Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (PSP)

Developer:

Kojima Productions

|

Release Date:

2010

|

Systems:

PSP, PS3, Xbox 360

---

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing the fifth of the main Metal Gear Solid games, Peace Walker on the PlayStation Portable! Or maybe sixth, depending on whether you count Portable Ops (creator Hideo Kojima doesn't). In fact it was originally going to be Metal Gear Solid 5 and it pretty much still is in everything but title, as it continues the story of the fall of Big Boss.

I've never been keen on handheld exclusive sequels to console exclusive games (or the opposite) as unless you're playing on a Switch it's going to really change the experience. Plus it means you have to get extra hardware to continue the story, which kind of sucks if you've spent all your money getting a PS3 to play Metal Gear Solid 4 and don't feel the need to take games outside with you. (Personally I had a PSP in the house before I had a PS3, but that's just the same problem backwards!) Ideally I'd want developers to port everything to everything, but if that's not possible and they really want to make a portable game, then they should make it a spin-off like Metal Gear AC!D that doesn't continue the storyline. In my opinion.

Part of the reason they went portable with this one is because Monster Hunter Freedom did really well on PSP, hitting a broader demographic, and they wanted some of that for MGS. Peace Walker was aimed towards a younger school-age audience and in Japan they found it, making the game a big hit. Outside of Japan, not so much. In fact the game sold so poorly in the West that they took one of its characters off the cover of the international versions of Ground Zeroes because no one knew who he was. The game did pretty well in reviews though, as it's one of the highest rated PSP games on Metacritic (sharing third place with Lumines and Persona 3). In fact it's actually way higher than Monster Hunter Freedom. It's also a pretty late PSP game as it came out a year before the release of the PS Vita. And a year before Peace Walker HD Edition was released on consoles.

Okay, I'm going to play this for an hour or two and hope that gets me past the first cutscene at least. Either way there's going to be a lot of SPOILERS here for both this game and earlier Metal Gears, so please don't accidentally ruin a game for yourself by reading something here you didn't want to know.