calling to the night is the best vocal track in the series

and its sadly part of the worst 3d metal gear. while ideas like recruiting soldiers and the mission structure are great, I dont think they fully work in this game and are just better handled in peace walker and V. the story is pretty whatever apart from moments like SPOILERS johnny's death.

idk this game cannot be saved by just good ideas and stuff like ashely wood's fantastic art.

MGS PO é um jogo muito injustiçado. A gameplay, por ser igual a do MGS3, é muito boa e junto com a nova função, de recrutar soldados, deixa ele bem divertido de se jogar.
A história é uma coisa que me surpreendeu. De início, ela é bem meh, demorando um pouco pra "dar partida", mas quando dá, ele fica muito boa. Além de ter a presença de personagens novos, como o Gene e as "irmãs" Elisa e Ursula, e a presença de personagens já conhecidos, como o Campbell, o Frank Jeager (futuro Gray Fox), Ocelot (como sempre) e etc.

Porém, por mais que tenha coisas boas, elas não são perfeitas. A mecânica de recrutamento de soldados, por exemplo é feita de uma maneira bem chata, com você tendo de arrastar o soldado até o caminhão. E a gameplay, por mais parecida com a do MGS3, pela a plataforma que foi lançada, fica difícil de jogar. Além do chefe final, que foi facilmente o mais fácil da franquia inteira.

Enfim, um jogo sólido (sem trocadilhos) e injustiçado pelos fãs, mas tem vários probleminhas que deixa ele não ser tão bom quanto os outros.

Portable Ops is an early mobile MGS only predated by Ghost Babel. Whereas the latter game was a continuation of the series' early MSX titles, Portable Ops aimed for something new yet familiar.

It didn't quite nail the goals it set out, but as I finished the game, I couldn't help realize how much ground work it laid out for Peace Walker and the eventual culmination of Big Boss' army in MGSV. A skeleton of what those games would become is here and it is rough, but the game is short enough to be inoffensive as another addition to the series.

The story manages to also play with some interesting ideals about a soldier's place in the world that give it that MGS flavor.

Overall, it's okay, but not awful.

it's pretty aright, doesn't really come close to the trilogy but it's honestly fine enough for a portable MGS.

biggest issue was the stamina system being back but the only way of recovering any stamina is exclusively done via rations, which aren't easy to come by - not helped by the extremely limited inventory system.

The cutscene presentation is pretty different but I do like the art for it, shame there isn't any voice acting for the codecs though. The recruiting system was an interesting idea, that much I'll say.

Esse jogo é MUITO subestimado. Sempre que falam é só pra jogar na cara que é não canônico e que o PW é muito melhor blablabla.
E jogo até não é perfeito, mas ele é realmente muito bom, a história é simples, porém muito envolvente, o Gene é um dos melhores vilões de Metal Gear e tenho dito, o stealth também é muito bom, apesar de ser bem fácil, a direção de arte desse jogo é provavelmente a melhor da série junto com a de PW, as artes estilo graphic novel são lindíssimas demais, e no geral, apesar da gameplay ser bem reduzida e simples, ela é muito boa e viciante.
Os únicos problemas do jogo são algumas missões que são meio confusas pra se liberar, um dos bosses do jogo ser um porre, o fato dele se tornar meio repetitivo no midgame e claro, a limitação do próprio hardwere, se isso aqui fosse pro PS3 seria o puro ouro.
Mas pra quem gosta de MGS3 esse jogo é praticamente obrigatório.

Metal Gear Solid: PoOps? No, Johnny is the one who poops in each game. Any MGS fan would know that, sheesh.

This is the one "Solid" Metal Gear game that I hadn't played prior, and I knew it's been widely contested as canon or not. At a glance, it looks like a portable Metal Gear Solid 3, at least visually. Hideo Kojima wasn't directly involved with this title, and while I don't believe his presence should be mandatory to make a good MGS title, this game feels like it's severely lacking a certain something.

