Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker/YMMV


  • Best Level Ever: Or more like, Best Minigame-slash-Cutscene Ever. How awesome is it that you get to chase a running away Metal Gear on a horse while dodging missiles and trees thrown at you!? A freaking lot, that's how awesome!
  • Best Boss Ever: The final battle with Peace Walker. Intense is the only word to describe it.
  • Broken Base: Fans are divided as to whether Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops was made non-canon due to Peace Walker or not, due to a relative lack of references in it as well as Kojima's choice of words when revealing its development. However, it should be noted that Konami's website (as well as one still from one of Kojima's talks on the game) showed a timeline where Peace Walker and Portable Ops were both on it, indicating that at least officially, PO is canon. In addition, fans were also similarly divided in regards to whether Kazuhira Miller was still working with Cipher by the end of Peace Walker or whether he quit working with Cipher after Paz attempted to launch a nuke at the East Coast under what is implied to be their orders, although the ending and the call itself suggests the latter belief is true.
  • Contested Sequel: Many Metal Gear fans who do not own the PlayStation Portable and/or care for the system's controls consider Peace Walker an unworthy sequel, much like Portable Ops before it. Naturally, this is debated.
  • Crazy Awesome: Oh, so many moments. Everything from getting Paz to sleep with you to holding people up with bananas, there's a Crazy Awesome moment for everyone!
    • Then you can beat up angry dinosaurs with World War Two/Cold War guns.
    • And THEN you and your buddy can hop into a cardboard box tank and start running around shooting up enemies with the cardboard cannon.
    • And on top of that, you can hurl ALLIES at tanks with the human slingshot, destroying the target in a peace symbol firecracker storm.
  • Creator Worship: This. And it will never get out of your brain. Thank you,Tomokazu Sugita.
    • Literally in the case of a voice recording from Cecil, wherein Kaz takes the Japanese pronunciation of her name as "Kojima is God" and gets a bit wacky over it.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: See here.
  • Disappointing Last Level: Chapter 5.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: When Snake has to take the snuff from Strangelove, the pose he does to her while taking it from her hand makes it seem as though he's giving her hand the royal kiss (that practice in various monarchies where the subjects sometimes have to kiss the monarch's hand).
  • Flanderization: The whole thing about comparing Costa Rica with Japan can be very jarring for Costa Ricans, (and Latin Americans alike) since the real reasons why Costa Rica doesn't have an army contrast with the reasons why Japan doesn't have one either.[1]
  • Game Breaker: The Stealth Camo, the Infinity Bandana, and the Soliton Radar (which, ironically enough, was part of normal gameplay as early as Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake). If it's any condolence, usage of the Stealth Camo won't allow you to S-rank missions, the Soliton Radar isn't useful until Rank Five, and the Infinity Bandana is acquired after a very HARD Custom AI fight. If that wasn't enough, they also require a very LONG time to develop, too.
    • In Outer Ops, the Kampfpistol (a Nazi flare gun modified into a grenade launcher here) does 5000 damage to everything. Vehicles and enemy soldiers included, one-shot killing them (if not dropping their health to near-dead).
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: Remember that little music video where Paz sings her theme song on top of Mother Base? It's the exact same area where you fight and (presumably) kill her... with the song as the background music.
    • Speaking of videos, the Tactical Espionage Operations trailer has Kazuhira Miller explaining to Big Boss about their potential future role in the economy, as well as Big Boss explaining that they probably shouldn't have gotten involved in the first place because people are going to get rid of him. It becomes a heck of a lot more harsh after beating the game, as this was actually part of the second ending, a few hours after defeating Paz, where Miller ends up admitting to his involvement in Cipher's scheme.
    • Also, Kazuhira Miller's english voice actor is british-born Robin Atkin Downes, which is ironic when you take into account of the fact that about 31 years later, British-raised Liquid Snake does pose as Master Miller.
