A Week In Comments

These escalating payments would, however, come with mailings, emails or messages that the subscription cost would soon end and, indeed, be fully refunded, once the game was won.

However, players who try to terminate their subscriptions would be deluged with messages, either questioning their determination, skill or even sexual identity and/or of dire warnings of what might occur should the subscription payments not be paid. Indeed, it will be darkly put-about by the vendors that should players drop their subscriptions, then their playing experience in *other, unrelated games* will be diminished.

Despite these rising costs—and the promise of eventual refund once the game was won—the playing experience would over time get gradually worse. There would be DLC of sort—which will be downloaded and installed without the player’s knowledge and with or without his agreement—and it will consist not of new areas to explore, but instead of changes to the game’s fundamental experience, making play increasingly complicated. Victory conditions would be abruptly and repeatedly changed and then made entirely unachievable (i.e. find items that are not there, kill enemies who are not in any way differentiated from NPCs, etc). Prior rankings would be reordered without notice or explanation.

Yeah you. The one that chose to boot me from an invasion match last night because I accidentally killed you. Yeah I killed you, but I did so in a match we were winning, with no prior team kills, and you died because you ran to try to sword melee three bad guys that were trying to grab our power core. So imagine my surprise and chagrin when either my grenades or rockets took not only you, but two enemies out.

Look, I didn’t mean, or want to kill you. That should have been blatantly obvious. I was provide heavy explosive fire to a hotly contested point that was full of baddies.

I could understand if I had done that to you even twice before in the match. Or if I was running around causing our team to lose by sticking teammates with grenades repeatedly. But I wasn’t. I was in the top half of the leaderboard on a team that was winning the match handily. I had well over 25 kills so far, and we were literally 30 seconds away from capping off a great win as a team.

But then you chose to boot me.

You, sir, are the definition of douchebag, and I hope your mom grounds you from your XBox for not finishing your remedial long division homework.

When it takes me longer to defeat the final form of Xehanort in Kingdom Hearts than it does to beat Peace Walker, I see no reason to suggest not buying Peace Walker if you plan on playing on your own. When we champion the “difficulty” of Demon’s Souls even though it’s more a case of the devs deliberately setting you up for failure constantly, I see no reason to mark down Peace Walker for being challenging.

Challenging – that’s the best way to describe Peace Walker. It’s not a difficult game, it’s a challeging game. If you go into a mission with the wrong gear, you might find yourself having to do that mission more than once. Go in equipped with the right stuff and that bastard of a mission is a cakewalk.

Maybe it’s because I’ve spent more time with my PSP than you may have, perhaps it’s because I was already used to the controls from Portable Ops but I can’t agree with your conclusion that it’s overly difficult and shouldn’t be bought if you plan on playing alone.

It’s a great game with a great story and style. In a sea of games that require no challenge to complete, Peace Walker provides enough difficulty to be a fresh breath of air without becoming frustratingly hard that you’ll give up on it.

Buy it – If you own a PSP.

Don’t buy it – If you want to miss out on arguably the best Metal Gear game.