series' fourth numbered entry, the clone operative Snake rides into a Call of Duty-colored Middle Eastern warzone. After a lengthy cutscene, gameplay begins. Snake's first task: figure his way out of a corral of videogamey object barriers by crawling under a truck. The moment he accomplishes this, another cutscene begins.
MGS4 does not integrate gameplay and story. The gameplay it does offer is a thin garnish compared to the depth and variety of which the series is capable. Item discovery is eliminated as a mechanic, Snake earns flat points that can be used to purchase weapons. There is no incentive to do anything but get through each area as fast as possible, and hope that the cutscene you reach at the end is worth it. Unfortunately the game does not offer anything particularly enthralling story-wise until the end of the third act, and the game is comprised of five acts total.
The Vamp to non-Vamp cutscene ratio is unacceptably low
Gameplay-wise there is nothing especially memorable either till the third act, at which point the game finally diversifies with a noir shadowing sequence. The payoff continues to build through the fourth act, but the ease of the gameplay (at least on Normal difficulty) means there feels like even less content than there really is from one cutscene to the next. The game also begins integrating a great deal of "cinematic" action, even splitting the screen between simplified gameplay scenarios and cutscenes.
Maybe you can ride a story high all the way to the end. The fourth and fifth acts certainly fly by. But this entry's four Beauty and the Beast subbosses follow the MGS3 route of being nothing more than emotional sketches, with exposition on their incredibly similar collection of backstories given to you after you win each fight. Each BNB boss fight also has an identical second phase, with absolutely no individual character implied through the gameplay.
I'm so light, because I have no soul
Other new characters introduced for MGS4 fall pretty flat: some forgettable goons among your allies Rat Patrol 01, and an arms dealer who has a pet monkey because haha monkeys are funny, I guess. To appreciate the wealth of returning characters, you will need to have played Metal Gear Solid 1-3. The game lacks a lot of the humor of previous entries, with the dominant joke for the first two acts being a guy that craps his pants and farts constantly. Yep.
There is something to be said for the treatment of MGS standby Otacon, Snake's scienceholic ally: this is his game. He improves pretty much every scene he is in, and his and Snake's interactions- along with newcomer Sunny, who does manage to make a memory out of herself -demonstrate one of the best friendly relationships in gaming. Brings an actual tear to your eye. And maybe that is worth going through the rest of the game.
You Tried
I decided to play the games because I wanted to play Revengeance after seeing some GIFs from it. It certainly helped that the series has a good reputation but yeah, that's the reason. Don't judge me!
I am going to write about the games in the order I played them, but I waited till I completed the whole series to write the reviews due to my asynchronous play order and because the games rely on a lot of internal references. GIFs are ripped from yt playthroughs.
=============================================
METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER
=============================================
Original Platform: Playstation 2
My Platform: Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, Playstation 3
Playtime: 17 hours
=============================================
"Real spies are nothing like James Bond. It's pure fantasy!"
The Metal Gear Solid series byline is TACTICAL ESPIONAGE ACTION, which is a way of saying you should avoid your enemies when possible, but that at any time you may be plunged into a firefight and you must be prepared for that eventuality too. In MGS3, you play a soldier codenamed Naked Snake who conducts stealth missions in an alternate history starting around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This alternate history embraces conspiracy theories, sci-fi elements, and a little bit of the supernatural.
Naked Snake procures most of his weapons and equipment on-site, hence the codename. The left and right back triggers open up a quick inventory menu for accessing items he's gathered. If this sounds a little unwieldy don't worry, the game acknowledges the time you may spend flipping through items by pausing when the quick inventory opens. You can also quickly equip or unequip your currently selected item by tapping the appropriate back trigger, useful for switching in and out of thermal vision when facing a camouflaging enemy, or running to a sniping position then quickly dropping and deploying your rifle.
The game features a primitive auto-cover system: run too close to a wall and Snake will automatically nudge up against it to take cover. I found this to cause more problems than it solved. Another punishing feature with cover is the camera behavior when Snake is crawling. If you crawl into a ditch or hollow log, the camera zooms in to first person, eliminating your peripheral view just as if you were really inside your hidey hole. The problem is the camera does not differentiate between an enclosed cover location like a log, and when Snake just happens to brush too close to a tree or wall while crawling. Snake gets "stuck" in this viewing position until you move him away, which sometimes deprives you of crucial seconds trying to get around a patrol. At best it simply disrupts the gameplay and disorients the player.