  • Goddamn Bats: Kidnappers, tiny flying robots that can shoot machine guns at you or, if close enough, latch onto your leg with a grippy claw on a cable. They're never a serious threat head-on, but they're just distracting enough that they make facing tougher opponents much more dangerous, because while you're hanging in the air trying to get down, everyone else is shooting you. They get extremely annoying during the infiltration of the Missile Base - chaffing or shooting down one causes a caution mode. And they're placed in areas where you can't really hide unless you've got a box... and even then, it's a wait. They're also much more mobile than previous UAVs in the series.
    • Armored Peace Sentinel soldiers during custom vehicle battles. On their own, with just machine guns or assault rifles? Fine. But at higher difficulties? They start blowing you away with rapid succession rocket fire, practically playing hackey-sack with Snake's body using explosions.
    • The damn Velociprey in most of the Monster Hunter missions. Not allowing you to reload? Getting in your way of firing potshots at the bosses? Leaping on you at the most inopportune times, knocking you down just as the boss is about to do something stupid? Just being an annoying part of the bosses? At least they let you cook up your rations. The funny thing is, they're faithful to their roles in Monster Hunter - being annoying pricks.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Revolver Ocelot was fully complacent in the Patriots S3 plan and was implied to be involved in the threat towards Olga's child's life if Olga didn't cooperate. In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Ocelot himself was later revealed to have been under Sunny's position when The Boss and The Sorrow had their final battle at Dolinovodno.
    • Also, if a Militaires Sans Frontieres soldier wears Miller's outfit and calls Miller, Miller will sometimes tell the soldier "Just don't go around causing any trouble while dressed up like [Miller]." Considering what happened in Metal Gear Solid, where the main villain did in fact not only go around and cause trouble while dressed up like Miller, but also arranged for Miller to be killed...
  • Ho Yay: Kojima strikes again. Just listen to Paz 8th diary entry
  • I Knew It!: "So wait, at the "endgame" the question of the discrepancy between Cecile and Paz stories concerning their capture by the CIA and the origin of the tape Vlad used to assure Big Boss's involvement still hasn't been answered? One of them isn't telling the truth... now which one is the least likely to be a traitor...?"
  • Memetic Molestee - Paz's diary reveals Strangelove groped her under the guise of applying suntan. (Strangelove nearly fainted.) Then she gets a cold, and then Kaz tries to serenade her, and then exclaims that suppositories are good for colds... and then takes off his pants. And after that, Strangelove comes by with an "Indian remedy" that you rub on your chest.
  • Moe Moe - Paz, the cutest girl in the franchise since Emma Emmerich. I'm Taking Her Home with Me!!
  • Moral Event Horizon: Interestingly subjective: Many might dispute when or indeed if Naked Snake has crossed this in the prequel continuity so far. However, Peace Walker does reveal the first time Big Boss starts using Child Soldiers (well, one anyways), which would pave the way to the children hanging around Zanzibarland in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.
    • Unambiguous with Hot Coldman. His very first on-screen appearance has him going beyond the Moral Event Horizon by shoving a paraplegic down the stairs, and he only gets worse from there.
  • Narm: Keep hitting CODEC while facing off against Peace Walker and you'll hear a very panicked Huey lament 'Oh God! We're all doooooomed!'.
    • Also, when a soldier falls unconscious due to being choked, he reaches out in a dramatic fashion before falling unconscious while giving a dramatic gasp.
    • Also, one of the game over lines as Cécile saying "Here. I'll do the Quetzal for you." and do generic bird sounds. Made funnier when the subtitles says "Kyoooh Kyoooh".
  • Player Punch: In a cruel twist, The Boss's horse must be euthanised by the player while also shooting The Boss again in a flashback, one right after the other.
    • Also, how you destroy the Mammal Pod. Basically you go inside her and pull out all the AI memory boards, listening to a progressively deteriorating voice of The Boss. To put this in human terms, you're going inside her brain and ripping chunks out of it until she's compleatly lobotomized. Yeesh...
  • Paranoia Fuel: In Paz/Pacifica Ocean's 10th audio diary, she mentions that there is a second Cipher agent undercover in Mother Base. She doesn't say who, and she also hints that even she doesn't even know who the second Cipher agent is. Happy guessing, fellow tropers!