I think the biggest hurdle everyone faces when trying Portable Ops has got to be the controls. The game is hellbent on emulating MGS3's control style, even if it results in a really muddy experience. The controls aren't impossible to get a grip on, but I had to unlearn certain things that had become muscle memory after years of playing MGS games. The PSP's general lack of buttons result in weird quirks like recentering the camera also readying your weapon, or needing to hold a button to sneak silently (despite the PSP's analog nub existing). The surround indicator is a neat twist on the usual radar, if not underdeveloped. I miss the upgrade that it eventually gets in Peace Walker where it shows enemies in your immediate vicinity. It sure beats having to open the pause menu every five seconds to double check if someone is close by. The inventory management is so limiting too, only four slots for items or weapons is insane. There's a reason why items and weapons were separate categories in every other Metal Gear game.

Portable Ops does have one cool trick up its sleeve: Undercover stealth! The soldiers you amass come in various uniforms, and using a soldier that matches the uniforms of the soldiers in the area will let you run around unnoticed. Well, unnoticed as long as you don't do anything suspicious, like readying your weapon, using your sneaking stance, or climbing ladders. Yeah, guards in this game aren't smart enough to climb ladders, whodathunkit? Undercover stealth makes early areas into complete freebies, but it balances out in later areas as soldier loadouts become more diverse.

"But wait," I hear you ask, "playing as other soldiers? How do you do that?" I recommend you brace yourself for approximately 70% of MGS:PoOps's gameplay: soldier recruitment. Just knock a soldier out, and then slowly drag his ass aaaaaaaaaall the way back to your truck at the start of the area. The game is aware of how tedious this method is, so it immediately introduces a new method, human deliveries. To deliver a soldier straight back to the truck, you have to drop him next to another (inactive) member of your squad, then call the codec frequency for deliveries. This comes with its own problems though. Teammates can only be swapped out if a designated "hiding spot" is in range, and their locations feel extremely arbitrary. The only way you can deliver is if another member of your team is already out in the field, so you'll have to take some extra time to move your teammates further into each map. Even once you stop dragging each individual soldier back to the truck and replace it with calling in a human delivery, it still brings that teammate back to the god damn truck. It's like you're constantly running a relay race in each area. And to what end? There's no clear indication that a soldier has good or bad stats. Apparently it has something to do with the kind of items they drop, but again, tedium.

On the positive side of things, I think this game has the most interesting version of troop management. Peace Walker and MGSV were pretty hands-off about the whole ordeal, but Portable Ops requires you to assign each soldier to their units individually. It's really not so bad, you'll never have so many soldiers that you can't effectively manage all of them. Your tech and medical teams develop items and equipment between excursions, but the best use of your men is listening in on the enemy. Setting up a spy unit in each area helps fill in the map with more useful info, as well as receiving intel about side quests or unique equipment. And the story? Absolutely bonkers, even if the gameplay pacing kills its momentum. ESP-trained twins, extended use of familiar faces from MGS3, young Roy Campbell, and a lab-cultured perfect soldier. Not to mention Gene, a leader who fills in a neat gap between MGS3 and the original Metal Gear (before PW and TPP). You could argue that this game is where Big Boss got the inspiration to be a charismatic leader for soldiers with nowhere else to go. All that said, the plot's effectively trapped in a vacuum; No game released after Portable Ops ever references its events (with a single exception).

I think all MGS games can be described like this to a degree, but if you know what you're doing, PoOps is really short. You might be able to find a "speed game" in here, if that's what you're into. As far as I can tell, this game's sole legacy is the credits theme, "Calling to the Night", featured on ingame MP3 players in all subsequent games. After skipping this to play Peace Walker instead years ago, I finally understand that offhand comment near the beginning of that game: "Finally, we can leave all that crap in San Hieronymo behind." After just one playthrough, I'm ready to leave this game behind too.

Portable Ops is an odd entry in the Metal Gear franchise. Be it because of its poor accessibility on a handheld console that can definitely not hold its weight, be it because it has sprung countless arguments online to whether it is worth it to play or even debating about its place in the canon story line of Metal Gear, be it because ever since Acid and Acid 2 and countless mobile games people just stopped caring about the handheld titles in the series, being overlooked as mediocre or simply not giving them a try... Pretty much everything that could go wrong with going ahead and making a fully-fledged story made to fit into an already established and moving story line is simply been overlooked and underrated by many.

