Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops [PSP]

Since the advent of the PSP, Snake's mission has always been to lead a single-player, stealth-action campaign on the powerful portable system. After two card-based strategy titles (the second being a wicked-good game in its own right), that vision has been realized. Amazingly, Snake gets by with a little help from his friends.

It's six years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 3. Snake quit FOX, the group he founded, and tries to live a peaceful existence in a hole somewhere. Every time he keeps pulling out, they keep pulling him back in, and he ends up in a volatile military situation on a remote South-American peninsula.

Snake's sporting all of his trademark moves and gadgets: hug walls, crawl first-person through air shafts, use close-quarter combat to knock out foes, etc. Metal Gear has always been a series that uses every button on its given controller, so it's surprising that all of these are done intuitively on the PSP. Yes, you'll miss the second stick for camera control (especially if you played MGS 3: Subsistence), but the quick-turn and auto-aim with L-button is nice. Square is your shoot or CQC button; Triangle climbs ladders or opens doors; Circle brings up your equipment screen; X toggles stances; and R goes into first-person mode. You may find the controls a bit unresponsive at times, however, and unfortunately it's usually when you need it most -- like during boss encounters.

Portable Ops does deviate from the norm in a few unique ways. The first is in its level layouts. Each map is essentially its own little world, which you can jack into and out of with ease. They're filled with hiding areas, patrolling enemies, and hidden items like usual. The difference is that most missions take a mere handful of minutes, and it's just a matter of reach a certain area. If you find yourself in a bind, either abort the mission to keep the changes that occurred, or restart for a fresh try. It makes sense in portable context, but at the same time it keeps you from really immersing yourself into the game -- something that Metal Gear games usually thrive on.

The new radar in Portable Ops is a big success. Instead of tracking movement, it tracks sound. There are two circles: The middle is the noise you make; the outer layer is the noise around you. Enemies show up as colors -- blue means they're far away, while red means they're almost sitting on your head.

By far the biggest shift is the addition of teammates. Snake has always been pretty much a lone gunman, but this game throws that philosophy out the window. Success is based upon recruiting the right troops -- essentially knocking them out and dragging them to your truck, then waiting while they're brainwashed into subservience. You still only control one agent at a time in real-time; but can assign troops to spy units to gather intel, tech units to make weapons and ammo, and medical units to boost healing.