Beans Spilled on MGS: Portable Ops
Yummina hummina, it's awesome.
Published: August 23, 2006
We've got nothing against Metal Gear Acid (well, nothing against MGA2 anyway), but, well, it's not a proper Metal Gear game. It's not canon, and plays like the departure from the universe and narrative of the main series that it is. Strategy is all well and good, but we want us a portable version of Metal Gear Solid 3. As it turns out, that's almost exactly what we're getting with Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, though we're probably getting ahead of ourselves here.
Here's the deal: Portable Ops is canonical Metal Gear, meaning it actually takes place in the MG timeline. Specifically, we're talking about 1970, six years after the events of MGS3, and before the rise of Outer Heaven where the series all began with the original Metal Gear on the MSX. Think of PO as sort of a bridge between Big Boss' life as a solider and his eventual defection and formation of Outer Heaven, which introduced everyone to Solid Snake. This is important, because the events here are in many ways tied to what's going on with Metal Gear Solid 4.
As a proper addition to the Metal Gear saga, Portable Ops is been closely overseen by Hideo Kojima himself, and the team at Kojima Productions has spent plenty of time paying service to both the games that came before and the ones that will be hitting in the future. What this means for fans is full voiceovers during cutscenes (drawn by Ashley Wood in the same style as the [umd=73]MGS Digital Graphic Novel[/umd]) voiced by the same people who donated their pipes in previous games. In other words, it's going to be a fanservice overload as tons of characters make appearances and all will have their roles reprised by the original voice actors.
The single-player story concerns itself with Big Boss waking up in a South American prison six years after the events of MGS3. He finds his former unit, FOX, has incited a massive revolt, culminating in rebels capturing a nuclear weapon and pointing it at Russia. Though the Cold War maybe over, it wouldn't take much of a spark to set things off again. While piecing together what caused the lead-up to the bloody coup, Big Boss meets a young Roy Campbell, who befriends the grizzled vet in what eventually becomes the catalyst for Big Boss starting Outer Heaven.
Though we didn't get a chance to play it, Konami did show us a new trailer for the single-player portions of the game, and mentioned that at any time, Big Boss can drag enemy soldiers into the back of Campbell's trailer and interrogate them for information. Furthermore, units can be recruited onto your side, and each has their own particular strengths and weaknesses in battle; medics heal but stuck for combat, snipers favor camping and so on. By performing certain tasks in the right situations, the ability to recruit powerful and rare non-player characters to your side opens up, making for what we hope is a ton of replay value.
Like MGS3: Subsistence, though, the main outside draw to the game beyond the single-player campaign is online play, and Portable Ops is already gunning for the top spot as the online killer app for the PSP. Through the clever use of IP addresses found at any hot spot, the game will generate a squad based on those little numbers, which can then be saved and used online at a hotspot of your choosing. Since you don't have to log on (the game just reads the IP), you can experiment with different hot spots around your cities, which should make for an insane variety of online squads.
We got the chance to go hands-on with the multiplayer portion in a single deathmatch map and were blown away by how damned good the game looks. The framerate is solid, the graphical detail amazing and the controls instantly familiar to anyone who played Metal Gear Online. A clever White Flag system allows players to surrender or keep fighting at the risk of losing that character forever. Though single-player allows you to place and switch between squad members, the multiplayer mode we played was stuck with but a single character.
After playing through the multiplayer portions, this has rocketed to the top of our most-wanted PSP game list, and you can bet we'll be all over any new info as soon as we can get it. Check back soon.
Here's the deal: Portable Ops is canonical Metal Gear, meaning it actually takes place in the MG timeline. Specifically, we're talking about 1970, six years after the events of MGS3, and before the rise of Outer Heaven where the series all began with the original Metal Gear on the MSX. Think of PO as sort of a bridge between Big Boss' life as a solider and his eventual defection and formation of Outer Heaven, which introduced everyone to Solid Snake. This is important, because the events here are in many ways tied to what's going on with Metal Gear Solid 4.
As a proper addition to the Metal Gear saga, Portable Ops is been closely overseen by Hideo Kojima himself, and the team at Kojima Productions has spent plenty of time paying service to both the games that came before and the ones that will be hitting in the future. What this means for fans is full voiceovers during cutscenes (drawn by Ashley Wood in the same style as the [umd=73]MGS Digital Graphic Novel[/umd]) voiced by the same people who donated their pipes in previous games. In other words, it's going to be a fanservice overload as tons of characters make appearances and all will have their roles reprised by the original voice actors.
The single-player story concerns itself with Big Boss waking up in a South American prison six years after the events of MGS3. He finds his former unit, FOX, has incited a massive revolt, culminating in rebels capturing a nuclear weapon and pointing it at Russia. Though the Cold War maybe over, it wouldn't take much of a spark to set things off again. While piecing together what caused the lead-up to the bloody coup, Big Boss meets a young Roy Campbell, who befriends the grizzled vet in what eventually becomes the catalyst for Big Boss starting Outer Heaven.
Though we didn't get a chance to play it, Konami did show us a new trailer for the single-player portions of the game, and mentioned that at any time, Big Boss can drag enemy soldiers into the back of Campbell's trailer and interrogate them for information. Furthermore, units can be recruited onto your side, and each has their own particular strengths and weaknesses in battle; medics heal but stuck for combat, snipers favor camping and so on. By performing certain tasks in the right situations, the ability to recruit powerful and rare non-player characters to your side opens up, making for what we hope is a ton of replay value.
Like MGS3: Subsistence, though, the main outside draw to the game beyond the single-player campaign is online play, and Portable Ops is already gunning for the top spot as the online killer app for the PSP. Through the clever use of IP addresses found at any hot spot, the game will generate a squad based on those little numbers, which can then be saved and used online at a hotspot of your choosing. Since you don't have to log on (the game just reads the IP), you can experiment with different hot spots around your cities, which should make for an insane variety of online squads.
We got the chance to go hands-on with the multiplayer portion in a single deathmatch map and were blown away by how damned good the game looks. The framerate is solid, the graphical detail amazing and the controls instantly familiar to anyone who played Metal Gear Online. A clever White Flag system allows players to surrender or keep fighting at the risk of losing that character forever. Though single-player allows you to place and switch between squad members, the multiplayer mode we played was stuck with but a single character.
After playing through the multiplayer portions, this has rocketed to the top of our most-wanted PSP game list, and you can bet we'll be all over any new info as soon as we can get it. Check back soon.