Overview:

Set after the events of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, we find Big Boss is out to strike it on his own after becoming jaded with the United States.  He is greeted by two individuals who are trying to make their country a better place only to realize that it has all been a ruse.  We find out that The Boss could potentially be alive since we hear her voice, and a contemporary song, over an audio cassette.  Naked Snake wants nothing else but to get to the bottom of this.  His mission takes him to the heart of 1970’s Costa Rica to, hopefully, find out what’s going on.

Visuals:

What a cool looking game for the PSP.  It invokes the feel of Snake Eater while still being noticeably portable.  The models look amazing while showing that Snake has aged and is trendy for the times.  The “animated” cutscenes leave something to be desired but they get the point across.  The environments are also really well done with some of them being quite large.  Only problem is they’re kind of empty but that’s to be expected.

Audio:

The game really shines here as most of the storyboards are voice acted with the same returning cast from the previous entries.  This can be a boondoggle as the cutscenes do drag on for quite some time and, with this being a portable entry, sometimes you just don’t have the time to wait for them to play out.  The rest of your typical Metal Gear sound are here with the “!” and soldier banter playing out as it should.  

Completion:

You know, I was all ready to hunker down and play this entry but then it got to the point where you have to start building out Mother Base or training individuals to learn upgrades where I bounced off.  I hated this in MGSV and I really didn’t want to do it in a portable game.  This, compounded on how the game actually played made me bounce off of it.  I know the system didn’t have dual analog so they’re working within the constraints, but having your camera on the face buttons is terrible.  I couldn’t get the hang of it and just stopped playing.  What a bummer.