Plus is not a sequel, but an expansion to MPO for those looking for more depth and better multiplayer.
Just as in the original MGS: Portable Ops, the objective is still primarily to collect weapons and personnel to expand your own personal army and build different squads for sneaking, spying, engineering and healing. The most noticeable difference, however, will be that the plot has been abandoned for the sake of removing the frills of a storyline to get to the point: Collect more soldiers and gain more stats. The methods for doing this are still the same, though. When engaging an enemy, you can still shoot them with a wide array of weapons from off-the-hip, through first-person view, or sneak over and hold them up to make them drop items. You can also grab them, choke them, interrogate them, throw them or drag them to whatever the situation requires. Once you've knocked out an enemy soldier, you can then drag them over to the truck Snake had requisitioned in the original MPO to have them "persuaded" to join your team. Levels in MGO+ have changed a bit. The mission structure has been modified into what is now called the "Infinity Mission". This structure plays out quite a bit differently than in the last MGO. Basically, Infinity Mission is broken down into 4 levels: Easy, Normal, Hard and Extreme. Once you've chosen your level difficulty, you're entered into an "all-or-nothing" gauntlet of random levels, depending on the mode you entered. In the previous MGO, you would choose 4 soldiers for your sneaking team, assign each of them up to 4 weapons or items, and then choose an area to begin your mission. In MGO+, you will still choose a sneaking team with up to 4 soldiers from your army (which can now consist of up to 200 members), but once entering Infinity Mission, they will go in empty-handed. All your weapons and items will have to be procured as you move along, so you'll have to choose your team carefully. As before, each character in your team can hold up to 4 weapons/items, which can be anything from pistols or assault rifles, med kits for health, rations for your stamina, body armor, magazines to distract enemy guards, and a few new items like textbooks to increase a soldier's skill in certain areas, a radio for a Fulton extraction (which I'll explain later), and a whole new array of present-day weapons. Each character may have different attributes and skills as well, such as a deliveryman can transport items directly back to the truck for use in later missions, or an athlete can run faster than normal. They also have different skills ranked as S, A, B or C with S being the best. Skills range in proficiency in all areas such as pistols, sniper rifles, shotguns, setting traps, etc.
The Infinity Mission will proceed through a random set of anywhere between 5 to 20 levels, depending on your difficulty setting, but the BIG difference is that each level will be consecutive. This means that you'll have to look around carefully to collect things you'll need to go on through each level. Also, your team will break off to go back to your truck after every 5 levels so that you can re-assign items you've collected and move recruited soldiers from your truck to your team. If a member of your team is killed during a mission, you can go on with the remaining members until you return to your truck to replace them, but once a soldier is killed, they're gone for good this time. This also includes your special characters (keep that in mind for those of you who imported your data from the original MPO), so be extra careful when using talented characters. If your whole team is killed off, or if you fail a mission, your defeat will be truly painful, because you'll have to start all over from the beginning AND you'll lose all the items and experience you gained AND all the new soldiers you collected. However, there are two ways to prevent the supreme frustration of hard work undone. The first is the Fulton radio I mentioned before. It you're lucky enough to come across one, and you find yourself hopelessly unable to complete your mission, you can use it to extract yourself along with all your items and characters you acquired. You'll have to start the mission all over again, but at least you can keep everything you collected. Your other way out is a blue waypoint at the beginning of each level that allows you to jump back to the end of the previous level. This will allow you to jump right back to the next level and try it again.
If you're lucky enough to get through all the levels in a mission you can then use all your new teammates and items elsewhere and you'll be rewarded with a special unlockable character for each difficulty you complete for the first time. There's dozens of new types of soldiers to collect, ranging though all installments of the MGS series from the Genome soldiers of MGS 1 to the newest Tengu soldiers to be included in MGS 4. The weapons and soldiers you can collect also span across from past to future, so the plot has been essentially thrown out to negate the inevitable plot hole that would occur if the story were to continue in 1970. No cutscenes, no spoken dialogue, just the mission. The results are still very fun, nonetheless. If you're a fan of the online multiplayer, the frills will be hardly missed. All your new characters and items can be used in online combat, just as before, and new skills add a twist as well. New careers include a stuntman who can recover from unconsciousness faster and an acupuncturist, who can heal teammates with tranquilizer darts.
The game as a whole is nothing hugely special on its own. Like the "plus" implies, the fun of the game is in importing data from the first installment, and using it to build upon. The game is really designed for those who were addicted to collecting characters for online play, so anyone looking for a better campaign experience may be disappointed. I definitely recommend MPO+ for anyone who has played through the original. Skeptics may find solice in the $20 price tag if they're concerned about the risk, but I believe the extra content is worth a look.
-B²