Big Boss' portable adventure is by no means a short one and definitely the best journey in his epic life.
One thing that every Metal Gear fan knows about the franchise is that the games focus very heavily on the story, this time round too you will find yourself looking at cut scenes for about 10 minutes but it is not anything to be worried about as it will be in justice not to concentrate on the story, again you will love the plot of a Metal Gear game. The story takes place 10 years after Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, 4 years after Metal Gear Solid 4: Portable Ops and a year before the birth of the series main protagonist Solid Snake. The plot is much more closely connected to "Snake Eater" than "Portable Ops" and features many flasbacks to the final events of the former game. Player's will control Naked Snake, now in 1974 much more widely and popularly known as Big Boss. Snake and his unit the MSF are enlisted with the responsibility of saving Costa Rica, which has no military of its own, this leads to a very long journey for the boss. The MSF will have to deal with 'Peace Walker' this time round, a super weapon which is designed to transmit false images to the US base making them believe that they will son be attacked. Of course Snake is the one who is supposed to put an end to the problem once and for all.
Along his journey Snake picks up many allies including with his main partner being Kazuhira Miller. They are eventually joined later in the game by Sandinista rebel leader Amanda Valenciano Libre and her kid brother, Chico, Paz Ortega Andrade, a student at the University of Peace; Hal Emmerich's future father Huey and French ornithologist Cécile Cosima Caminades. Of course he encounters many enemies as well the main ones being Hot Coldman, who is the CIA Central America station chief, and Ramon Galvez Mena, Paz's instructor. Dr Strangelove is a British AI expert whom Coldman hired to work on the Peace Walker Project although she later changes her alliance for Big Boss. The story is played out in real time and is depicted in a comic book type way, as they are in real time you will be required to more than once press a few buttons in between to proceed forward or being faced to replay the unsuccessful bit. Indeed these real time events are so important that at times they become as challenging as playing a mission itself. Many times the player can get frustrated at the particularly hard nature of the game but you will almost certainly not get angry enough to stop playing the game and the reason for that is going through to the end of the story, it is just that good.
Game Play is accessible by playing through levels called missions. Being a stealth espionage game you will spend a considerable amount of time playing those kind of levels however that is not the only style of play in the game. You might just as well go on shooting at your enemies to proceed forward and that is not an overstatement as the enemies really aren't hard at all. At times, though, it will be mandatory to shoot and go forward. But going the violent way won't give you any pleasure, the real fun lies in the stealth parts. Nothing compares to creeping from behind a tree to your enemy and shoot him with a tranquilizer to his head without his knowledge and it is not as simple as sounds, still the shooting is satisfying, and a generous auto-aim toggled by the Select button is a particular mercy. Using the default control scheme, you control the camera and manual aiming with the face buttons, move with the analog nub, and access the menu and perform context-sensitive actions with the directional buttons. These controls mostly succeed at being fluid and intuitive, though they can be slightly fiddly on occasion, as can the two other control set-ups on offer. When trying to scroll through your gadgets or weapons, for instance, by holding a face button and a directional button simultaneously, Snake is frozen in place while you rifle through your inventory, since the game doesn't pause.
This vulnerability can be frustrating in the heat of a boss fight if you need to switch gadgets while out of cover. Maintaining stealthiness is challenging and requires a bit of patience as well, while getting caught by a lone enemy may not be a lot of trouble, getting caught with many others in the surrounding can cause a fleet of soldiers attacking you. Not to fret, Snake's loyal MSF who reside in a base fittingly called Outer Heaven have many solutions for you. You will have a horde of weapons to help you in your grueling missions. For slow sneaking stealth missions the best weapons would be the CQC weapons to tranquilize and knock out enemies while for mission requiring firepower the the assault rifle and missiles would definitely be notch above the rest. You won't be sent in to battle without any recovery items and there are many varieties of these including Ration, Spicy Curry and Tortilla chips. Big Boss also has a Psyche meter which if it were to deplete to the end would knock out. In-game the environments cannot be called as beautiful but they can still be considered as technical achievements. The attention to detail is excellent and you will have to use these details to your advantage and more crucially they are also your disadvantage as mostly in the game your enemies will camouflage themselves to spot you more efficiently but using the weapons described above all you would need is a sharp eye. If there is anything which can be remotely disappointing in the game is the place which every gamer thrives for and that is the boss fights. Initially one could feel nicely challenged by them but eventually these parts could end up being the parts you dread. You will be fighting AI in all the boss fights here, these range from Tanks, Choppers, Pupas, Chrysallis's, Cocoons and obviously to Peace Walker. These giant mammoth beings will make you work your sweat through, even one mistake could send you considerably back in your aim of finishing them off and even one big offensive shot from there could send your life to it's end stages so you will have to prepare for these fights with extra focus. Still the level of difficult can be opinionated, if you've played hardcore games before or are smart enough to know when to attack at the right time you could end up liking these challenges.
This is all just about the in game experience, "Peace Walker" is a game which will make you let out all of your gaming will in it. Even after finishing the story mode you will still be playing for 10 hours. The story mode is referred as 'Main Ops', this mode is the core of the game and playing this when your out of the house or traveling in the car wont cut it. These levels should be played when your relaxing at your house and have a few hours spare time. If you want quick fast paced fun then the mode for you is 'Extra Ops'. This one features tons of mini games which has a lot variety, even one including in which you have to go on a date. These levels are fun to play and get a good amount of practice and collect new members for your base, this brings us to the next section of this game. As if it were not enough for you to take care of Costa Rica you will also have to worry about Outer Heaven and its residents. You won't be offered any weapons or items that easily, to get the best ones you will have to increase your units. These feature the R & D, Combat, Mess Hall, Medical and Intel, each bring their own uniqueness and each of them are extremely vital to end the game. Many players, especially the less frequent ones will find this game difficult and they need not be ashamed of this because "Peace Walker" is not necessarily a one person game and for that you have the option of co-op in your missions. In a normal mission you can invite one friend with you while much more crucially in boss fights you can play with four making them much easier to fight against. If you're not interested in partnership you can play against each other in the Versus Ops mode as well. The game play is a plethora of stuff which leaves out nothing and you will find no one complaining that something was missing as everything has literally been incorporated in the game.
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker can finally be summed up as a complete game which will leave hardly any one disappointed and if you are happy with the game then you are guaranteed never to be left feeling incomplete. Sony's PlayStation Portable has been criticized as having a limited library of games and having even fewer qualitative ones but with the addition of "Peace Walker', at least for now those critics would have been silenced. The game play will easily take you up than 40 hours to complete the story mode, add the extra ops, the versus mode, co-op, replaying of the previously completed levels and you have a game which will last long enough for you to be content with just this one game for quite a few months and you will be picking up your PSP much more than you would have ever thought.