Also, on the Metal Gear Online case:
As strange as it sounds, even if you've played through the original MGS3, the new camera angle can be reason enough to make the game worth playing through again. Key action sequences, such as the battle against the Ocelot commandos or the tense and methodical sniper duel against The End, are reinvigorated thanks to this simple, arguably long-overdue addition. But then there's Metal Gear Online, which is like a whole separate game and could easily justify the price of admission by itself. Metal Gear Online is generally an excellent spin on the conventions of multiplayer shooters, combining the sort of action you'd expect from other online shooters with some distinctive Metal Gear twists.
There are five different modes of play: sneaking mission, capture mission, rescue mission, team deathmatch, and deathmatch. Deathmatch is probably the only one of these that isn't compelling, since it's particularly chaotic. Sneaking mission pits one player as Snake, who must retrieve a microfilm and reach an exit point before an opposing team takes him out. Capture mission is a tug-of-war-style game of "capture-the-frog," in which two teams must fight to keep a froggy doll safely in their bases for the longest period of time. Rescue mission has one team defending a rubber duckie while an assault team must grab it and haul it back to base; this is the only mode in which players stay dead until the end of the round if they're killed. The two deathmatch modes are your basic free-for-alls. Online play supports up to eight players in a match, and it's easy to quickly get into open matches in your mode of choice using the game's lobby system.
METAL GEAR ONLINE (PS2) - Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence
There's also that whole multiplayer mode, remember that? From the main menu, you can jump into a six-player ad hoc versus game, and there's a game-sharing option if you'd like to start a quick deathmatch with some friends using just one copy of the game. You can also trade comrades with other Portable Ops players. The real meat of the multiplayer experience is somewhat buried within the tactical map interface, though. If you've played Metal Gear Online as part of MGS3: Subsistence, you'll know what to expect, but it's remarkable to play a fully featured online shooter such as this in a portable format. The control scheme translates quite well to a multiplayer mode, though again, this really isn't much of a pick-up-and-play game; so perhaps the reason the online mode is nestled within the campaign is because by the time you can get to it, you'll have already learned the controls to some extent.
Not all of the multiplayer modes from Subsistence are in here, as multiplayer is limited to deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag. You have a basic auto-aim ability with your weapons, but by manually aiming from a first-person viewpoint, you can instantly kill opponents with a shot to the head. Besides a whole bunch of guns, you'll get to use grenades, mines, and even those incredibly distracting dirty magazines in battle, and online performance was mostly smooth and stable during our tests on live servers. Interestingly, you get to choose between either "virtual" online battles or "real" online battles, and in the latter, any of your characters that are killed will indeed be gone afterwards; but whoever killed them may then keep them, sort of like racing for pink slips. Except in a race for pink slips, you can't wave a white flag to give up and live to fight another day--you do have that option here. At any rate, since it's based on a tried-and-true concept, the online multiplayer portion of Portable Ops is quite impressive, though the fairly complex controls and quick, brutal rounds will naturally attract a hardcore subset of MGS players. So don't expect anything less than ruthless competition.
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops gets even weirder by featuring a mode called cyber-survival, which is basically a simulated online strategy game. You can deploy squads of your comrades to go online and fight against other squads, and depending on your squad's statistics and how you've arranged and outfitted your four characters, they'll fare better or worse. You can earn new recruits through this process and through some other quirky means, such as scanning for nearby wireless access points, or even using the PSP's GPS device, which is sold in Japan. These types of extras give the game some of that unmistakable Metal Gear Solid personality.
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops PSP
By the way, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops is my favourite handheld game. Ever.
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