Hey folks. It's been a while since I've posted anything, let alone anything productive. However, it seems my counterpart has been doing stuff, so I might as well jump on in, and give you some of my opinions. So without further stalling, I'll be reviewing Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops for the PSP.
I had originally wanted to purchase this game when it initialliy came out, around Christmas time, but certain things held me up. I don't remember the details now, but let's move on. I had seen the Metal Gear Acid series, and was unimpressed. I've been a big fan of Metal Gear for a long time now, and it just kinda made me sad that it's name got lent to a Strategy game. Strategy games are fine, if you want to play D&D and don't have any friends that are willing to stoop that low. However, when somebody says Metal Gear, D&D is just about the farthest thing from my mind.
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops is a legitimate Metal Gear Solid game. It also, surprisingly, fits into the storyline of the entire Metal Gear series. You play as Snake, as usual. This is the Big Boss Snake too. It takes place a few years after Snake Eater, and Big Boss finds himself captured by some guy named Cunningham of the CIA. When you come to conciousness, you find that your neighbor in the prison is an extremely young Roy Campbell, who proceeds to help you escape from your cell, and you return the favor. It becomes quickly apparent that up against this new enemy, the two of you won't be enough to stop an entire army of Russian soldiers and an impending new threat called "Metal Gear."
That's where the storyline ends, and I start talking about the gameplay. Well, if you enjoyed Metal Gear Solid, MGS: Sons of Liberty, and MGS: Snake Eater, then you're in for a treat (if you happen to have a PSP). This game is very much the same as Snake Eater, and rightly so. You'll be sneaking around levels holding up and grabbing Russians, and shooting them in the head after they've given you their delicious bounty. Either that, or you can drag them back to your base of operations (It's a truck) so you can persuade them to join your team. Torture aside (We never saw it, so it never happened), once you get them on your side, you can use them in missions, in order to add a level of steath onto Snake's already impressive line-up of things like sneaking, crawling, and doing summersaults. While using a russian soldier, other soldiers that are dressed the same way don't really care what you're doing. Other than that, the extra characters don't really add anything to the gameplay.
One thing that I was rather disappointed about was that Snake's neverending pockets have been gimped! Now each character you have only allows you to carry 4 items, which includes extra ammo. I found myself running through an entire level with Snake to take everyone out, and sending other units through to collect everything. Other than that, the new style is refreshing, and It could be a more interesting genre on a more complex system like the PS3 where you can have AI for each of them, and assign them tasks such as Covering Fire, or switch between them in real time, without needing to find cover.
Moving onto graphics. Like most PSP games, they look like they belong somewhere between PSX and PS2. The levels, also true to form, are about as big as the sections of the map in previous titles. However, since they are each separate levels, you have to load each of them before you can play. The cinematics, however, have been done a bit differently this time around, mostly, I'm sure, because of the same reasons the levels are small and that the graphics are average. Limited resources. The new style is a comic book style, with black and white images drawn somehow so that the pictures move. Just because they're different doesn't mean their bad either. I thought that the gritty artwork they used was perfect for the general story of the series.
Something else I need to mention is the playtime that the average person will get out of this game. Something I like to call replayability. While the main point of Portable Ops is to add another piece of the puzzle to the world that came out of Hideo Kojima, it has a lot of things that you can do with it after the story is all out on the table. First of all, is an online multiplayer mode. Take a team of your four best (or worst, depending on the mode) soldiers across the world wide web via any hotspot in order to test your skills against anyone in the... well, at least in the country. Not sure if we've broken that border with this one. It includes three different online modes, which are also playable via Ad Hoc wireless, so if it isn't enough that one person owns a PSP in your general vicinity, and you can find other real life people to play against, then you can do that. One of the modes even lets you play "for real" where you capture anyone of the other players that you kill, and they capture anyone that they kill. Scary, right?
If you can't find anyone else to play with, or you've become fed up with the multiplayer stylings of other people, then you can always start a new game, which will allow you to keep your soldiers and also, since you probably missed a couple of these guys on the first pass through, capture all the bosses. This can get fairly complex, and will most likely require a faq or walkthrough in order to be completed with maximum efficiency, but who knows, maybe you're just a glutton for punishment.
The whole package is actually very impressive. For a fan of the series and a handheld that doesn't have too much that will allow you to play over the internet with people, this is a welcome addition to my library. If I ever finish all my other games and have some free time to kill, then I'm definitely going to come back to this title and capture the rest of the bosses and lose them to the people that play online.
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