No, there are no cards involved. Time to rejoice Metal Gear Solid fans on the move, this is a proper Metal Gear Solid game! Complete with all your favourite Metal Gear Solid moves such as holding soldiers up, shaking their bodies down for ammo and accidentally crouching before getting shot in the face when you were trying to roll away to safety. Oh, and army recruitment.

Army recruitment? Hideo Kojima’s series can never be accused of taking the path of least resistance and Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops is no different. Initially, it seems to be the usual Metal Gear fodder you’d expect to see on the console and that alone is enough for drool to accidentally trickle onto your PSP’s screen, before the quick wipe-drool-off-screen-then-check-tosee- if-anyone-was-watching ritual. Snake in a 3D environment, free to move about however he pleases, without having to worry about how many turns he has left or if he should use the Nikita card to move or to attack later. It’s a far cry from the boxed-in world of Metal Gear Ac!d and fans will feel a stirring in their crotch region when they see that not only does it look beautiful but it’s a whole Metal Gear Solid game squeezed into the PSP. With voiceovers. And cutscenes. And camp bosses with camp names like Gene. It’s such a wonderful thing to behold.

Put your hand back down there at the back, we know you want to know about controls. Surprise everyone! The controls work out fine. It’s essentially the Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater control system, having undergone a nip and tuck to fit in the slimmer PSP jeans. The only sacrifice that has been made is the moving the camera around has been shifted onto the D-pad. Due to the fact God only gave us one thumb on each hand (the cretin), this makes it a struggle to see the world around you while you’re running. Fortunately, the pacing of Portable Ops means this is never a problem, as you find that running anywhere that hasn’t been properly scouted is a very stupid idea. If Snake gets brave and charges into territory unknown, then Snake gets dead. It’s a simple equation.

So ladies and gentlemen, introducing – army recruitment! The main gimmick Portable Ops has hung its hook from is converting enemy soldiers to your team. Sneak up to the soldiers and you can hear them muttering about how happy there are with their life as a soldier (“Gene plans to attack the motherland? What is he thinking?”). The idea is you knock out the unhappy soldiers, then drag them back to the truck for a little persuasion and/or punch them in the mouth to convince them to join your side. Of course, it doesn’t work out this way – a few minor victories converting soldiers and you soon charge every soldier swinging your fists like Tyson, trying to gather an army large enough to conquer a small nation.

The point of having an army is each soldier has different traits and abilities, which you can use to your advantage. Some are particularly good with shotguns. Some are good at sneaking. Some are good at dragging bodies, Some can send items back to the truck for you to pick up when your inventory is full anyway. Soldiers can also get past their former comrades without too much suspicion, while Snake’s Billy Ray Cyrus mullet stands out like a sore thumb. The ‘army’ tag is a bit of a misnomer, as you can only ever control one character and the time and switch between them during levels. It’s more like the world’s largest tag-team, albeit a tagteam with balaclavas and AK-47s, probably the only thing the WWE hasn’t tried yet.

You also have to master the radar, which has changed again for this Metal Gear Solid entry into the series. That sounds incredibly dull, something that ranks up there with indulging in a hardcore Go! Sudoku session, but it’s a brilliant radar system. Any sounds soldiers make will be flashed up on your radar, with a colour cone indicating how close they are but never specifically pin-pointing their location. This encourages the slower pace of Metal Gear Solid 3 while leading to some tense moments. When you have an angry red cone flared up on your radar, you won’t want to so much as fart in fear of giving your position away.

Once you get the hang of the radar and the recruitment, Portable Ops falls into a nice rhythm, swinging between your need to accomplish your main mission and your want to recruit, recruit, recruit. Throw in the trademark Metal Gear touches to uncover – try starting a mission with a soldier rather than Snake for a new Codec conversation or shooting Roy Campbell at the very start – and this really is the whole package. This is a huge triumph for the Metal Gear Solid series, really highlighting what Sony’s portable can do when developers figure out where the ‘Make Everything Look Lovely’ button is hidden under the PSP screen. An essential purchase for fans.

Ryan King