I found a really good review that summed up all my feeling between Portable Ops and Peace Walker. Unfortunately this review is in Spanish, so I will have to re-do the review myself.
First I'll start by spoiling everything and giving my personal opinion: I consider Portable Ops a real, true to the series Metal Gear, while I consider Peace Walker blasphemy and should not be called "Metal Gear" at all.
Now you have everything summarised, if you still want to know why I feel like this, then keep reading.
Story:
What defines a good Metal Gear is a good story. An MG game should at all costs try to give you a good, enjoyable story. It is basically a canon created with the very first Metal Gear that came out, and was consolidated by Metal Gear Solid for the PS1. Portable Ops' story takes off from where MGS3 left it, I will not go in details cause I don't want to spoil everything, but lets say that PO's story feels like MG, while it's not a big thing, it still explains stuff that mgs3 didn't, and with occasional twists and turns here and there, charismatic characters that remind you of Liquid and the rest of the MGS crew, true to the canon, amongst other things, the story itself makes PO a real Metal Gear.
The same cannot be said for PW I'm afraid. The story is generic, the villain looks like out of a random comic book (he's just a guy who wants to fire a nuclear weapon to prove a point that doesn't even needs proving), the characters are nothing new (as a matter of fact, most of them are just copy-paste of other Metal Gears, like Huey, Zeke or Pupa), you never get to fight and beat the *** out of the main villain (one thing that always kept me going in a metal gear game was my anxiety for kicking the main villain's ***, something I could always do, until PW came a ruined all). The story is not only boring and lame, it basically *** on MGS3's ending nad retcons the heck out of every other Metal Gear game (Chrysalis alone makes Rex look like a gummy bear, TX-55 no longer looks like a threat, it looks like a joke compared to Zeke).
Graphics:
Compared to graphics both games are equally good IMO, they both take the psp system to its limit.
Controls:
Lots and lots of people complain about the crappy controls in PO, but I always say this: it's not PO's fault, but rather Sony's fault for not giving the PSP a second joystick. To prove my point I installed PO on the vita and mapped the right analog stick to the camera buttons, and as I thought, the controls became a lot better, it reminded me of MGS3, actually, PO plays just like MGS3.
Replay value:
This is something a lot of people take in favour of PW. We all know the huge amounts of extra missions, the problem is they start becoming repetitive after the 100th vehicle battle, and once you have beaten all of them then there is nothing more to do, which is what happened to me. On the other hand, PO's story itself is so good that every once in a while I replay the game just for it, and PO+, which is available really cheap, can give you an infinite amounts of random missions, which, by being random, will always appeal to me cause I never know what's going to show up next.
Pokemon vs Football Manager:
Yeah you read right. This point is to allude at how PO and PW soldier management system works. For PO you have to do the tedious job of grabbing the soldier back to the truck and manage them in a pokemon style, PW on the other hand allows you to use the Fulton recovery to grab soldiers easily and the management system is similar to a Football Manager game. In PO recruiting soldiers have the meaning of using in them in battle in various ways, you can use them because they are good at a certain weapon or because they blend with the rest of the enemies. In PW on the other hand the soldiers loose their necessity and become nothing more than pure figurines to make your Mother Base full of people you will never use, or barely use.
Now, let me hear your thoughts (oh and please avoid replying if you have not played, beaten and watched every cutscene in both Portable Ops and Peace Walker)
Part 2
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