Review by: Tom Chick

The Metal Gear Solid games have taken some bold turns. A couple of their boldest are on the PSP. Metal Gear Acid was – you'll never believe this – a mix of turn-based strategy and a collectible card game. And now Peace Walker is a bunch of stealth missions linked together by a finicky base management game. It's a bit like X-Com, or maybe those sports management games, or perhaps Disgaea, but also unlike any of those.

The basic idea is that you play a stealth mission and instead of simply murdering guards who are going about their canned patrol routes, you can kidnap them. With balloons. I realize that sounds ridiculous, but you if you saw The Dark Knight, it might sound ever-so-slightly less ridiculous. Then, when you get back to base, you assign the balloon-abducted guards to various jobs, which are mostly in the service of unlocking cool new toys and weapons for your later stealth missions, where you'll use more balloons to kidnap more guards.

The description might make it sound small, and even repetitive. This is, after all, a PSP game, so how big can it be? But someone forgot to tell the developers, who instead made a game that could easily sprawl across a next-gen console system. The mission variety, the optional activities, the spread of gadgets and weapons, and the epic storyline are all the stuff of a console system that wouldn't fit into your pocket. You can even install about a gigabyte's worth of data onto a memory card, most of it recorded dialogue. I finished the storyline after thirty hours and have since logged another ten hours just leveling up my staff and unlocking more gear. And I am nowhere near done with it. This has to be one of the biggest handheld games this side of a bloated JRPG.

The stealth missions are typical Metal Gear Solid. They're familiar, mostly easy to manage, and they transition fluidly to "Oh no, I've been seen and I must shoot everyone!" bloodbaths. At which point, the alarm level resets and the guards return to their blissfully oblivious states. It's all very stylized, which is a kind way to say it's completely unrealistic in the service of gameplay. There are plenty of missions that dispense entirely with the sneaking, including some boss battles.

When it comes to doling out the bullets, the controls work as well as can be expected, which is to say you'll be fine if you played the Syphon Filter or SOCOM games on the PSP. Everyone else will eventually adjust, with the option to use an autoaim function that serves as training wheels. In terms of shooters, this is pretty much as good as the PSP is going to get.

But the real charm of Peace Walker is the way the base management and missions feed into each other. There's an easy back-and-forth with the missions serving as both resources and a game clock. The missions are resources because you'll definitely play some missions just to "farm" the guards as new personnel. You'll eventually "farm" vehicles and parts as well. The missions are a game clock in the sense that each mission marks the passing of a turn. Sometimes you'll play an easy side mission just to mark a little time while you research a better gun before tackling one of the harder story-based missions.