METAL GEAR SOLID: PORTABLE OPS - PSP - Is it good? Hardcore fans shower praise. Cautious newcomers are left bewildered.
However, as the game began and I immersed myself in the world-doubts and second thoughts rose like dandelions in the summer.
The controls in previous Metal Gear titles work perfectly once you get in the know. Here on the PSP...not so much, at least for me. I found them to be increasingly tedious as time went on. There was never a flow reached where reaching the proper buttons and pulling the proper trigger allowed me to enact the proper tactics or strategies that I was looking to employ. Again, that's just my own personal experience with this though. Others may, have and will find it a much more easily controlled world than I, I'm sure.
Being that the story takes place after the events in MGS3: Snake Eater, I was primed, prepped, and ready for action (as I thoroughly enjoy that game and praise it to this day!). But, upon immersing myself in the world, I found the plot lacking, wanting and deviating from a tried and true formula that the Metal Gear series has honed to a science. While it attempts bravely to coerce the player into falling head over heels to solve this and that, to dive into the mysteries, to REALLY want to defeat this or that character, to REALLY want to get to know them-it just simply falls flat on it's cardboard cutout face. And it's a shame because anyone who's in on the Metal Gear saga/history would expect to be intensely engaged and hanging on every word. I thought that would be me, but it ended up to be more like me hanging on each minute that excrutiatingly and monotonously went by so that I could put the game down and do just about anything else.
That's not how a Metal Gear game should make a gamer feel. But that's what happened to me.
There's standard action, but that's another problem. It's standard. It breaks no new ground. It seems like a few steps backwards into original Playstation territory. Which isn't a terrible thing to envision, but when a release is developed in this day and age when standards and techniques are at these stages-one expects a solid delivery, a solid journey, and the feeling that your money was well spent.
All in all, I believe that the absolutely obsessed fans will continue to eat up any Metal Gear merchandise, but those open-minded gamers that seek to know, experience and understand the true glory of the Metal Gear series should NOT start with this title.
P.S. - - - Pick up MGS3 or MGS4 - no matter what sort of gaming you're into!