Cheap Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops (Video Games) (Sony PSP) Price

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Customer Reviews of Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops

A Great Game, But Only If You're Hardcore
What made the Metal Gear series so wonderful was the concept of a lone operative sneaking into a base a la James Bond, but doing it realistically (crawling, hiding, sniping) instead of getting invited to a white-tie dinner by the bad guy. In the first PS1 game, you could be a novice player and still make it through the game, each time you play making you better and better. The PS2 games got more and more complex, sort of bloating up the concept with more complex controls and quick reaction scenarios where the average player would get creamed over and over again until the learning curve was passed. These "frustration points," as I call them got more and more numerous until MGS3, where the entire last third of the game was essentially one long frustration point (e.g., oops, stepped wrong, you die, oops, didn't make the shot, you die, oops, didn't lead the girl through 5 screens of bad guys safely, start over, etc.) To a hardcore gamer, these challenges are meat and potatoes, but to a casual gamer that can't play daily, the fourteenth time that 3 Metal Gears blow Snake into atoms is the time that the game gets shelved permanently. This is where MGS:Portable Ops puts itself: it's JUST hard enough to make the hardcore MGS fans want more, but JUST hard enough to frustrate the casual gamer into just shelving it. <
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>First off, the game looks great and the sounds are perfect. How they crammed all of this into a UMD is spectacular and shows how well software developers can compensate for poorly-designed hardware. The controls aren't too bad, but the analog nub can be hard to control at times. The real permanent frustration point in the game comes with the camera, which seems to have a mind of its own. Dragging enemies (a HUGE part of the game) becomes a comedy of errors as the whirling camera causes you to spin around while you get used to the analog nub...you look like you're tangoing with a drunken partner! The camera likes to sit right up against your active man, so you can't pan out and get a wider view of things...this is especially fatal when going through doors, where you can see an all clear and pop out right into a guard's line of fire. For me, the camera is enough to make the game unpleasant...but I suppose it can be gotten used to. The missions are broken up into little ones (UMD format again) and they seem fine. They make sense and you do have some sense of time in the game. Well done! <
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>MGS games are all about sneaking and infiltrating. Well, this MGS takes it one step further by allowing you to recruit soldiers for different teams (this has been explained in other reviews.) This is sort of a tactics-style development where you can outfit the troops, put them in squads and deploy them as a team. However, the developers decided to hamstring this potentially fun feature by making it so killed soldiers never return...so you can get a secret character for a major accomplishment...and he gets an unlucky camera angle on the next mission and ends up getting jumped by 3 guards. Well, your hard-earned man is now gone forever unless you reload. By making the risk too great, this keeps casual gamers from risking hard-earned troops on the battlefield. They should have an option for an easier mode where the soldiers can be brought back. However, the saving grace is that the unique characters (such as Snake) can be brought back and recover slowly. <
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>This game is very complex and mastering it, or even proceeding in it takes a large time investment...unfortunately, it's not one that most casual or older gamers might be able to make. The manual only tells you how things work on a basic level and, like ALL NEW GAMES TODAY, you can't just have fun and play through...you've got to have the FAQ/game guide/cheat sheet with you or you'll never get 100% complete and the best ending. Lame. <
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>With very little to reward the casual gamer, I can't recommend this as a 5-star pick. I'd rate it a 1. However, since it's so appealing by its tough nature to hardcore gamers (5 stars for them!), it DOES merit a 3 on the fun factor (1+5/2). The polish of the game is super and only the whirly camera demon knocks it down to 4 stars.

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Metal Gear Solid doesn't suit the handheld
It was too hard to control Snake and his compatriots in this game. The mission structure was nothing like the console iterations of Metal Gear, as levels were self-contained and not free flowing. However, i do realize this is an important plot point later on in Big Boss' life leading to the eventual creation of Outer Heaven. The graphics and animation were excellent however for the portable, but the gameplay is restrictive and frankly boring. <
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>But, if you're an avid MGS fan, you must own this game, as it is part of the canon storyline.

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"Gotta catch 'em all"
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops(MPO) brings exactly what fans of Metal Gear have been longing for, on the PSP. Stealth/espionage gameplay has been reintroduced, since the failed attempt of Ac!d to gain success in Metal Gear fandom. <
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>MPO may take several days, to a week to finish, depending on how fast, or how slow, you wish to play through. The Subsistence engine has been beautifully translated to the PSP (with some very minor graphical instabilities). The in game camera, works a bit similar to Subsistence, except now, the directional buttons are used to pan the camera. <
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>Most mission levels may last a maxium of 10 minutes - short and appropriate for a portable experience. Also, since this is a portable game, expect the gameplay to be slightly different from what's been currently experienced on Metal Gear. For one thing, instead of Snake "gunning" it on his own, he now has the ability to capture and recruit enemy soldiers. The amusing thing is, EVERY soldier, or personel captured, will agree to join your group. One can't help but wonder, if there's a correlation between this game, and Pokemon. Well, by capturing more Pokemon, err... soldiers, your job becomes much easier on missions, as you can now establish teams to cover much of the mission maps. <
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>Well, here's the break through of my ratings for MPO: <
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>Graphics: 9 <
>An almost perfect translation of the Subsistence engine onto the PS2. Some minor pixilation problems might occur, when panning the camera. <
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>Sound: 10 <
>Excellent sound quality. You can also connect your PSP to Dolby 5.1 speakers for a greater MPO experience. <
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>Music: 9 <
>I was a bit disappointed that Harry Gregson-Williams, was not involved in the musical score, as he was with the previous games for the Playstation 2. However, Konami produced a beautiful score, and the soundtrack is worth getting. <
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>Controls: 7 <
>It may take several hours to get used to the controls of MPO. Regardless if you've played Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, you will have to learn controls all over again. I was disappointed that MPO did not incorporate the "pressure sensitive" features of the analog stick. Slightly pressing the analog, will cause your character to run. In order to walk, the Triangle button must be held down, while simultaneously pressing the stick. Also, this lack of pressure sensitivity can be EXTREMELY annoying, when trying to aim precisely with a gun. If you were an ace sniper in Subsistence, expect your talents to drop, when playing this game. <
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>Overall Score (not an average): 8.5 <
>The game lasts roughly 2 days if you speed through, but the side quests, and finding hidden characters, will take a while to complete. Besides a buggy camera, and slightly problematic control issues, MPO comes highly recommended. Metal Gear fans owe it to themselves to get this game. <
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>Well, that's it for my review. I hope you found it useful. :)