The Metal Gear Solid series makes its PSP debut, and its off to a good start
The plot to this game is incredible (which is to be expected in a Metal Gear game). It starts out 6 years after the events of Snake Eater with Snake who has been taken to a prison somewhere in South America. He finds that he is forced to fight his former unit, FOX. This unit has started a revolt and Snake is blamed for it. In the prison, he meets Roy Campbell who he teams up with to end the revolt.
The gameplay is similar to the usual Metal Gear Solid gameplay except with a few controls changed around to fit the PSP. For instance, in order to fire your weapon, you have to hold down the L trigger before pushing the square button to fire. If you want to choke hold anyone, you have to quietly walk up behind them and hold down square. Triangle is used to stalk, circle brings up the menue, X crouches, R brings you into the First Person view, the analog stick is movement, and the D-pad is the camera. This may seem confusing but as time passes, you will get used to it.
Another new feature to this game that makes it even more interesting is capturing and recruiting enemy soldiers. This is very simple. Just knock them out and bring them back to your truck. You can capture up to 100 soldiers and place them in one of 4 units. The sneaking unit (the unit you control in game on every mission), the spy unit (used to spy in certain locations and they can bring back ammo or they can report anything that they find in the area such as weapons), the tech unit (used to build items or sometimes weapons), and the medical unit (used to heal soldiers). This new feature to the game is quite fun and makes the game more interesting.
My only complaint to this game is the fact that the cut scenes are comics and not cut scenes. I suppose this isn't all bad though because you can still figure out what's going on. I just wish there were more voice overs than there were.
So, in conclusion, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops is a definite must have to anyone who owns a PSP and it definitaly is the best PSP game to date, it even beats Syphon Filter (previous favorite IMO). If you like action games or if you just like the MGS series, you should not have any problems liking this one, you will not be disapointed. Kojima has done it again.....