As printed in The Northern Light newspaper
Jan. 30, 2007
While the original "Metal Gear Solid" pioneered the stealth action genre, the first two PSP entries in the franchise were card-based tactical games. With "Portable Ops," the PSP finally gets a game closer to its home-console counterparts. In fact, "Portable Ops" has the only directly connecting stories of the series, until "Guns of the Patriots" connects with parts 1 and 2. "Portable Ops," however, connects to the end of part 3, "Snake Eater," which put the player in the position of the legendary soldier who would eventually become Big Boss, the antagonist of the original Metal Gear series and genetic donor to series hero Solid Snake.
The storyline fits with the new team dynamic by showing how and why Big Boss, still known as Naked Snake, builds up his army of loyal followers. Rather than rendered cutscenes, the story unfolds through dynamically-drawn animated storyboards and features quality voice acting, including David Hayter reprising his role as Snake.
The stealth portion of the game features a fully 3D camera that most of the previous games didn't have, but the lack of a second analog stick makes the controls a little awkward still. To make up for this, weapons can auto target, and each character has a skill rating that determines the hit chance of their weapons. Players can also aim in first-person mode for sniping accuracy. But in this game, capturing enemy soldiers has the benefit of adding them to your team, with the possibility of 100 members, either as part of the medical team, surveillance team, technology team or active mission squad. While Snake will always have the best stats, capturing soldiers with different uniforms will allow those characters to blend in with like-dressed enemies, making certain missions much easier to complete in a stealthy fashion. Missions are appropriately sized for on-the-go PSP playing, and playing in different areas is encouraged by having different Wi-Fi hotspots act as automatic recruiting points for special soldiers.
"Portable Ops" also makes use of the Infrastructure mode for PSP's online play, connecting wirelessly to players worldwide. Online play has two team and two solo modes, with an optional mode that actually removes losing players' fallen soldiers and rewards them to the winners.
With its combination of role-playing elements and stealth action, "Portable Ops" is a must-have game for PSP users, and even those disappointed with the "Acid" series will find plenty to love as the game returns to the genre it pioneered.
“Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops”
4 1/2 stars (out of 5)
Konami
Developed by Kojima Productions
Genres: Stealth, action, squad-RPG
No comments:
Post a Comment