I was a big fan of the original release, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. It was a bit of redemption after what seemed like a trend in the wrong direction with the MGS games on the big consoles. I mean, the original game was like my church for about a month. The graphics now look pretty primitive compared to what we can hold in our hands with the PSP. The gameplay in many ways hasn't changed, but that in itself isn't a bad thing. The later games on more advanced consoles were clearly leaps forward in terms of graphics... even the sequel to the first game on PlayStation was a huge advance. Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus is built on the same foundation as its predecessor, which was itself built on visuals that were somewhere between PSOne and PS2 graphics. The disappointment with Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus is that it doesn't make any leaps forward from the game we played as Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. This isn't a new thing for the franchise since we had the "VR Missions" entry on PSOne not long after the original game launched. The PS2 games had their follow-up entries that offered expanded content and it was never about introducing more cutting edge graphics.

The new stuff you'll see here if you use a watchful eye includes some new soldiers and of course, some new maps. The maps don't really stand out in contrast to what we had in the previous title. This means you'll be struck at some points with the notion that you're just replaying Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops with a few twists. There are some notable new areas including at least one from a previous MGS game, and some old main characters that make an appearance. All this might seem strange to someone picking this up for the first time without previous MGS history. The little touches may be lost on these people and it pretty much was lost on me, since I felt like I'd had my fill of the original Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops and wanted something new. The novelty is only in the gameplay here, barring a few cosmetic items that won't mean much if you don't love the experience of playing.

The add-on game is almost a fixture of Metal Gear Solid at this point, but I kind of saw Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops as the add-on to a string of console games that were never received quite as well as the original. The portable version was pitched as a way to experience the world of tactical espionage and infiltration on the small screen. It was all that and more for people that wanted to return to the more strategic qualities of gaming that the original offered. Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus could be a way for fans of its predecessor to dive back in with lots of new content and experience more of what they enjoyed before, but it doesn't make the cut. Instead it feels like a repackaging of the old game without nearly enough new stuff to justify splashing out the cash.

The most obvious thing missing is the story. The new single-player experience is just a series of missions that works along the lines of a survival mode in other games. You play stage after stage and keep what you kill. This includes weapons, enemy soldiers, and special items you find during the stage. You can risk it all by continuing or drop back into managing your squad at the conclusion of a stage. Playing levels over again is possible in case you really blow things at some point, but you'll end up going back anyway if you lose every member of the squad. This creates some frustration in the event that you played a nice round but ran up against something difficult or made one stupid mistake. That stupid mistake is going to cost you your characters' progress up to that point and all the items you collected in previous levels. The stage concept is fine, but without the option to save during a stage or exit gracefully there is just too much frustration. The ability to conscript enemy soldiers is still present, but introduces some weird changes to the feature that draws recruits down from a wireless point. The feature still works but the soldiers now can refuse to join your squad. In the game's documentation, this is made to sound like a new, exciting challenge, but for most folks it will just feel like frustration. If you built a great army in the first game, you'll want to transfer over all your people anyway, so it may not matter.

The competitive modes are largely the same, with a few key additions. Chatting is played up and available both in the game and in a separate section of the lobby. The Shooting Range is now available for play as a competitive feature and lives on its own, attached to the multiplayer lobby. Many features of the lobby are tuned to beginners, which is strange since they'll most likely feel completely out of their depth without any kind of story to key in on during the single-player mode. The Training Mode is great, but battling the bosses in Boss Rush won't mean much if they haven't played through the first game. Continuing from the previous game is the option to upload a prebuilt team to the network, where they'll roam and do battle and possibly bring back some spoils of battle. The team is autonomous so all you can do is fire-and-forget, unlike the competition modes where you'll enter the battlefield kicking some enemy butt. Regular and Team Deathmatch are fun and additional modes such as Real Combat, Free Versus, or Game Sharing round out the package. The Real Combat mode is basically like racing your car for its pink-slip like they did in the movie Grease. Lose the slip, lose the car. Losing your hard-earned compatriots is sad, which is why Virtual Battle or Free Versus exists. All the options for online multiplayer are identical, making it almost worthless as an upgrade for those gamers hooked on online play. The only possible motivation to buy Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus for core fans of the first game is to gain access to a few new characters and have the option to play in new locations. Why this couldn't be added to the first game as a download expansion pack is a mystery, but the answer might lie somewhere in the $19.99 you'll be asked to fork over for Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus.

The Infinity Mission Mode, which serves as the single-player experience in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus, is not without its challenge. Each stage introduces more difficult enemies, both in terms of placement and the patterns they walk on their guard patrols. The ability to structure a dream team to infiltrate every level is wiped out somewhat when you have to play several levels across a stage successfully in order to keep your items and captured soldiers. You learn to improvise when you are forced to play one level after another and you definitely learn to build your squads strategically. The management of all your soldiers is challenging, especially as you approach the game limit of 200. Trying to keep track of 200 anythings is difficult in my world, so you can imagine how much I have to micromanage all these soldiers. Figuring out in what areas they excel and matching them up squad by sqaud is challenging in its own right. As you jump into the online action, you'll only have to worry about the strengths and weaknesses of other players rather than the PSP CPU... The best thing about the MGS franchise is how the guards and soldiers appear to be smart by virtue of their programmed routines. I never get tired of watching the reaction to a call for reinforcements, the cool-down stage after danger seems less present, and finally the return to normalcy. Human opponents never give you this satisfaction but instead will not rest until they've hunted you down in a stage and popped your cap.

The controls for Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus are unchanged for the most part with the exception of a few new features. Chat is initiated during battles by pressing Select + (O) and using a simplified keyboard. This feature helps to plan strategy or direct team members in modes like Team Deathmatch or Team Capture, but chat tends to draw attention away from the main gameplay and just doesn't feel smooth using the PSP controls. The other new features are the ability to take a snapshot of action on screen to save and send to your friends. This is coupled with some new animations for movement that can be initiated during battle and ostensibly photographed in the game for perusal later. Why this would rank high on a MGS fan's wish-list, we don't know.

The biggest question mark is why someone, anyone will be rushing out to buy this? It doesn't offer anything groundbreaking from the first game and it virtually is the first game with a few tweaks. The hardware is well suited to episodic gaming and low-cost or no-cost upgrades. The model for Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus is too limited and feels like a retread. It might be different if the original story mode were preserved and this game really was just an expanded, "director's cut" of the original. Instead it feels like the pressure to release a special add-on overruled the common sense observation that this just wasn't enough to justify a new release. Had this been packaged alongside a new game as an add-on disk, it would have been a great bonus, but as an independent game it just doesn't work. There's nothing wrong with the guts of Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus, nothing that will prevent you from playing. The sad thing is why work like this is being pushed to market rather than having the development team focus on something new and innovative that will be as cutting-edge as the first MGS installment we played back in 1998.