Rescue Mission: How Peace Walker Salvaged Metal Gear's Reputation

After the roller coaster ending of Sons of the Patriots, you couldn't blame the most ardent Metal Gear fan for feeling emotionally drained. MGS4 had a grand mission to accomplish: the narrative needed to tie up all the loose ends of the series and put Solid Snake's story to rest. The creators at Kojima Productions accepted this challenging task and delivered a finale that beat players over the head with a barrage of curtain calls. As great as it was to see so much closure for the core cast of Metal Gear Solid, this approach left players in an unfamiliar state where they were happy to say goodbye to Solid Snake and crew. But a bigger question lingered after the close of MGS4: Where could the next game in the series possibly go?

[2pacalypsenow]

How did i salvage its reputation? MGS has always been great and MGS 4 was the end for SOLID snake , And there's many stories from big boss that can be told so i hope MGS5 shows when Solid Snake was cloned.

[Fez]

It's one of those hit grabbing headlines. The actual article is well written. I think he's mainly referencing the way peace walker rewarded non-leathal kills whereas 4 didn't really have any repercussions for killing. Maybe also that Peace Walker is a game first and foremost whereas 4 is more of a homage to the fans.

Although I don't understand this - "considering the series' complicated history with controls"... MGS is not well known for having complicated controls. I expected the link to explain but it just redirects to the same page. Not sure what the writer has experienced but MGS controls have never been a problem for me :S

[dedicatedtogamers]

For "complicated controls", the author has a point, although an MGS vet simply deals with it:

In MGS3, for instance, in order to interrogate someone, you have to come behind them, LIGHTLY press square (a full press will slit their throat), then press R3. If you want to hold out your gun and use them as a body shield, you have to hold square lightly and press R1 (I think) to aim, and them R2 to shoot.

Complicated controls for a complicated game. I think people take for granted the "contextual button press" actions in MGS4 and Peace Walker. The older MGS games forces you to use complex button combos.

[Fez]

Actually yeh forgot about all that. And there were a lot of CQC controls that were a bit confusing. I never really used CQC because of it.

I wouldn't say the series had complicated controls though, just MGS3. The other games had pretty simple controls.

[Nate-Dog]

He is mainly talking about Portable Ops I presume (since he mentions the series's PSP history) because that was a headache to play through at times, trying to control the camera just to see your near proximity and do anything else at the same time was almost impossible, at least for me it was.

[Fez]

Lol, oh yeh forgot about that too. Never played PO but heard the controls weren't the best.

[Gamesgbkiller]

I want PEACE WALKER 2
it was a perfect game!

[Knushwood Butt]

It's a masterpiece.

[StanSmith]

"Rescue Mission: How Peace Walker Salvaged Metal Gear's Reputation"

Metal Gear Solid was damaged? News to me! They've always been great games!

[dorron]

Great game, but there are two things I didn't like:

1.- All bosses are robots. They have no soul. Where are the bosses with a background story, like psychomantis?

2.- Missions: I know short missions are great for an on the go portable gaming, but I prefer one single mission/story gameplay like MGS3.

All in all, amazing game!

A shame it was included in Vita version of MGS HD.

[Aggesan]

A shame indeed. I hope they will make a HD version of it and sell on SEN. I'm tempted to buy the psp-version, but the low-res graphics and non analogue camera controll kind of ruins it for me.

[Slugg3r]

And it is locked 20 fps, while HD collection runs at steady 60fps.

[Knushwood Butt]

That framerate is generally good, but it goes out of the window in some of the fireball spitting Monster Hunter battles..

[sly-Famous]

How can MGS4 be the end of Snake? Snake is MGS.

[Nate-Dog]

In MGS2 you play the vast majority of the game as Raiden, in MGS3 you spend the whole game playing as Big Boss, and in Portable Ops, Peace Walker, and most likely whatever the next MGS game is (going on the art "propaganda" that KP released about it). If Snake is MGS then all of the above games meant nothing I presume?

[sly-Famous]

Dont be silly, you know what I mean.

[dorron]

Big Boss is Snake too. In fact, Naked Snake.

[Nate-Dog]

@Sly-Famous: No I don't know what you mean. There have only been 2 games in the MGS series with Solid Snake as the main character and only 3 with him playable in any form, and the Snake of MGS4 was nothing like the Snake of MGS1 or MGS2 (but that's besides the point). The "Solid" in Metal Gear Solid doesn't stand for Solid Snake, ya know.

[Spore_777]

Sons of The Patriots?

[MWH]

he must've meant Guns of the Patriots.

[kent80082007]

I wasn't aware that Metal Gear's reputation needs salvaging, talking about salvage I'd say RE revelation salvaged RE's reputation, but then they blew it all up again in RE6