3/5 ★ – WoahItsFlug's review of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.

Peacewalker is a fantastic follow-up to Snake Eater in the story department and its stylized cutscenes and incredible soundtrack give it some of the best presentation in the series so far, but it's severely held back by it's stiff, awkward controls, downgraded stealth mechanics and bad boss battles. I wanted to like Peacewalker a lot more than I did. I loved its animated cutscenes, grew attatched to the new characters introduced, and I thought it gave Snake some great character development in dealing with his grief over the loss of Boss in MGS3 and starting down the path that would lead him to becoming an antagonist in the original games. However, whenever it was time to actually play the game I was not having much fun. At its best, Peacewalker was a stripped down, overly linear recreation of what made MGS2 and 3 so great. At is worst, it was nearly unplayable due to the janky controls, low framerate and unfair boss design. It always felt like I was fighting the controls rather than any of the enemies. The stealth wasn't satisfying either. More often than not it was easier to just run through and kill all of the enemies than to try to work around the bad AI and crowded environments. Sadly, the interesting motherbase expansion and weapon development mechanics weren't enough to keep me invested. I could write an essay about why Peacewalker's story and characters are so amazing, but I'd rather just watch a playthrough on youtube than actually fight my way through this slog again. (P.S. Listen to Heavens Divide, one of the best VGM tracks of all time!)