With so much non stealth additions & removal of some stealth, the game fails to live up to franchise expectations.
Before MGS3, Snake's arsenal was limited to mostly the staple weapons the series had been known for. Nikita Missiles, Fa-mas, Handgun, Grenades, etc. MGS3 introduced a whole new arsenal of guns to play with which added a lot more styles of game play to the series. This I liked, but it came with a horrible consequence. You're playing a game where the primary focus of the game is to be stealthy and yet you are given shotguns, machine guns, etc. I never liked having to choose between stealth and Rambo game play because the true enjoyment of the series had always been being stealthy and there were rarely any rewards for shooting everything up. Ironically by MGS4, there were so many non-stealthy guns to choose from, it was actually easier not to be stealthy. Well Peace Walker suffers from this horribly and the main offender is the MK tranq gun.
I always seem to have ammo for that thing and it's super easy just to tranq everything. Peace Walker also has an ironic twist. To get weapon upgrades you need men, but to get men you need to make nonlethal kills. Since the tranq gun is really easy to use, I end up going through virtually every mission and tranqing everything in sight. It's amazing how easy the game is when the game doesn't punish you for taking down enemies as long as they aren't killed. And the worst part is that I never actually get to use the weapons I'm making because I'm so busy grinding for more men.
I believe that if a player has go out of their way not to use features of the game in order to make it harder and more interesting, than the game has a serious problem. And what I mean by that is to avoid using all weapons in the game except for your fists, stun rod, empty clips, and smoke grenades just to make the game stealthy again. Since it seems a large portion of the game is using nonstealthy weapons and collecting men for R&D to build more weapons, I might as well use them.
Because of the direction the series has gone, the games have lost their charm. They are no longer fun because I'm no longer sneaking around. I almost wish they went the opposite direction with the series where it placed more emphasis on stealth and less on actually shooting. Or if it really wanted to go the route of giving you an arsenal of different firearms, the enemies should have been more lethal and more plentiful to compensate.
Worse yet, the game adds no new stealth elements. In fact it removes elements that MGS4 introduced and even removes basic stealth mechanics from the original PSX MGS. For example you can no longer crawl underneath things or move when laying on the ground. You can also no longer move when you're leaning against the wall. As a result, I almost never lean against walls or lay on the ground since knocking on walls is pointless since I can easily tranq everybody or throw an empty clip and there isn't really an advantage to laying on the ground since there are so few enemies in the levels you rarely come across situations where you need to be that stealthy in the first place.
I feel like the only way to play Peace Walker is to run and gun and the run and gun aspect really isn't that fun. If I want to run and gun, there is call of duty for that. I play MGS for stealth and at one time for the story before I realized that Kojima likes to recycle the same themes over and over again. Am I the only one that thinks it's lame that Otacon's father coincidently worked on the original Metal Gear or that coincidently Big Boss knew both Master Miller and Colonel Campbell and yet neither Miller or the Colonel ever question the fact that Solid Snake looks exactly like Big Boss? It's like Kojima has turned into George Lucas and is systematically finding every excuse to destroy the series as much as possible.
I would have preferred fewer weapons, very limited ammo, more enemies, more stealth options, and more dynamics for the CQC system. The worst part is that most people appear to enjoy this game. With all of the bad gameplay decisions, horrible PSP controls, and repetitive staling story I'm going to have to look elsewhere to get my stealth.