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Honest Review Of Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops

The story alone makes Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops required playing material for fans of Kojima Productions’ long-lasting, memorable stealth action series. This is not called Metal Gear Solid 4, but this PlayStation Portable game is a direct continuation of the moving, thought provoking story presented in 2004′s MGS3: Snake Eater, and in turn throws the new light on some of the mysteries of the previous games in the series. That is the good news, the better news is that Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops also takes the series in some interesting new directions from a gameplay standpoint. This game has it all, featuring not only a large, open solo campaign, but also some extensive multiplayer options and lots of other surprises. Complicated controls and a storyline that does not waste much time on exposition mean Portable Ops will take a while for inexperienced players to get into, and although it is amazing how much of the visual detail the series is known for got crammed into this game , fans will note that this is not as nice of a production as the games in the series proper. But it’s still an all-around great experience, especially since you can play it on the go.

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Portable Ops takes place in 1970, some years after the profound events of Metal Gear Solid 3, and it chronicles another important chapter in the life of the legendary soldier called Snake, also known as Big Boss. A soldier through, Snake’s latest assignment takes him to a secret Soviet base in South America, and early in the game, he is caught and detained there … by members of his own former FOX unit. He escapes with the help of a young Green Beret named Roy Campbell, and they decide to work together to put an end to what is seems to be a very bad situation between American forces and rogue Soviet militants. Snake and Campbell soon agree that they can not succeed in this situation on their own, and they begin to employ some of the enemy soldiers to their cause. As the story unravels, Snake will meet with some faces from his bloody past and find the true nature of what is happening in this South American base. Snake is an already likable, complex character and ends up even more late in this game.

Much like the story in MGS3, sometimes the story in Portable Ops grows dense with double-crossing and the second guessing and breaks into some philosophical discourse on the meaning of loyalty. It’s heady stuff, but at the same time, it is presented in an over-the-top manner that makes it exciting instead of burdensome. Of further note, the main villains in this story much more convincing than MGS3, they are exciting, memorable characters, some of the best villains this series has ever seen. Unlike previous games in the series, but the biggest story sequences in Portable Ops presented with animated comic book panels, rather than in full 3D. These cutscenes are not quite the same cinematic flair as MGS3, and mostly black and white ink artwork is stylistically very different from the way the rest of the game looks. However, this format really works and it helps to make the key story sequences of Portable Ops about as dramatic as the MGS3 before it. There are lots of great plot sequences in the game, but generally there is a much better balance between gameplay and story here compared to previous games in the series. It takes about 15 hours to finish the story the first time through, and while you will be back with plenty of plot to think about, you’ve spent most of the time performing various stealthy missions.

Excellent graphics and a captivating story will entice you to press through this game is challenging campaign.

When it comes down to control the action – doing things like shooting, sneaking, and fighting hand-to-hand – Portable Ops borrows heavily from MGS3 and MGS2 before it. Fans of the series can expect much of the same type of behavior from the enemy artificial intelligence, and many of the traits and abilities they’ve already seen before. You can still flat back against walls and peek around corners, execute a powerful forward dive, fire a bunch of authentic firearms either from a third person or first-person viewpoint, and crawl through narrow passageways to escape enemy patrols. But some gameplay tweaks are in here to make this game more playable using the PSP’s controls. Of particular note, Portable Ops uses the third-person camera perspective introduced in this year’s MGS3: Subsistence, so you can move the camera angle around your character using the D pad, or quickly reset the perspective by tapping the left shoulder button. Also, there is a nice, new radar system that tracks nearby enemies based on how much sound they make, and it lets you know when the enemy is near without giving away their location. Fortunately, the “survival” gameplay elements of MGS3, which forced you to spend a lot of time in menu screens rather than in action while curing deep wounds and eating weird food, have been cut from this game. The typical mission in Portable Ops is a short, instant-action affair.

Although the underlying gameplay is familiar, the overarching structure of this game is very different from what has been done before in Metal Gear Solid. Early on, Snake and Campbell establish a mobile base, and at this point, you are introduced to the game’s strategic layer. You see a tactical map containing all the known regions of the South American base, and from here you are able to use any of these regions in any order at any time. Meanwhile, a key new gameplay component has you recruiting more and more soldiers to your cause, which you can then assign to spy on particular territories, serve in the medical department to help heal your wounded soldiers, or join your technical team generate new leads for you from time to time.

Of course you can also assign them to your sneaking team. Another big change in Portable Ops is that now you can play as many other characters other than Snake. Each character is rated differently with different weapons and skills, and some have special abilities. In practice, though all pretty much plays alike, so it’s a bit of a shame that you’re not going to spend a lot of different movements, depending on the character. It’s still an interesting addition to gameplay, though, as it lets you put more characters into each mission, which you then control one at a time – the others lie in wait in inconspicuous cardboard boxes (what else?). Furthermore, some uniformed soldiers blend right in with their former friends, so you can mosey right into enemy territory.

The first time you shoot an enemy soldier, the process is convincingly detailed in a cutscene where Snake, a famous and charismatic soldier, earning the loyalty and respect for enemy combatant. From this point, what happens to your enemies to make them join you after capture is implied, but to capture enemies in the first game, you must knock them unconscious and dump them on the back of your truck. Simple! It is an oddly disturbing, surprisingly fun collection minigame kind, and it will force you to use nonlethal force most of the time when you most need literally dozens of soldiers to participate. Their ranks will mostly consist of former enemy grunts, but it is possible to get stronger, special characters to join you through various means. As the squads you gather in single-player games are the same character you want to take online multiplayer, there are plenty of good reasons to go into different mission areas just to kidnap and convert some of the locals.