The HD Collection version of MGS3 offers two camera angles, "Normal" (top-down) and "3rd Person". Normal is the original camera presentation of MGS3 and enhances the utility of certain items like the Motion Detector and Anti-Personnel Sensor. Unfortunately, once you go 3rd Person you will not go back, it prevents frustrations like entering an enemy's view before they enter yours, and makes the camera experience a bit more cohesive. I found the game would sometimes switch back to Normal camera on its own, and I had to switch between the two perspectives in the options menu a couple times to get it back on 3rd Person.
Its vision is based on movement
R1 is the first person viewing key in either camera mode, but on some weapons you enter the first person scope by pressing L1, and adjust the scope with the triangle key while trying to control the scope view with the right stick below. You need a lot of fingers to pull this off, but using scoped weapons is not too necessary throughout the game. Free-aiming (aiming without using iron sights or a scope) on the other hand was a recipe for failure for me, so I had to stage in the game's 3rd person or top-down camera mode, then switch to first person and hope I was pointing the right way to take out the guard coming around the corner.
There are also some control elements the game will not tell you about, so if Snake's mentor starts talking about CQC (close-quarters combat) and you're sitting there wondering why you can only flail at a guard when he spots you, read through the game's instruction manual. The CQC controls are touchy though. To grab a guard you have snuck up on, you press O. However if you keep holding O, you will kill the guard. If you do not press O firmly enough when trying to grab the guard, you will simply punch him in the back of the head. Like I said, touchy.
A first-time player will absolutely have to practice with the controls. You might want to try a bit of play on Very Easy before you switch to Normal difficulty, but be warned you cannot change difficulties mid-game, you will have to start a new one. Most cutscenes can be skipped if you need to replay a section, there are a few occasions where they can't and I'm not sure what the deciding factor is.
So I have spent six paragraphs talking about the game's controls, and the reason I did that is because I spent more time fighting the controls than the enemies. I actually gave up on the series for a couple months after completing the first mission in MGS3, but I eventually went back and read the manual and powered through the rest of the game. I also replayed the game after I completed the others and had a much easier time because I knew where the controls were deviating from the more standardized controls of modern MGS games, and where the particular quirks of the series were still present. I also figured out the 3rd Person camera existed on my second playthrough, which was like finding Jesus.
I'm haunted by controls from 2004!
In addition to TACTICAL ESPIONAGE ACTION, MGS3 integrates a bit of START menu diving to serve three survival mechanisms. The first is camouflage, you can hide better from enemies wearing a green shirt in the forest and a brick-colored shirt in an industrial area. Next is food, you need to eat random animals and rations to maintain your stamina.
And then there's the cure menu, where you get an image of Snake and have to heal all his booboos with the correct medical supplies. All three of these mechanics felt like stopping the main gameplay to fiddle around in menus, not very rewarding or well-integrated. My most inspired experience with them was after the fact, visiting the cure menu and realizing the reason my screen got all dark and blurry was because the boss I was fighting shot me with a tranq dart. The creators of MGS apparently didn't feel very attached to these systems either: the food and cure menus were eliminated completely in subsequent titles, and the camouflage system in Peace Walker and MGS5 can be readily ignored.
Whew. So, bad controls, esoteric mechanics, we're on the path to oblivion right? Fortunately as with many things Metal Gear, the entire picture is more complicated than that. If you can learn to live in peace with the controls, MGS3 offers a fun story with carefully conceived characters: almost every action in a cutscene has meaning, and the facial animations are top-notch (the only exception being that the game is originally Japanese dubbed, so the English dub doesn't match the lip synch). In fact the game starts off by setting the standards so high for developed characters that when you finally start running into the four sub-bosses, members of the elite Cobra unit, you come away a bit disappointed that all of them are little more than a concept sketch.
You don't need lipsynch to tell you this guy hates barrels
The Cobras are pretty fun to fight, with the highlight sequence of the game being when Snake is tasked to hunt down a Cobra sniper across three forest zones. Not every sequence is perfect: the on-rails chases get overplayed, and you have one hell of a time in a dark cave. But the bulk of the game is conceived on careful and rewarding exploration of various indoor and outdoor areas, with the outdoors being especially challenging because of enemy camouflage, limited views, and occasionally dangerous animals. You can breeze through with the minimum of effort if you want, but explorers will discover extra items that don't just make them stronger, but offer alternate ways to play the game.
