Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops - updated hands-on

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More details revealed on recruiting, using new characters and the series' original Ninja

A little bit of the mystery surrounding Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops has fallen away, because we've got new screens, a brand new trailer and - best of all - new details on the handheld sequel to PS2's smash hit Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. To check the trailer - which offers up new plot and gameplay elements, graphic-novel-style cinematics and the first good look at the game's non-robotic Ninja - hit the Movies tab above. Just be sure to come back, because you're going to want to know the rest of this stuff.

When it arrives this winter, Portable Ops will break new ground for the stealth-action series, and that doesn't mean card-based strategy this time. The game opens in 1970 - six years after the events of Snake Eater - with Snake/Big Boss waking up in a cell in South America. He soon learns that his FOX unit has gone rogue, stolen a nuclear device and pointed it straight at the Soviets. To avert apocalypse, he'll have to recruit operatives for the new FOXHOUND unit (starting with his young hipster cellmate, Roy Campbell) and use their skills to help him do all the sneaky things he normally does himself.

We've learned a little bit more about how this recruitment will work; apparently, each mission begins with Campbell driving Snake to the insertion point in a military truck. If Snake can subdue enemies and drag them back to the truck, he and Campbell will go to work interrogating them. During the interrogation, you'll be able to reason with them, eventually winning them over to your side.

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.