Peace Walker HD — the half of Vol.2 that isn't MGS4

MGS4 grabs the headlines, but Peace Walker is quietly the most interesting game in this bundle — a portable Metal Gear built around short missions, a growing army and online co-op for up to 6 players, now in its HD form on PC for the first time.

What it is

Originally a PSP game from 2010, Peace Walker sits right between Metal Gear Solid 3 and Metal Gear Solid V in the timeline. You play Big Boss in 1974, running Militaires Sans Frontières out of a base in the Caribbean. KONAMI's launch notes describe it plainly: witness the rise of Big Boss as he builds a private army during the Cold War. The HD Collection version in this bundle is the same game with the HD treatment it previously got on PS3 and Xbox 360.

How it plays

• Short ops, not one long campaign. Missions are compact: infiltrate an outpost, extract a target, secure intel, leave. Designed for portable sessions, which means it respects your time even on a desktop.
• Mother Base. Everything you extract feeds your base — soldiers, vehicles, even AI weapons. Recruit, assign, upgrade, and watch your army grow between missions. It's the loop MGS5 would later refine.
• Fulton recovery. The balloon. Tag a guard or a tank, the balloon goes up, it's yours. The most satisfying "steal everything" mechanic in the series.
• Co-op for up to 6. The official notes confirm online play with up to six players. Ops get a lot easier — and a lot funnier — when every target is being carried off by two or three balloons at once.

Why it matters now

Peace Walker was the game that taught Kojima's team how to do base-building, and its ideas run straight through Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain. For anyone who came in at MGS5 and wondered where the whole Fulton-and-Mother-Base thing came from — this is the answer, and it's playable on PC for the first time in this bundle. It's also the only game in the Metal Gear Solid line on Steam with online co-op. There's no multiplayer in MGS4, and the Vol.1 titles don't have it either.

Quick facts

• Also sold separately: Peace Walker - Master Collection Version is $19.99 on its own on Steam. The bundle math still favors Vol.2 — MGS4 ($29.99) + Peace Walker ($19.99) is $49.98, so the $49.99 collection throws in Ghost Babel and all the digital extras for a dollar.
• Online: up to 6 players, per KONAMI's official description.
• Vol.1 bonus: owning any Vol.1 game saves you a GOLD uniform for Peace Walker.
• Extras included: Peace Walker Screenplay Book, Master Book, and the shared Digital Soundtrack Vol.2.
• PC specs to expect: the bundle requires Windows 11 64-bit, i5-9600K, 16GB RAM and 34GB of SSD space — Peace Walker is the lighter of the two games, but the requirement applies to the collection as a whole.