A PSP gem for strategy lovers
I have not played the multiplayer on infrastructsure or ad-hoc but the campaign is very entertaining. There are 9 missions in total although they are sprawling and i spent around 30min to 1h 30min per mission and i have replayed some of them. Several missions take place at night which allows you to attach night vision scopes to your weapons and the screen displays in the usual green style, but can be viewed normally also. There is an interesting feature that allows you to play missions from a default insertion point "a" or an unlockable point "b". The additional insertion point is unlocked by aquiring the highest level of local influence in the previous mission, which has to do with objective completion. You can choose from the special forces of these countries: U.S., Netherlands, U.K., Australia, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, and South Korea, all voiced in their own languages. The third mode is Instant Action which while short can be entertaning. There are two missions unlocked for every campaign mission completed and they generally consist of defending an area, demolishing targets or maintaining 100% stealth. I found the stealth missions the most fun and all missions usually last 5 to 10 minutes.
The gameplay is the most impressive part of the package which consists of sneaking around knifing sentries and then arranging a nice cozy killing zone for their buddies. This is most easily accomplished by splitting your four man squad into two two-man squads alpha and bravo. You can also choose any one character at a time. This flexibility allows you to do things like simultaneously knife two sentries walking towards each other or surround your enemies and prevent them from taking cover. The many commands at your disposal allow you to aportion a field of fire, lay down suppressing fire, toss grenades and even have one squad run to your selected destination while the other squad provides cover. The sheer number of firearms that TS contains is amazing. easily 2 or 3 times the number found in the Fireteam Bravo series. All those weapons can be purchased by about halfway into the campaign if you did a good job and got alot of CE (command equity). There is one failure though, the training system, while it doesnt hurt the experience can be easily maxed out by the 4th mission. If you read the GS review (an absurdly low score) you know that it complains about camera woes and the inability to look around some corners. Let me assure you that that is false, you are in complete control of the camera. As long as you have placed your squad next to the corner you can use the "L" button to switch between squad mates and easily peek around any obstactle. It is true however that the movement skimmer occasionally gets hung up on objects like stairs but it isnt a big issue. Personally I had no trouble with the load times the reviewer has obviously never played ESIII:Morrowind :) .If you are on the fence about this game i encourage you to go ahead and buy it, it is one of my PSP favorites!