So, has Metal Gear Solid become a franchise that Konami is trying to pimp out, solely to generate revenue? No, we don’t think so. Peace Walker is a direct follow-up to the superlative MGS3: Snake Eater, filling in the gaps of Big Boss’s transition from David Hayter-voiced powerhouse into Sean Connery-esque supervillain. Since many of the game’s staff worked on Guns Of The Patriots, it’s clear that Kojima Productions is taking it very seriously.

Peace Walker is a PSP title that takes place in 1974, as Big Boss and the crew he conceptualised in Portable Ops move in to Costa Rica, to cement the foundations of the soldier’s country Outer Heaven. According to the debut trailer, it seems as though Cold War mutually assured destruction is no longer enough to deter military action in Central America, so Big Boss and company go in to sort it out. Features promised by Konami include a ‘new game system’, thus we’re assuming many of MGS’s dusty mechanics will be revised in Peace Walker. Like Portable Ops, the appearance of multiple Snakes in the game’s debut footage implies that this’ll either be a team-based strategic stealth title, or something multiplayer focused.

 Team stealth is a conceptually flawed idea (more people, greater chance of being seen), but Peace Walker depicts two Snakes sharing a cardboard box for cover; even if this doesn’t work, the fanboy within any Metal Gear fan will appreciate the image of two gruff, fiercely masculine Snakes running in tandem under a box. This, we hope, is only the tip of the PSP title’s offbeat new concepts.

The team’s use of the PSP hardware is stunning – when we first played Metal Gear Ac!d in 2004, we never anticipated the handheld would get this close to PS2-quality visuals. Peace Walker should be the ultimate showcase of Kojima Productions’ technologically progressive work on the PSP and, like Rising, will hopefully show the series has some staying power outside of its main instalments.