Costa Rica’s standing in the international community as an oasis of peace and democracy amidst the Central American powder keg of political instability and military conflict is fueling the imagination of leading video game developers.

The constitutional ban on the military and the country’s peaceful ways leave it wide open for bad guys with extremely nefarious motives to set up shop in Konami’s Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and Sony’s Syphon Filter; two games which in 2011 were remastered and ported to modern console and portable gaming platforms. Costa Rica takes an important visual, historic and atmospheric backdrop in both games.

Syphon Filter

In 1999, Syphon Filter was released on the original Sony PlayStation as an action title starring Gabe Logan, a highly-trained agent working for a secret intelligence agency on the trail of Erich Rhoemer, an abominable terrorist who puts all James Bond villains to shame in terms of pure evil.

Rhoemer enjoys hiding out in Costa Rica, where he runs a massive trafficking operation to fund his Syphon Filter project; a biological warfare contagion for which no antidote exists. Rhoemer escapes Costa Rica, but Logan, who puts both James Bond and Jason Bourne to shame in terms of pure secret agent moxie, catches up to him in Kazakhstan and neutralizes him.

Players get a full shot of Costa Rica in Syphon Filter 3 when they get to play as Logan in a flashback to 1999 before Rhoemer escaped. It turns out that Rhoemer’s trafficking operation in the rainforest was mostly a cover for research on the strange native plants that produced the deadly Syphon Filter virus.

Both Syphon Filter and Syphon Filter 3 were remastered in 2011 and ported over to the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play smartphone. For Tico gamers, the Xperia Play has been one of the best things to come out since Claro and Movistar formally opened their doors to wireless customers looking for a fresh break from the ICE monotony. Claro ran a successful promotion that gave Xperia Play smartphones for free to new customers who signed up for a 24-month plan. Lucky Xperia Play owners can download Syphon Filter and other games right from the Android Marketplace.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

The Metal Gear series is legendary among video game fans. Created by Hideo Kojima, a prolific game designer who’s often considered a national treasure in his native Japan, the Metal Gear titles are famous for their intricate plots that dig deeply into political and ideological subjects such as pacifism, nuclear deterrence, government controls, and the paradox of achieving peace through armed conflict.

In each of the dozen or so video game titles in the series, a secret special operations operative codenamed “Snake” must battle a shadowy organization involved in the manufacturing of Metal Gear; an ominous bipedal mechanized vehicle capable of carrying a nuclear payload. In each game, the player control Snake as he is tasked with finding and destroying the heavily guarded Metal Gear. To finish each game, Snake must succeed in neutralizing Metal Gear, only to find out that those responsible for it will eventually reorganize and resurface elsewhere in the world to continue their villainous plans.

In Peace Walker, players are treated to a complex plot which accurately depicts portions of Costa Rica’s political history. The game takes place in 1974, and players soon learn that President Daniel Oduber Quirós is playing a dangerous game by making a diplomatic peace offering to the communist regime of Cuba and thus irritating the United States. The Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua is threatening to spill over into Costa Rica, and Ticos suddenly find themselves very vulnerable after having enjoyed a quarter of a century without an army. To make matters worse, a mercenary group lead by a radical political philosopher sets up shop in Tortuguero to begin working on a new Metal Gear. The dangerous group plans to deal with the Cold War in its own way, pitting the CIA against Soviet troops supporting the Nicaraguan conflict, with the ultimate goal of dominating both sides with Metal Gear.

The convoluted plot in Peace Walker begins to make sense with the introduction of a young Tica named Paz Ortega Andrade, a beautiful high school senior who becomes the first student at the University for Peace. Paz alerts Snake to the presence of the Metal Gear mercenaries in Costa Rica, and in the process educates players about Costa Rica’s Civil War, the country’s governance style and diplomatic protocol, its constitutional law, rich biodiversity, and the teachings of German philosophers. The amazing action in Peace Walker takes players on dangerous missions through Limón, the Irazú volcano, the Monteverde Cloud Forest, Heredia, and Ciudad Colón. For the game’s climactic finale, Snake crosses over into Nicaragua’s Lake Cocibolca, and along the way players get to learn even more about fascinating stuff such as José Figueres’ strange relationship with the Somoza government and what really happened after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker was originally released on the Sony PlayStation Portable, but in 2011 it was remastered in High Definition for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360.