MGS Peace Walker Demo Impressions

27th September 2009 • 0 Comments

This past week the gaming world has moved to Tokyo for the Tokyo Gameshow, among the many great games on show Kojima Productions provided the first chance to play their latest PSP game, Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. 

Thanks to IGN though you don't have to travel all the way to Tokyo in order to experience this as they made the demo available to download on their site and being a huge Metal Gear fan I went and downloaded it immediately. 

The first thing that strikes you is how good the game looks, it doesn't look like a PSP game its as good as a PS2 game, it is easily the best looking PSP game to date. The demo then drops you into a tutorial which teaches you the controls and how to operate the camera.

The controls have had another big change. Since the PSP lacks a second analogue stick the camera is controlled using the face buttons and you move with the analogue nub. The left shoulder button allows you to aim your weapon, with the same over the shoulder camera of MGS4, you then fire with the right shoulder button. A lot of actions have been placed on the right shoulder button, if you are moving when you press it you do a roll, three taps whilst standing still let you do the punch punch kick combo and holding it down lets you perform CQC.

CQC has been changed a bit as well, you can still knock people out by holding down the left shoulder button, however by pressing the right shoulder button with a direction you now throw the soldier to the ground. If you're surrounded by enemies you can perform a CQC combo by pressing the right shoulder button when prompted on the screen which is pretty cool. It seems you cannot aim your weapon whilst in CQC which is a bit disappointing but this is probably down to the limited amount of buttons on the PSP.

Selecting items and weapons has been moved to the left and right directional buttons and crouching has been moved to the down button. There has been a big change to the crouching system in this game, you press it once to crouch but if you wish to lay on the floor you have to hold the button down. While laying on the floor you cannot move which is a change from previous games. The up button on the directional pad performs context sensitive actions like in MGS4, for example leaning up against a wall (you cannot move along the wall either).

Another change is that you cannot pause the game now apart from entering the PSP into sleep mode, this can make item changes more hectic than they were originally. Codec calls also seem to be played out whilst you're playing which was done occasionally in MGS4 but seems to be the norm here. 

It is a bit disappointing that some moves you could do from MGS4 aren't there but this is probably down to a lack of buttons on the PSP. The controls do work well though and are much better than they were in Portable Ops. Speaking of Portable Ops, one of my biggest gripes with that game was that it focused too much on multiple characters in one level and that each level felt a bit disjointed.

A similarity with Portable Ops is that Ashley Wood has returned to do the cutscenes, they are yet again presented in a comic book style. Whilst not a huge fan of them in Portable Ops they seem to transition from in game cinemas to these cutscenes very well and they seem more animated this time round. I would love to tell you the story of the demo however it was all in Japanese. 

Peace Walker seems to feel more like an MGS game as it focuses on one playable character at a time and you progress through the levels in a typical MGS fashion. The camo meter from MGS3 and 4 also makes a return at the moment though you can seem to get pretty close to guards with a low camo rating this might be changed nearer release. 

The big feature of this game is co op gameplay and in the full game there will be over 100 missions to play with three other people. You are given a taste of this in the demo, unfortunately I have been unable to try the co op part of the game, but all these missions could be played in single player as well. When you start the mission you are given a choice of 4 character classes, each have different items equipped and cater for different players.  So for the more gun ho of us you have the selection of better weapons, whilst people who use stealth like me are provided with radars and quieter weapons, this is great as it allows people of different play styles to play together.

The missions are quite straight forward and normally involve getting to a place and completing the objective. At the end of each mission you're given a rank like so:

From what I've seen of the co op it seems to have taken a very Monster Hunter tone. If done right this could be very popular.

From what I've played of the Peace Walker demo I am very impressed so far. They have implemented a good control scheme for a PSP game and the gameplay plays very much like a traditional console Metal Gear Solid game. The co op missions look very good so far and perfect to play in short bursts and great to play with some friends. It is a long wait for the full version of Peace Walker as it comes out in 2010, but if you think you can handle a lot of Japanese you can always check out the demo at IGN.

If not check out the TGS trailer.