Game Reviews

I'd love to be able to say that Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker achieves this lofty goal, but ultimately it falls just short. But then, it wouldn't really be a Metal Gear game if it didn't suffer from one or two glaring flaws, would it? To its credit, though, Peace Walker is the best thing to come from Hideo Kojima's long-running series since Metal Gear Solid 3, despite a handful of compromising shortcomings. That Peace Walker would have to make some compromises is a given; it is a PSP game, after all. No slight intended to the system, but the PSP lacks either the horsepower or range of controls of the PlayStation 3, which played host to the most recent entry in the series. Yet despite taking a technological step backward, Peace Walker does an admirable job of reproducing both the spirit of MGS3 and the control mechanics of MGS4 to the furthest extent possible. Certain Metal Gear standards have been streamlined or removed altogether in order to make the game play as smoothly as it can: Camouflage feels largely irrelevant, and it's no longer possible to crawl. For the most part, however, Peace Walker seems to have been designed with these limitations in mind -- in fact, the entire game feels very deliberate in its design. It was clearly intended to be a thoroughly portable experience above all else, and this is the source of its main appeal.