I've got to say that my first experience with the game wasn't the best. I first picked it up in my PlayStation Vita console, installed a patch that could let me play with dual stick controls (...because if you don't do this, the only way to move the camera would be with the D-Pad that is very conveniently placed on top of the movement stick in the console), and so I booted it up. The first look at it wasn't really all that great.
I noticed how the game ran pretty poorly in its actual hardware, a sub-30 fps at all times wasn't great for a series that is usually pretty slick and smooth in a technical level, coupled that with the fact that I was pretty much counting pixels on my screen when I was trying to take a guard down with Snake's tranquilizer pistol, it wasn't a really great two first hours and I kind of dreaded the fact that I was gonna have to be playing this but not Metal Gear Solid 4 or something else.

So, in my journey to see how could I improve this game experience I noticed that there was a 60 FPS patch for use with the PPSSPP emulator, and naturally I just had to try it. I put my save file in my computer, increased the internal resolution to 1080p and keybinded in dual stick controls... And, oh my god. This game is literally just diet Metal Gear Solid 3 absolutely shackled and limited by its original hardware its insane, and it doesn't surprise me how this didn't catch on to people even today.

Portable Ops is a following story to Snake Eater, if you think about it, it's kind of like a neglected Metal Gear Solid 3.5 and its main catch is on how the operation rolls out. In most Metal Gear games it's mainly Snake sneaking into some sort of facility without any prior objects of utility or weapons, these having to be found in the facility itself in order to get to advance forward, beat bosses easier or take out guards faster. And in that regard, this game is completely different to any other entry that tries to put its spin into the Tactical Espionage series.

In this game, due to how the plot is set up very early on, Snake doesn't have to work all alone anymore, but you instead have to sneak into different places around San Hieronymo and convince the guards that you take out to join your side to aid in the creation of weaponry, medicine, scouting different places to inform you of valuable arms that might be useful for your own mission, and with this you practically get to create your own army that's out to rebel against Gene who longs for a country inhabited by special soldiers at the expense of some of his own troops... And eventually Metal Gear coming into question.
A lot of these recruits have their own special abilities and are more fit to be dispatched in certain areas (such as tech or medical) than to use in battle, because you can opt for playing as 200 or so characters that you can recruit yourself, some even secret only able to be entered through passwords, they can all be equipped with their own weapons and if you have an unit that gets eliminated or depletes its stamina you can just roll out with another one, this works a lot for gathering objects when your inventory full.

Now, the bad part about this system is that in order to recruit members you have to take out guards, generals, medics and scientists, and that's fine since the stealth aspect of this game is pretty easy, but the one thing that turns away people the other direction is having to drag their corpse all the way back to the spawn area behind a truck to count them in. This process takes a long while if you're doing it by hand and you most likely will because I've found that the mechanic of leaving people nearby cardboard boxes with the other members of your team around for them to get captured simply doesn't work. I personally had to use fast forwarding in my emulator to make it less of a chore, and even then I had to repeat a few missions so that I could gather enough members for a sustainable medic team or spy unit, but it's something that you'll do once and never again hopefully, since most of the time you'll use Snake anyways, and unless you fight bosses there's no need for more than your trusty Mk22 since the enemies' routing is pretty basic and most of the maps you're gonna sneak into are pretty much enclosed, smaller spaces because of the console it was put on (but also works at its advantage because it makes for a bite-sized experience you can either binge or hop in and on every so often).

Having explained how the recruitment system works, the only thing that there is left to say about this game is pretty much its story, it's surprisingly good for a spin-off game of a seemingly low budget, it has great pacing, a great retrospective on Big Boss's actions through MGS3, and even a glimpse into the future that is the start of the whole franchise and a small array of familiar faces who make for bosses that are pretty much on par with mainline. I particularly like how they adapted the story to be in this very rough comic artstyle that fits the tone of the series perfectly and manages to absolutely bring the same movie-like vibe and action of the 3D titles to the portable system.

It's a shame that a lot of people won't look back to this game because it's been argued forever whether it is worth it or not because "it's not canon", when it was made carefully so it didn't contradict anything from the main story, expanded upon Naked Snake's story and even had the approval and overseeing of Kojima himself even if he didn't direct or write for it (he literally didn't want to drop MGS4 until this one was finished and out), and people worry about it because it didn't show up on a timeline? Gimme a break, the story is excellent for what it is and you best bet it's canon, it'd be a waste if it wasn't. (Manifesting it shows up as a remastered version in Master Collection Vol. 2 whenever that comes out three years from now on)

Overall, pretty surprising. Calling to the Night is a really good credits song, too.