Because of this variety in approaches and victory conditions, I feel MGS3 offers something for every kind of player. Snake is definitely his own man, and one of the more likable protagonists you will ever encounter, but his technique is all up to you. The thing you are going to remember first about MGS3 is its characters and their stories, but the gameplay is still good enough that those stories remain best served by that gameplay, and not by a miniseries or movie. The aesthetic of the game is very consistent, and the integration of game and cutscenes is such that the gameplay helps tell the story, it's not just filler on the way to the next cinematic. This should be an objective of all games, and it is very well-realized here.
The environments are nothing to write home about, but serviceable for a PS2 game. The HD Collection version is very crisp and clean. I appreciate that the indoor and industrial settings have simplified textures, it's much easier to find your way around than out in the forest. The character animations are stellar. I'm an animation-centric person. If you show me a screenshot of a pretty game, I'm going to ask "but how does it look when it moves?" And I can comfortably say MGS3 impressed me, the movements of the characters are all very particular to them and full of charisma. Theatrics are the name of the game for Metal Gear Solid characters, they don't care about realism, they are here to write their mark across your memory.
=============================================
METAL GEAR SOLID: PEACE WALKER
=============================================
Original Platform: PSP
My Platform: Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, Playstation 3
Completion: All main missions, all side-ops up to [118]
=============================================
"It will bite you unless you kill it."
Don't be fooled by this game's original release on a handheld, it's a complete MGS game with a lot of nice gameplay improvements and elaborations compared to MGS3. The HD Collection version's graphics are very nice, the actual gameplay does not look different from the PS2 games. The only flaw is that cutscenes are now portrayed comic book style, with static or slightly moving images instead of full 3D renders.
Peace Walker sees the agent from MGS3, now titled Big Boss, assembling a gang of mercenaries "without borders". In addition to the sneaking missions and boss battles the series is known for, you are tasked with building up your mercenary base, recruiting soldiers, and dispatching them on missions to collect phat money for you. If you are familiar with the assassin recruits you gather in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, this follows the same lines. Rather than finding all your gear in the wild, you find blueprints (or receive them when your mercenaries complete missions) and then you get to choose if developing the gear is worthwhile to you.
I enjoyed building my base and customizing my gear, but the "Recruit" option at Mother Base is basically punching people out over and over with a wealth of load screens in between, and not very fun. I quickly gave up on it and stuck to kidnapping my recruits from the field. Yes, that is a thing the game allows you to do - kidnap people and convince them to join your army.
Peace Walker is divided into main ops, which advance the story, and side ops, which help you gather new gear or give you challenges (mostly different kinds of tanks and helicopters) to beat, which in turn will give your mercenaries new assets for their missions. You can even play as one of your mercenaries in most of the side ops, which is nice because some of them end up with much higher health than Big Boss, and they get a money bonus for completing the mission.
While the abundance of load screens and confirmation screens are a little bothersome, Peace Walker has some seriously addictive gameplay in all its ops. You have the option of three different control types, one of which adopts the standard of MGS4 (there's also one that mimics the controls of Monster Hunter...). This means you are no longer subject to the "growing pains" of the experimental controls in MGS1-3.
Goodbye top-down camera, hello x-ray camera
The game is also easier than MGS3 in general, but especially if you focus on developing the right kinds of weapons to suit your playstyle. Ultimately, my base was turning out so much money I could develop everything available all the time, but in the beginning I was able to ignore weapons I don't use (assault rifles, machine guns, SMGs) in favor of hyper-developing my preferred weapons like the tranq pistol and Fulton recovery system, aka the kidnap balloon.
The camouflage system returns, supposedly enhancing your sneaking abilities by selecting the right camo, but since you can't see a battlefield in advance it's sort of moot and can be completely ignored. By the end of the game I used only my custom-developed sneaking suit or the battle suit anyway, depending on the mission. Loadouts throughout the game are tactical: you can only carry a certain number of items and weapons into a given mission. The sneaking suit decreases your item carry limit, but quiets your footsteps. The battle dress lets you carry an extra weapon, but your footstep volume is set to "STAMPEDE".
Most side ops reuse locations visited in the main mission over and over again, so don't expect to see a whole lot new on them. Some of the side ops are main mission bosses with bigger health bars and their voices pitched lower. Side ops are not where the story is located, but they are great for perfecting your technique on bosses while simultaneously gathering rewards to make you and your Mother Base stronger.
Against the might of a man with a tranq gun and a balloon, what could one tank possibly hope to do?
