Co-Op Preview: Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
On the 20th of March Matthew Carron and Lloyd Dew of One Last Continue Team UK had the opportunity to go to London and get their hands on the much anticipated title Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker for PlayStation Portable. Whilst they were able to enjoy what was essentially a near-final build of the code, they decided to spend more time playing the much touted co-op mode than the single player.
If you want to read more of an overview on Peace Walker then you can read what Joe Gwilliams discussed with Konami’s representative Steve Merrett at this link. Our single player thoughts can be found here. Be warned that there may be some potential spoilers within this preview.
On April 20th we were part of the OneLastContinue Team UK *breathe* contingent who attended the Konami press event in London and boy did we have a blast. As mentioned above, we spent most of our time playing the co-operative mode, which was only available after playing through the prologue that set up the story of Peace Walker. Our thoughts are as follows.
The much touted co-op portion of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker only kicks in once you have reached the “Mother Base” of Miliitaires Sans Frontiers, an off-shore converted production facility from which your organisation operates against the invading forces threatening Costa Rica. It’s here on the Mother Base that you are able to research and develop new items, weapons, view your current staff roster, form teams and select either single or multiplayer mission types.
Co-op, as the name suggests, is where you will go in order to undertake missions with up to three fellow Snakes; or if, you’d rather get competitive, you can go against them in versus modes, such as ‘Capture the Bird’, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Base Mission (think Headquarters from Modern Warfare 2). We only managed to dabble in the competitive modes, but from what we experienced there certainly seems to be more depth here in this triple A title than any other PSP release thus far. The technology which Kojima Productions have integrated into their proprietary engine utilizes a powerful method by which you connect to other players, Ad-Hoc party connection. Ad-Hoc allows one player to host a local multiplayer session using the wireless LAN, and selecting one of the available channels (channels are designated from 1-20) and the other players connect to that channel in order to join your game. The only problem we had was getting our Ad-hoc games to connect to one other – but as this wasn’t release code, it’s likely that this is a pre-release issue which will have been ironed out long before release. Not unlike the Metal Gear Online aspect to MGS4, this mode does actually bring a whole new aspect to the game – one which is reflected in the title of the game. No longer considered to be just a single player series, Kojima Productions have obviously developed Peace Walker to be a title enjoyed by multiple players; in order to mark this they have awarded the title a wider-encompassing designation, Tactical Espionage Operations.
Having played several co-op missions locally with a Konami rep (as well as someone from another outlet who needed some friends), the first thing which struck us was how solidly (no pun intended) the missions fit into the core-structure of Peace Walker. That’s not to say you can’t enjoy Peace Walker as a solo effort – you can, but as as it is commonly said, “strength comes in numbers.” This is especially strange and somewhat contradictory, considering the difficulty does not scale properly or fairly: When the maximum amount of players are in a squad, boss battles and otherwise-tricky situations become somewhat less of a challenge. While this preview version was considered ‘near final’, there is still over a month before the title leaves Japan and launches in the West – until the final review code lands here at OneLastContinue, the difficulty is something we’ll merely file under ‘wait-and-see’ before we make final judgements.
After some story elements and cutscenes (which we will not spoil), the four of us spawned next to each other within the game, starting the mission. The addition of other players means new tactics are available to the Snakes’: as one player distracts enemies by knocking on walls, another can run up behind them and knock them out. A smart move at this point is to make use of the Fulton Recovery System, as this boosts your team back on Mother Base (you can read about this in detail in Shaun McIlroy’s upcoming look at the single player mode of Peace Walker). We must say, however, that we found it’s most definitely more fun to play with friends instead of going at it alone. Whilst it can make for some emotionally heated moments (such as when Lloyd found himself berated for not being a team player), it can be quite emotionally rewarding as well. One thing that definitely rocks about the co-op mode in Peace Walker are shared spoils: as you complete missions with the aid of colleagues or friends, you’ll share the rewards of said mission. Experience, weapons technology research and captured soldiers. Why is this so great, you ask? Well, imagine there was one soldier you both wanted to grab from the swag pool available; instead of arguing who gets the soldier – you both do, thus rewarding you both!
Another pretty neat feature we found waiting for us was the Snake-In/Snake-Out system. Basically, a “high-five” icon pops up, and unfortunately, while we didn’t see any of the expected hand-slapping action on screen, it did allow us to create an “on-the-fly” tag team of sorts. One Snake becomes designated leader, with others connecting to his rear like carriages on a train, each aiming and attacking enemies independently, yet cohesively. In execution, it works a heck of a lot better than it sounds, with the health meter of the “Snake Train” being expanded dependent on how many are in your party. It’s also a lot easier to move stealth-wise when trying to get through certain doorways or past patrols without being spotted.
Each player is surrounded by an orange ring and if two players’ rings intersect (don’t…), you’re then able to share weapons and items with one another. This is a very useful mechanic, as an ammo-sapped player can take/steal ammo from a fallen buddy. After the action subsides and the gun-fight is over, the first player can then go ahead and revive the downed teammate before both go buggering onwards towards the goal. In order to move on to the next area both players need to be close to each other, which only ever becomes a problem if your team are spread out across the map while scattered in alert mode – such a scenario almost always will end in pain.
Playing through several areas and quite a number of missions it’s fairly safe to say that the bosses have been designed with multiple players in mind. Additionally, they’re also designed to be taken down in a number of ways, most which involve teamwork and co-ordination. It’s something that can only be fully expressed via experiencing it first hand; while it took us a few tries to get certain things right, we certainly agree that the mechanics are so tightly bound together that we can’t imagine you’ll ever find a negative thing to say about the co-operative experience.
We left London with the distinct feeling that Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker will be a very impressive and solid game. We enjoyed that we were able to experiment with vastly different tactics and routes, trying to get though the level most efficiently. Getting the Snakes into the “love box” and sneaking around was not only extremely entertaining, but also quite effective when infiltrating. Neither of us wanted to put the game down, but unfortunately we had to: now have to wait just a little longer to to play what we feel will be the biggest and most rewarding game on the PlayStation Portable.
