Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker Hands-on
Take on the role of Big Boss once again in this portable MGS game for the PSP.
Konami recently gave us a chance to not only sit down and play the next Metal Gear Solid game (called Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker) for the PSP, but it also took some time to explain some of the new controls adapted for the game, as well as some of the story elements and the general setup. The first thing we see upon starting the demo is the mission selector screen, which, as you might suspect, lets you select missions that you've already completed. "As you know, up until now, Metal Gear has been a sequential game, you play the game from beginning to end," said a Konami representative. "And you can do that in Peace Walker. It has a very good story, and you can play it from beginning to end. But now you can go back and replay missions that you've beaten."
Of course, you might be wondering why you'd want to go back to play these missions--the answer is they change depending on how you progress through the game. Much like the Metroid and recent Castlevania games, Peace Walker's missions feature some areas that are only accessible by attaining certain skills later in the game, so while you might not be able to access these areas on an initial play-through, you can revisit them later with Big Boss' new abilities. Additionally, some other things change as well, such as enemy placement, so it seems like Kojima Productions is trying to give some extra incentive for playing through these missions.
After an explanation of the mission selector, we jump around to some of the other menus, including co-ops (which shows game lobbies for co-op games that are available), as well as the pre-mission launch screen where we see options for equipment and key configurations. There are actually two settings under the key configuration called shooter and action: Shooter is the setting we use because it's a similar to the control scheme found in Metal Gear Solid 4.
We then launch into the first mission, which starts with a cutscene of Snake (who is now Big Boss) riding to a beach area on his motorcycle. He gets off his bike and walks by a sign that indicates this is a training area for members of his mercenary unit called Militaires sans Frontieres. Here are a few story items worthy of note from this cutscene: The date is 1974 and the location is Colombia. The date is especially interesting because the Les Enfants Terribles project that spawns Solid, Liquid, and Solidus Snake supposedly started in the early '70s. This might also explain why we see that Big Boss has a massive scar on his chest (not entirely unlike the original Boss' massive scar) as he walks to the beachfront without his shirt.
Anyway (back to the game), this beach area is where we learn some of the basic mechanics in Peace Walker. The first feature explained is the camera system, which is completely mapped to the PSP's face buttons. You can change whether or not these controls are inverted, but for the purposes of this demo, triangle points the camera up, X pans down, circle pans right, and square pans left. We also learn that the up key on the PSP's D pad is used as the primary action button and the down key makes Big Boss crouch. Actually, like previous MGS games, Snake has three readiness states--the usual walking and running, low-detection crouch walking, and then the prone position. But the big difference here is that Big Boss can't move while in prone position, so you can't crawl around on the ground as you would in a normal Metal Gear game, and you can't shoot either. The analog stick is what controls Big Boss' movements, and using it in combination with different buttons produces various results. For example, pressing the analog stick in a certain direction along with a tap of the right shoulder buttons lets you perform a roll move.
As the training continues with some of Big Boss' subordinates on the beach, we see more of what he can do. Of course, he still has his standard punch, punch, kick move, which you can execute by simply pressing the right shoulder button three times in succession. We then learn to use weapons by taking a stun rod, readying it by pressing and holding down the left trigger. We then swing it by pressing the right shoulder button. Finally, we move onto some close-quarters combat. Peace Walker's version of CQC functions just about the same way it does in Metal Gear Solid 4--you press and hold the right shoulder button to take hold of an enemy and then decide what you want to do to him from there. In this tutorial, we're told to throw the soldier in any direction by pressing a direction on the analog stick. We're then told to do the same thing again, only to throw the soldier into another soldier. In either case, a CQC icon shows us on the screen, indicating when you can perform these moves.
This icon is actually important for another aspect of CQC that lets you perform continuous CQC moves when surrounded by multiple enemies. When you perform your first CQC throw, that icon pops up again to tell you that you need to press the button again to perform another CQC move on the next soldier without breaking the sequence. While it takes a few seconds to get used to the timing, it quickly becomes easy to execute these continuous CQC attacks.
We've thoroughly finished beating the snot out of the soldiers on the beach (essentially completing the tutorial), so we move onto some of the story elements in the game, specifically an early cutscene with drawings from famous Metal Gear artist, Ashley Wood. It's here that we get a glimpse of some of the characters in the game, including Master Miller or as he is known in the Japanese version of the game, Kazuhira Miller (who sort of made an appearance in Metal Gear Solid, but it was a ruse setup by Liquid Snake). We also find out through this cutscene that Snake hates being called Big Boss and that his soldiers also like to refer to him as Victory Boss or Vic Boss.
We also see a girl in red and a man named Ramon Galvez Mena join Big Boss and Miller around a table. Galvez tells Snake and Miller that about a year ago, an unknown military group has been operating near the border of Costa Rica--one of the few countries without an official standing military. Big Boss suggests that it might just be rebels or perhaps even the CIA (because of how well equipped it is) but Galvez says they're operating in Costa Rica as a security force. Miller, being the businessman of Militaires sans Frontieres, thinks it's a good idea, but Big Boss doesn't want to take just any mission nor does he want to feel like he's selling out.
As the scene progresses, we learn the name of the girl in red--Paz Ortega Andrade. Interestingly, Paz and Miller have something in common--both of their first names mean peace, which is something that will surely be pointed to over and over again throughout Peace Walker. We're told that you can move the camera around in these cutscenes and that some portions are even more interactive. During a specific part where we find out Paz's age (16) and the fact that she had been captured and tortured by this group operating in Costa Rica, you can press a button to examine the scars produced from her captivity. She then pleads with Big Boss to take the mission, as does Galvez who happens to do something quite curious: He calls Snake Big Boss, which is something that no one outside his mercenary organization seems to know.
Related Game
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
- Publisher:
- Konami
- Category:
- Modern Action Adventure
- Release:
- TBA 2010
- ESRB:
- Mature
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