Metareview - Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops

A true Metal Gear title on PSP? Not exactly. Yes, gone are all those stinkin' cards, but Portable Ops is no epic. Then again, this could be the game's greatest strength: it's not trying to be a PlayStation 2 title on the go.

With brisk missions, bold Infrastructure modes (see: Cyber-Survival), and gracious load times, Portable Ops is proof that PSP is a capable platform. (Kojima and company even found a use for the GPS attachment.)

• 1UP (95/100) - "[A] game that essentially pushes the PSP in all of its features: graphics, portability, Internet, extra hardware doohickeys, and multiplayer. Sure, it might have hiccups ... [but] it's also a damn good showcase for the PSP."

• Games Radar (90/100) - "Portable Ops feels like what you'd get if you took the Metal Gear Online game from MGS3: Subsistence, simplified it for the PSP and then built a single-player adventure around it ... but rest assured that Portable Ops is anything but shallow ... Portable Ops is one of the only games that's really tailored to all of the PSP's unique strengths. The controls work surprisingly well, the action doesn't feel like a pared-down console game and even the loading goes quickly."

• Gamepro (80/100) - "[It] succeeds because it boldly strays away from the familiar path that was forged by its big console brethren ... But for all its willingness to be different, Portable Ops still suffers from some of the familial defects."