Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is on it’s way, and it seems like great timing with me finishing Peace Walker on the PSP. Damn it, I wished I played this game sooner.

(WARNING: MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD)

Peace Walker was released in 2010, and was meant for release on PSP. This seems weird at first, but it becomes understandable when you understand what this game is trying to achieve.

MGS Peace Walker, is a lot like Monster Hunter. It came out around the time Monster Hunter became the PSP’s only and best killer app, and thus it borrows tons of influences from the Capcom franchise. Like, a lot. Hell, they even partnered up to include monsters from MH as playable bosses in Peace Walker, that’s badass!

The mission structure is similar, it employs the same tactics of preparation and execution, and tops it off with the Metal Gear flair we all know and love. The bosses are long, large battles against foes that could be taken down with friends, you have a hub base that you use to hire employees and develop/craft new gear for you. This combined with a different kind of control style that would evolve to Ground Zeroes/Phantom Pain’s new control scheme. If you play Peace Walker, you can tell that MGS V is literally expanding upon every single aspect that Peace Walker had. Which is great, because Peace Walker just so happens to be the new game on my list to take the super difficult list of “Niko’s Best Super Duper Games that are 100% worth playing and you must f***ing play them!”.

It’s not a perfect game of course. You can tell that a lot of the game was made for multiplayer in mind, like secret sections and bosses. This makes lonely people like me have a way more  difficult time to finish the game. I remember being legitimately stuck at a lot of these segments, taking super long attempts to win. It’s implementations of some of it’s QTEs are mechanically broken. In the torture mission, you have to rapidly tap triangle to not die, but you have to do it at such a inhuman rate that it can be almost impossible for those with not much strength to complete. I had to roll a toy car’s tire on the triangle just so I could get past these missions. There’s no reason for this kind of bulls*** at all, especially since a lot of the QTEs are just fine, if not way too repetitive. The game expects too much out of people when it wants you to mash a certain button. When you run out of Psyche in the game (Your other bar you need to take care of), your character will knock out, forcing you to move the joypad repeatedly. My joypad has it’s pad broken off, so it actually is a strain when this happens.

Like Monster Hunter, your slower movement makes sure you plan out your moves first. In the bosses, you’ll probably be placing down tons of supply markers (which are beacons that will drop ammo and rations), but this decreases your heroism everytime you do it, so you have to make sure each shot counts and you’re using them efficiently.

The soundtrack is neat, and it’s graphics are great for a PSP game. They’re equivalent to Monster Hu- you know what, I think you get the point.

Stealth works just as well as combat, with the new control scheme making it easier to move around. Your moves are more limited though, since you can’t do stuff like crawl or peaking out at corners. This is a big negative for me, but the game’s still great without them. Stealth is still efficient to tackle, and with the fulton system, you’ll want to avoid killing enemies so you can take them as staff for your base. This encourages stealth and discourages straight up killing. That’s awesome.

The game’s base building mechanic functions well and is tied to the entirety of the game. You are the Big Boss, after all, and you’ll receive maximum efficiency and get better gear as you maintain the morale of your troops, capture more soldiers to join your group, and send your combat units out on Outer Ops missions.

I wished I played this game sooner. Oh I wished. It takes so many influences from Monster Hunter, but carves out the Metal Gear Solid foundation. With Monster Hunter’s tactic/strategy-based mechanics and Metal Gear’s fun stealth action, it’s an absolute beast of the game. Except for the cliffhanger and Chapter 5 parts, those are stupid.