Friday 12 January 2007
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, MGS' first full-action foray on PSP, will be boosted with exclusive new characters, deeper recruitment details, fresh multiplayer maps and additional missions when it's released in April in the UK, developer Konami has revealed today.

UK gamers will have the luxury of 12 more characters to locate and recruit into their spy network than in the Japanese and US versions, and all characters have been beefed up with new career info. These fresh details will expand each character's bio, highlighting their key attributes such as athleticism or strength.

Above: The UK edition of Portable Ops will also offer some patriotic solider uniforms

Boss Battle mode offers new recruitable characters to unlock while, in multiplayer, Portable Ops will gain two new battlegrounds for the game's exciting six-player stealth-offs. And why are we treated so kindly? We reckon Konami feels sorry for Europe, as we can't experience the GPS-linked gameplay boasted by US and Japanese versions of Portable Ops.

But whatever the reasons for these special bits and bobs, we're not complaining. Especially since you can still locate and recruit rare characters by logging into PSP access points across the globe - a crude but still effective alternative to the GPS link-up. We'll have the first screens of these exclusive extras early next week.