I've been trying to complete a full MGS series playthrough for over a year and a half, starting with 1 and going all the way up to Ground Zeroes and V, but omitting 4 which I plan to play last, after V; basically just release order with a little dash of chronological finality.

I love 1, 2 and 3 and had no issue with making my way through them, but this full series run project of mine is always cut short—for the third time now—right here; Peace Walker. I just can't muster up the will to play it.

Here's some extra context to help illustrate just why PW is so off-putting to me: my first MGS game was V, which I played a few years back with no prior knowledge of franchise lore or characters—I loved it regardless. I REALLY loved it. As an enormous stealth game fan, MGSV is without a doubt one of the greatest stealth games ever made, and almost certainly the best third-person one.

It was only after I'd exhausted a full two playthrough of V that I thought, "huh, you know, it would be pretty cool if I actually played the first 4 games so I'd know what the fuck is actually going on in this story", which led to my decision to play through the entire series. And they're great. I love 1-3 and V nearly equally, but for entirely different reasons: those first three for their characters, utterly unique dialogue and cutscene delivery, and occasional bursts of masterful emotional and thematic storytelling, and V for its unmatched stealth sandbox and commitment to systemic freedom and player-driven gameplay above all else, in spite of the fact that its story fails to connect with me due to the nagging feeling that I'm missing a crucial chunk of context.

Which brings me to Peace Walker. That's the context. As the direct predecessor to V, and the only mainline entry left to play before Ground Zeroes and V besides 4, which I'm saving for last not only because I want it to serve as the chronological finale to the saga as stated above, but because I actually don't own a PS3 to play it on (oopsie), it pains me to say that I just cannot get into it.

My main reasoning is that everything about its structure, core gameplay and methods of storytelling feel like they're stripped down versions of what would eventually be fully realised systems in V: the repetitive mission-based format, which is clearly tailored to suit a more casual pick up and play gameplay to suit the handheld console PW was originally designed for, just does not translate very well into a console experience. The basic stealth-action components of the gameplay feel nice enough, but lack so much of the depth and freedom that V has in spades owing to the limited level design and lack of some core movement options and tools from both earlier games and its direct sequel.

And while I find the story's premise very intriguing—following Big Boss's actions after the death of his mentor and how he interprets her last wish for him to "live for himself"—the actual storytelling feels like a huge step down for the franchise: the beautifully drawn comic book-style "cutscenes", for all their style, fail to match the energy or engaging nature of the fully animated scenes I'm used to (they weren't even upscaled for the HD Collection!), and it has the same reliance on cassette tapes to deliver much of its background info and character backstories that V had without that game's one saving grace that made listening to tapes not feel like a chore; the ability to play them any time you wanted without being locked into a menu.

All of these factors combine to make playing Peace Walker, or at least the 5 hours I managed to get through this time, feel thoroughly underwhelming, and its similarity to V only makes me long to be playing that instead. I know that was a long rant, but I felt I had to give proper context for why I can't bring myself to finish Peace Walker so I don't seem like I'm writing it off without a care. I do feel like I've cursed myself a little bit by playing V first, which makes it a bit hard to see PW's gameplay as anything more than a prototype for something more refined, and I'm sure if I played it on its original handheld console of choice instead of the HD Collection, I might enjoy it more, but this is the position I find myself in.

With all of that said, I do still need to understand what happens in Peace Walker's story to accomplish my original goal of following the franchise's story from beginning to end. My problem is that I absolutely despise watching full playthroughs of games on YouTube, or even those popular and well-produced "movie" edits of games that curate their best gameplay moments in addition to cutscenes. Watching an edited cut or a game's story without any of the interactivity of the medium, with so many bits of incidental storytelling lost in order to squash a 20 hour game into a movie length video just has zero appeal to me. And then there's the matter of the cassette tapes.

There's a video on YouTube that collects all of Peace Walker's tapes into one big compilation. It's over 6 hours long. You can't listen to any of those tapes during a mission. Did Kojima seriously expect the player to sit down with the PSP in hand for over six hours in total just listening to audio logs with no interaction whatsoever? I mean, I know you turbo MGS nerds would and probably have already have done this, and hey, I totally respect it, but my brain is just not wired for such a thing. And because those tapes contain such a huge portion of the game's world and character building, skipping them would also do my understanding of MGS's overall narrative a disservice.

So I have three choices, then:

• Suck it up and just force myself to play through Peace Walker even if I am not enjoying myself at all, which seems like a good way to both torture myself AND twist my perception of it from being a quirky little offshoot game that's probably totally cool and would've been the shit back in the day on handheld that I just wish didn't include so much narrative-critical canon story content, into it being something I actively resent

• Watch a playthrough on YouTube and then all 6 hours of the cassette tapes, which sounds absolutely awful

• Just skip it entirely and move right into V; not ideal. It's a game I know I adore, but my original intent behind this full series playthrough was to finally understand the wider narrative, and that won't happen if I skip an entire mainline entry

As you might imagine, none of these sound particularly appealing to me, but I really have to choose one or I'm never going to get any closure. Right now, I'm leaning most towards option 2, but if you've read this far and consider yourself versed enough in MGS lore to offer an educated suggestion, then I ask this: what's the best way to go about this? And if you think it's option 2, then any suggestions for comprehensive recap/compilation media that do a good job of recounting the most essential narrative beats and character details of Peace Walker without being overly long (SIX HOUR LONG CASSETTE TAPE COMPILATION) would also be appreciated.