(PSP) Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus review

Expansion pack that offers more stealth-action gameplay but without much of a compelling reason to keep you playing.

Developer	Kojima Productions; Konami
Publisher	Konami
Franchise	Metal Gear
Genre	Action; Stealth
PSTV	Yes
PSN	EU/NA

 

World-building & Story

Set after the events in San Hieronymo Bay from Portable Ops, this Plus expansion follows Snake and Campbell as they continue to grow their band of mercenary soldiers within the region.

Unlike its predecessor, which included sporadic but effective comic book cutscenes to tell its rather disjointed narrative, there’s no real plot in Plus beyond you continuing to recruit soldiers then using them in online battles. It’s a shame as Metal Gear Solid has always been about story for me and it’s really missing here, but there you go.

 

Presentation & Sound

Changing nothing from Portable Ops, the graphics in Plus are still incredibly impressive for what they achieve on PSP even if they include nothing new.

So this is exactly what I imagined a version of Metal Gear Solid would look like on PSP. Character models are absolutely superb, with the same level of detail to animations whether you’re crawling to avoid detection or fighting your way out of a sticky situation with punches and kicks. The fact that the different types of NPC’s you recruit all have their own quirks – politicians move with confident swagger, while ninjas dart around the screen to avoid detection – is really unparalleled on PSP.

In terms of environments, the game doesn’t quite hit these same heights. It isn’t helped by the muted brown and green colour palette, but that’s something that Metal Gear Solid as a whole was doing at the time. It’s more just the reuse of areas over and over – they’re all okay, but there’s a lack of objects indoors in things like a makeshift hospital, while outdoors textures can be a little muddy and some areas can feel a little samey.

Music is recycled from Portable Ops but voice acting is not – there’s very little spoken here aside from the grunts of enemies which is a shame.

 

Gameplay & Content

Acting as an expansion pack to Portable Ops, gameplay in Plus is largely the same but there really isn’t enough of it to make it worthwhile – at least in terms of single player.

So please refer to my review of Portable Ops for an in depth explanation of how Plus plays but in short, this is Metal Gear Solid 3 as a portable package. That means the same sneaking, hiding and taking out targets is present and you will feel like a true special agent as you silently assassinate. First person weapon aiming is available as well as basic CQC manoeuvres such as grabbing targets and interrogating them from behind or slamming them to the ground.

The big gimmick for Portable Ops is that you have a squad of four you can take into battle and you can switch between any of them by finding a hiding place for your currently controlled character. You can also recruit enemy soldiers by knocking them out and dragging them to your truck (or getting a teammate to do this for you) which adds a nice strategic element to capturing and building your perfect squad.

All of that is still present here and you’re now able to recruit up to 200 troops with new specialties available, that you can then deploy in various disciplines to give you things like new guns or medical supplies (although the spy trait now seems pointless as you’re not gathering intel on new locations anymore). Instead, the main mode here you sees you progressing through interconnected missions on four different difficulties with a brief battle at the end, before you return to your base.

To be fair, there are new mission types here like surviving in a constant alert phase that makes some of the harder difficulties a challenge and you’ll still have to manage your stamina with rations lest your health decrease, but overall it all feels a bit superficial – like something that should have been a bonus in the original releases, rather than a brand new game.

I understand that Plus was mostly about expanding the multiplayer options and there is plenty of choice there, which you can’t really test today unless you have ad hoc but at least that’s an option. There is a boss rush included which has bosses from the original titles, but there’s nothing new included here which again is a bit of a missed opportunity – the bosses that were in Portable Ops were pretty fantastically designed.

You can hunt camouflaged kerotans and some of the mission rewards include historical figures from the Metal Gear series like Old Snake and Raiden which is a nice touch of fanservice for longtime followers, but overall I can’t help but feel this is a bit of a missed opportunity to expand on the Portable Ops framework in a way that makes sense for the franchise.

Don’t get me wrong – it offers the core Metal Gear stealth gameplay in a potentially endless package, but if I return to Portable Ops, it’ll be the original version – not this Plus version that just doesn’t add enough to make it worthwhile.

 

Conclusion

Portable Ops Plus is the kind of thing that would be sold as a cheap expansion pack or even possibly a big patch in the modern era which makes it a bit of a strange proposition now. It’s still a good game no doubt, but the fact it does very little to expand the single player in any meaningful way is a shame and overall, it’s just not what I was hoping for from this storied franchise.

5.5/10