Peace Walker is pretty weak on plot and characters. At the start of the game, Big Boss has a sidekick named Miller who did not appear in MGS3 and is introduced with no explanation of where he came from, but apparently a close relationship to BB. Your competitor agents Eva and Ocelot from MGS3 are nowhere to be found. Most of the character humor goes with them. Ocelot's absence is especially weird, given how he shows up as BB's chum in MGS5.
Big Boss agrees to undertake a mission on behalf of a college student and her professor, which is predictably not what it seems. Halfway through the game the credits roll for some reason, then you play another substantially less interesting half where most of the main ops are "find this guy, again" and end with you fighting a mecha pilot in a bikini. The story cannibalizes MGS3 themes and reintroduces them, playing sound clips from MGS3 over and over again as if there is something new to be garnered from them in Peace Walker's context.
Before there was BB-8, there was...Professor Galvez
This game does introduce your XO Miller, scienceaholics Huey and Strangelove, and kiddos Paz and Chico who are all pretty important characters in MGSV: Ground Zeroes and MGSV proper, and the gameplay of Peace Walker also seems to be the source of MGSV's gameplay. It's definitely a fun little game, and I cannot understate how much the controls improved, it just lacks on character beats and story. If you like any other MGS game, you will like this one.
Peace Walker has an online component, you can complete some missions with others and trade mercenaries with them. I was unable to ring up anyone when I tried it though, probably due to the game's age and the platform split.
=============================================
METAL GEAR SOLID 4: GUNS OF THE PATRIOTS
=============================================
Playstation 3
Playtime: 23 hours
=============================================
"I may have loved you once, but now you're just too damn senile to see the truth."
MGS4 has much nicer controls than any previous entry in the series, but as I discussed in my MGS3 review this does not automatically translate to better gameplay. Something I touched on in that review is how gameplay can work together with cutscenes to better convey a story. Think about it: if a game's cutscenes accomplish the entirety of the story on their own, not just the technical details of the plot but the tone and the entirety of the experience, why have the "game" part at all? You could just make a movie, or a miniseries.
As the sun rises on the series' fourth numbered entry, the clone operative Snake rides into a Call of Duty-colored Middle Eastern warzone. After a lengthy cutscene, gameplay begins. Snake's first task: figure his way out of a corral of videogamey object barriers by crawling under a truck. The moment he accomplishes this, another cutscene begins.
MGS4 does not integrate gameplay and story. The gameplay it does offer is a thin garnish compared to the depth and variety of which the series is capable. Item discovery is eliminated as a mechanic, Snake earns flat points that can be used to purchase weapons. There is no incentive to do anything but get through each area as fast as possible, and hope that the cutscene you reach at the end is worth it. Unfortunately the game does not offer anything particularly enthralling story-wise until the end of the third act, and the game is comprised of five acts total.
The Vamp to non-Vamp cutscene ratio is unacceptably low
Gameplay-wise there is nothing especially memorable either till the third act, at which point the game finally diversifies with a noir shadowing sequence. The payoff continues to build through the fourth act, but the ease of the gameplay (at least on Normal difficulty) means there feels like even less content than there really is from one cutscene to the next. The game also begins integrating a great deal of "cinematic" action, even splitting the screen between simplified gameplay scenarios and cutscenes.
Maybe you can ride a story high all the way to the end. The fourth and fifth acts certainly fly by. But this entry's four Beauty and the Beast subbosses follow the MGS3 route of being nothing more than emotional sketches, with exposition on their incredibly similar collection of backstories given to you after you win each fight. Each BNB boss fight also has an identical second phase, with absolutely no individual character implied through the gameplay.
I'm so light, because I have no soul
Other new characters introduced for MGS4 fall pretty flat: some forgettable goons among your allies Rat Patrol 01, and an arms dealer who has a pet monkey because haha monkeys are funny, I guess. To appreciate the wealth of returning characters, you will need to have played Metal Gear Solid 1-3. The game lacks a lot of the humor of previous entries, with the dominant joke for the first two acts being a guy that craps his pants and farts constantly. Yep.
There is something to be said for the treatment of MGS standby Otacon, Snake's scienceholic ally: this is his game. He improves pretty much every scene he is in, and his and Snake's interactions- along with newcomer Sunny, who does manage to make a memory out of herself -demonstrate one of the best friendly relationships in gaming. Brings an actual tear to your eye. And maybe that is worth going through the rest of the game.
You Tried