    • It's hinted to be Miller in the aftermath of the Paz battle, and then confirmed in the final unlockable data file "The Phone Call". However, the accuracy of the term "agent" is debatable as he makes it clear in the call that he has no intention of actually siding with Cipher as much as simply work with them as a "business partner" with the intention of expanding MSF as long as they don't try to do anything that risks MSF's existence, something he also hinted to Snake in the ending.
  • Recycled Premise: The main character is called out allegedly to save a location from invading forces/a terrorist group, only for it to become apparent that there were ulterior motives from the people who sent the main character, to recreate a legendary hero to further control the populace, only for that to be revealed to actually be a front for a far more sinister objective involving human control, and the mole working for the hero also says "I'm taking it back!" and some variation of returning it to the mole's true employers when hijacking a Metal Gear? Oh, and the main villain for most of the plot up to a certain point also had a direct hand in manipulating one of the previous events in the series? Sounds a heck of a lot like Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty's plot.
  • Scrappy Level: The torture chamber escape. In a throwback to Solid Snake's escape from prison in the original Metal Gear Solid, there's more than one way to escape, but the game doesn't flat-out tell you what they are, instead just expecting you to look around the room for unusual prompts, which irritates some players, and once out, you're practically naked (and literally naked, too, at least from the waist up). Having to button-mash very quickly for the first time since Metal Gear Solid, with no way to opt out, doesn't help matters.
  • So Cool Its Awesome: Many Metal Gear fans who own the PSP believe that Peace Walker rivals Snake Eater as the best Metal Gear Solid game ever made. For a game that belongs to a franchise full of awesomeness, that's saying something. Hell, IGN even stated that this is the biggest game in the franchise, ironically (at first) available only on Sony's smallest system.
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: This game is more or less a direct sequel to Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, and has the same basic idea of building a small army by capturing and indoctrinating enemy soldiers. However, Peace Walker builds on virtually every aspect of the game and pretty much blows Portable Ops out of the water.
  • What Do You Mean It's for Kids?: For a game geared towards younger audiences, it seems to get away with several things that were not meant for the age group, such as some very suggestive briefing tapes, a mention on Miller mooning the other MSF soldiers while drunk at what was implied to be a wild party, various references to the drug trade, a lot of smoking (explicitly shown as well as implied), and the fact that there are two dating missions where the ending of the mission implies that the two are having sex, either from a heterosexual (albeit allegedly pedophilic) manner (Paz Oretega Andrade) or of a Homosexual manner (Kazuhira Miller).
  • Woolseyism: During the Date Kaz mission, if the player interrogates Kaz, he'll say "No skeletons in my...closet." Originally, it was closer to "I'm not hiding anything!"
    • Likewise, the changes for the various promotional product placement items in the game were rife with Woolseyisms: For instance, the magazines, which were originally referencing stuff like Dengeki Playstation, Dengeki Gaming Blitz, Weekly Shonen, and Weekly Famitsu, were changed. What they were changed to also resembled some magazines that probably would have been a bit more fitting for some things the military would want, as well as political stuff, and in addition also briefly referenced Les Enfants Terribles children (Solid, Liquid, and Solidus). In addition, the various Curry items were originally Bon Curry, Bon Curry Neo, and Bon Curry Gold 21. However, they changed it to Spicy Curry, Future Curry, and Great Curry, respectively, and they also redid the item description to give a history on what Curry is, and even stated that it was Kazuhira Miller's favorite food. With Pepsi Nex, they also altered the design so it acted as a reference to Narc Soda, the soft drink that Drebin often drank from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Likewise, all of the items were also given some unique brand names (Tres Bien for the Men's Cologne, and Taco Chips for the Tortilla Chips).
  1. ↑ It's has something to do with the Latin American tradition of having the Army letting to do what they want, and being a social caste by themselves. The Costa Ricans are Genre Savvy enough to avoid that, and Costa Rica (along with Mexico, in less degree) are the only Latin American countries which the army are not a social caste different from the rest of society (In the Costa Rican case, they decided to eliminate the whole armed forces, just to avoid another coup d'etat like almost everyone else in that era.)
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