Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops review

Sneaking, shooting and obsessive collecting make this one of the few great PSP games

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If your recruits aren't good enough for you, well, here's where Portable Ops starts to go all Pokemon. Using an ad-hoc or infrastructure connection, you can hook up with other players and trade your comrades for theirs, pit them against each other in deathmatches or even scan wireless networks to create random characters. You can even send a squad out to roam the Internet and capture soldiers who've been sent out to do the same.

As for the multiplayer itself, up to six players can compete in deathmatches, Capture matches (won by the player who holds onto a croaking frog the longest) or team-based versions of either. You can use any of the characters, weapons and gadgets you've collected, but be forewarned - if you choose the Real Battle option, you'll lose them for good once they're killed. Of course, if you win, you'll recruit your opponents' "dead" troops, so it can be worth the risk.

Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.