Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops

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Hype, it's a wonderful thing, we all love getting worked up about the next big thing. Be it games, movies, music or whatever you're into we all like looking round the corner at what's coming soon and anticipating how fantastic it's going to be. Take Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops for example, it's the Metal Gear game fans have been crying out for since the PSP arrived, it has taken a couple of slightly strange MGS Acid games and even a UMD based graphic novel for them to realise what PSP gamers really wanted but the bods at Konami got there in the end and have at last produced a proper MGS game for Sony's handheld platform. Such a hotly anticipated title has seen every screenshot and video clip scrutinised by fans, their obviously impressive quality further ramping up expectation to near fever pitch levels. All of which means that standing here just before at the release of the game itself there's a feeling of inevitability about its greatness that threatens to whisk the less discerning reviewer off into a deluge of superlatives that ends with a score in the high 90's. The problem is, like a lot of hype, once the smoke has cleared the reality of what's left isn't always all you were hoping for.

Despite such a cautious introduction its only fair to say right off the bat that this is the game hardened MGS fans have been waiting for, in fact its hard to see how a MGS game could have been made for the PSP any better so everyone involved deserves a well earned pat on the back and a glass of bubbly. The cynical amongst you may have noticed the slightly backhanded compliment in that previous statement, for those that didn't let me be a little clearer, MGS:PO, while beautifully made and technically very impressive, suffers from the same problems that plague other less notable PSP games meaning that what could have been a truly great game is let down, not by anything contained on the disk, but instead by the platform it's running on.

First things first though, before we get bogged down in negativity let's step back a little and start from the top. Set in the 1970's, Portable Ops puts you in the shoes of Naked Snake (him from MGS3) just after he's been captured by a rogue military unit deep in South America. From that setup it's up to you to escape and take down the powers that imprisoned you, sounds simple enough but this being MGS you have to contend with any number of plot twists and double crosses before the story is over. Anyone who'd been wishing for a plot less convoluted and contrived than normal will find themselves disappointed but seeing how part of the series' charm is its unique story telling it's hard to be too critical. The plot is moved forward through a mixture of beautifully drawn graphic novel-esque cut-scenes as well as the more traditional MGS codec conversations both of which do their job well although it's a little disappointing to find only the cut scenes accompanied by full voice acting, a first concession to the limited size of the UMD perhaps. Now the PSP has been around for a while we're starting to see titles that push its hardware to new limits, MGS:PO is one such game with lovingly animated and impressively detailed characters populating its game world, while some of the environments are a little less impressive you'll rarely notice anything too glaring and the whole thing is infused with the kind of attention to detail and atmosphere that you've come to expect from the series. Indeed it's fair to say that there's not much available on the PSP that beats it on the visual or audio fronts.

The move to a handheld format has seen a tweaking in the way Snake's missions work in Portable Ops, each mission is now broken down into smaller more manageable chunks generally over a fairly small area and often reduced to simple get from A to B style exercises meaning there's little chance of getting lost or being unable to work out what you're supposed to be doing next. It's an approach that works well on the whole and offers a regular feeling of satisfaction with noticeable progress being made every time you play. The flip side of that however is things do feel a little claustrophobic at times and there's a tendency to feel constrained by the limited size of the task in hand rather than enjoying the fact that you're never too far from a completed objective.

Considering the eagerness of fans for this PSP based adventure it's commendable that Hideo Kojima and his team have found the time to be truly innovative with the MGS formula, most noticeably with the inclusion of troop recruitment. In a series first enemy soldiers can be 'persuaded' to work for you, all you have to do is knock them out, drag them into the back of your van (yes the presence of your own recruitment van deep in enemy territory stuck me as strange at first too) and soon enough they become available for you to utilise as you see fit. You can either give these new recruits jobs like producing medical supplies, manufacturing gadgets or even turning them into spies; however, most interestingly you can also take them into the field of battle as part of a team of up to four soldiers. Each new soldier is rated depending on their strengths in different areas requiring you to think about how you use them, some also come with access to some of the more hard to reach areas of the base meaning they can enter certain places much easier than Snake. The team based combat isn't exactly on a par with the Ghost Recon's of the world and there's something delightfully school playground like about the fact that your team members hide in unsubtle cardboard boxes when you're not controlling them, but it brings a compelling twist to the traditional MGS gameplay and along with the personnel management offers a completely new level of strategy to tax the grey matter. Another startling novel idea is how it's possible to recruit new soldiers out of thin air, or more specifically soldiers generated from the network addresses of any nearby wireless networks your PSP can find. The prospect of wandering the streets testing for a network that will create the ultimate soldier is an interesting one to say the least and has to be one of the most novel uses of mobile gaming technology we've yet seen.

The multiplayer modes aren't without their own innovations with players able to take their fresh recruits into battle with them. However, by doing so you run the risk of having them killed (and them staying dead for the single player game) or, potentially worse, captured by your opponent meaning they're removed from your collection and added to theirs. It's all very clever, by taking the recruited soldiers and making them entities in their own right outside of the single player game it gives them an air of collectability that makes them feel genuinely precious especially when they're ones you've created from a handy local network address. You can even send your team off into the wide open world of the internet to do battle on your behalf without you even being there, they'll report back on how they've done when they're finished and may even bring back a prisoner or two if you're lucky. It's a bit daft, feeling a little like the toys coming alive and being let out of the toy box and is perhaps one gimmick too far but you certainly can't accuse MGS:PO of lacking ambition.

Unfortunately, now we get to the frustrating bit. For all the positives, and there are clearly a lot to be found within the game the whole thing is hampered by the fact that it seems no-one, not even the people behind one of the most critically and commercially popular gaming series of all time, can solve the problem of how to work around the PSP's lack of a second analogue stick. It's not that MGS does it any worse than every other title out there; it's simply that playing a game like this on the PSP is akin to asking dedicated PC gamers to play an FPS without a mouse. On the PS2 the Metal Gear Solid games were home to a control system that was slick enough to let you truly feel like the deadly solo operative you were playing. On the PSP at times it feels more like you're a kid playing paintball against a group of adults who've been told to stand still just long enough to let you hit them. No matter how you cut it having to move your hand from the analogue stick that moves Snake around to control the camera with the d-pad just feels clunky, slow and most of all frustrating, even jiggling the controls around inevitably causes just as many problems as it half solves. Annoyingly, even in the midst of such frustrations you know it's not a fault of the game itself, in fact ported to the PS2 this would be up there with the best games on the platform, it's a fault with the PSP's design, one that causes a whole genre of games to loose marks through often no fault of their own.

So there you have it, from one point of view all the hype was well deserved, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops is a fantastic achievement, it brings a perfectly realised entry in the series exclusively to the handheld market while managing to retain all the elements that make it so popular and yet still finds the time to offer a set of innovative new additions to the mix both in terms of actual gameplay ideas and uses for the hardware that really push the boundaries of what we expect from games. However, the other side of the argument is that despite all of those things it's still a title that's hampered by the limitations of its chosen platform, one that would have been significantly more fun to play on a PS2 or any of the other home consoles. I imagine the MGS fanboys out there will feel I'm missing the point, and perhaps I am, but it's still a disappointment to play such a well made game yet wish with all your heart it was on a different console where it would have been able to shine as much as it should.

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By Paul Newcombe