The missions themselves tend to be simple and straightforward, often requiring little more than reaching a particular destination. While some of the missions stand out as being memorable, their brevity is mostly for the game’s credit, since a large number of idiomatic missions makes an enormous advantage for a portable game. The story continues as your spies collect reports on important information or points so you gradually unlock more and more places to go. The routine stealth action missions, which usually pit you against some pretty intelligent but fairly predictable enemy guards, sometimes interrupted by a central story mission of some sort, and the occasional boss fight. The head matches in Portable Ops is not quite as puzzle-driven in nature as those some of the previous Metal Gear Solid games, instead of boiling down to a mere shoot-outs against some very tough opponents. On the normal difficulty (an easy setting and an unlockable “extreme” option is also available), some of these boss fights to be very, very tough, requiring patience and strategy. History will force you to figure out how to succeed.

If you’ve played Metal Gear Solid 3, you will be able to dive right into Portable Ops.

The open structure of Portable Ops is mostly well thought out and give this game a different feel from previous MGS installments. However, some aspects of it, like how most soldiers look and play alike, is not fully baked. There is a fairly high level of abstraction involved in the awarding of spies to territories and such things, and your spies are never in any danger of being caught. Actually, the whole tactical card very abstract, so you never get a coherent sense of being in a South American military base, nor do you get the impression that all the enemies all levels have something to do besides go back and forth, wondering when Snake going to fall in. But there is so much interesting gameplay and depth to explore that suspending your disbelief about these types of questions should not be difficult.

There is also that whole multiplayer mode, remember? From the main menu, you can jump into a six-player ad hoc versus game, and there is a game-sharing option if you want to start a quick deathmatch with some friends using just one copy of the game. You can also shop mates with other Portable Ops gamers. The real meat of the multiplayer experience is somewhat buried in the tactical map interface, though. If you’ve played Metal Gear Online as part of MGS3: Subsistence, you’ll know what to expect, but it is remarkable to play a fully featured online shooter like this in a portable format. The control scheme translates quite well to a multiplayer mode, but again, it’s really not much of a pick-up-and-play games, so perhaps the reason that online mode is situated in the campaign is because the time you can get what you have already learned the controls to a certain extent.

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Not all the multiplayer modes from Subsistence costs are here, as multiplayer is limited to deathmatch, team deathmatch and Capture the Flag. You have a basic auto-aim ability with your weapons, but by manually aiming from a first-person view, you can instantly kill opponents with one shot in the head. Besides a whole bunch of guns, you will get to use grenades, mines, and even those incredibly distracting dirty magazines in battle, and online performance was mostly smooth and stable during our tests on live servers. Interestingly, you get to choose between either “virtual” online battles or “real” online battles, and in the latter, all your characters that are killed will indeed be gone afterwards; killed, but whoever they may then keep them a little like racing for pink slips. Except in a race for pink slips, you can not wave a white flag to give up and live to fight another day – you have that option here. Anyhow, since it is based on a tried and true concept online multiplayer portion of Portable Ops is quite impressive, although relatively complex controls and quick, brutal rounds will naturally attract a hardcore subset of MGS players. So do not expect anything less than ruthless competition.

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops gets even weirder, which offers a mode called cyber-survival, which is basically a simulated online strategy game. You can deploy squads of your comrades to go online and fight other squads, and depending on your team’s statistics and how you have arranged and equipped your four characters, they will perform better or worse. You can earn new recruits through this process and through some other quirky means, such as scanning for nearby wireless access points, or even using the PSP’s GPS unit, sold in Japan. These types of extras give the game some of that unmistakable Metal Gear Solid personality.

Portable Ops looks and sounds great, especially for a portable game. A lot of the environments are pretty basic, but the character models are really impressive, especially for the Snake, with his shiny, new sneaking suit. Bloodthirsty MGS fans may be disappointed at the lack of blood in this game, which is remarkably absent after MGS3 is something gruesome throat-slashing moves. This game is still rated M for Mature, but apart from some stylized violence in some of the cinematic cutscenes, it is not clear why. Metal Gear Solid series is renowned for the quality of their presentation, and Portable Ops meet this high standard. Likewise, the sound is excellent, especially cinematic score that sounds straight out of a spy thriller. The many original compositions are on par with the excellent music from MGS3. David Hayter reprises his role as the voice actor for Snake and again put a strong performance, with that hit low growl of his. The voices of some of the villains is even better, and to give these characters their distinct personalities.

Ever since 2001′s stupefying Metal Gear Solid 2, this series has strived to be more consistent in its storytelling without sacrificing the great detail and convoluted tone that MGS is known for. At the same time, the gameplay continues to become more and more freeform, so you can choose how best to approach a tactical situation rather than forcing you to figure it out through trial and error. Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops has some fantastic new ideas in this direction, together with a story that gets fans of the series speaks for several months. Although clearly the best fit for Metal Gear Solid fans, this is one of the best, most ambitious game to date for the PSP.

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Ever since 2001′s stupefying Metal Gear Solid 2, this series has strived to be more consistent in its storytelling without sacrificing the great detail and convoluted tone that MGS is known for. At the same time, the gameplay continues to become more and more freeform, so you can choose how best to approach a tactical situation rather than forcing you to figure it out through trial and error. Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops has some fantastic new ideas in this direction, together with a story that gets fans of the series speaks for several months. Although clearly the best fit for Metal Gear Solid fans, this is one of the best, most ambitious game to date for the PSP.

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