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.
