Is Portable Ops worth playing?

So much like everyone else on the planet, i've been playing the hell out of TPP (finished Chapter 1, yet gonna need to take a break from it since I have a full week of college studies ugh! ) and as someone who has played through MGS1, MGS2, MGS3, MGS4 and Peace Walker... I am left wondering if I missed anything by not playing through Portable Ops. I know it's not listed on Kojima's MGS timeline, but is it worth going back and playing or should I just load up one of those YouTube vids with all of the story beats and cut-scenes or should I just ignore it entirely?

I played it for 30 minutes about, but it was terrible. Maybe it gets better but my copy of the game thankfully stopped working.

Things you should know:

- the codec calls aren't voiced. Many of the cutscenes aren't voiced either. It's really dull and doesn't feel like metal gear at all.

- no choice between shooter and action style controls. Action is the default. You can manually reassign looking to the face buttons, but there is a lock on button AND a ready button (they are separate buttons unlike in peace walker) so good luck figuring out where to reassign everything in a way that makes sense. If you use default controls, dpad is camera, fortunately you can press a button to center camera behind you, although this is not so great for a stealth game.

- I only played about 3 levels but each one was basically just a multiplayer map. You're placed on the outside and the objective is in the middle, and the story is just an attempt to wrap ot all together and make it seem like a regular metal gear game. (Although I've played other games that did this pretty well, Medal of Honor Heroes and Phantasy Star Universe, so there's nothing really wrong with passing off a mp game as a single player game, and maybe it does get better but I didn't like anything about it so far)

- the graphics are much worse than peace walker and.. Snake's movements are more robot-like compared to peace walker, and the controls feel a little eh. The game just doesn't have the same polish to it. Also, it lacks color. By comparison Peace Walker was very vibrant.

It's been years since I played it, but from what I remember I loved it. I don't know how it's aged though, controls were a little wonky.

If you just want the story, just watch this video. Feel free to mute it if the sound is too annoying.

Not really a Metal Gear fan, and haven't actually played this one, but I did play some of Portable Ops plus. I think that was one of my first online experiences in a game and I never figured out how to get a gun, so I just ran around doing the dive thing and tackling people. I don't think it was a very good game though. Not sure how this one compares.

I'd say if you are going to try it out make sure it has plus to it. Another thing to is that it is probably less refined than Peacewalker and suffers from the psp only having one analog stick but other then that it is adequate. It also has some pretty important characters showing up in the games storymode which is sorta surprising since Konami never talks about the game anymore.

You should at least check out the story because it adds more to the story between MGS3 and Metal Gear than Peace Walker, Ground Zeroes, and Phantom Pain. The gameplay was rough at the time and can only have gotten worse with aging.

It's pretty rough around the edges, but it is an interesting curio if you want to see where the base building / recruiting from Peace Walker and The Phantom Pain had their origin. It's also interesting from the perspective of being a Kojima-less Metal Gear. It mimics the style, but lacks a lot of the depth and attention to detail that the core series is known for. It's not a bad game, but is easily the least essential of the main Metal Gear series. I wouldn't recommend it unless you are way into Metal Gear or interested in it as a historical curiosity (which also probably means you're way into Metal Gear).

Honestly think it's a better game than PW.

Playing it is one thing since I played through it a long time ago and the only thing I fondly remember is the whole pseudo mother base recruitment and base management stuff but I thoroughly enjoyed the story beats in Portable Ops so watching the video of the cut scenes Here would be my suggestion. The video was made by the same guy who made the Peace Walker video that Dan and Drew watched.

I finished Portable Ops back around release, it is rougher than Peace Walker. The levels were mostly designed for Single Player and Multiplayer in mind so as a result they are not as intricate as Peace Walker's multi-zone areas.

You form a squad of 4 solider for each mission, some of which provide support roles like creating items or producing intel. You can swap between squad members, any non-active squad member hides in a cardboard box. You are capturing soldiers to recruit them but there is no fulton system so you need to drag them to a truck. You can find soldiers by scanning Wi-Fi signals like the PSP version of Peace Walker. Soliders who are not integral to the story can actually permanently die on missions.

The story is okay, Ashley Wood's cutscene art is as awesome as always. A bunch of the supporting cast from Metal Gear Solid 3 make appearances. It is not integral to the plot of the series since it was not written by Kojima but it is more important than Ghost Babel, ACiD and ACiD 2 since those games take place in alternate realities.

It's not a must-play its just okay, maybe worth checking out if you have played everything else.

The controls aren't great, but Portable Ops and Peace Walker and probably closest to Phantom Pain in gameplay then any of the other MGS games oddly enough.

It's not worth playing. The only good thing about it is that it has got MGS3 Subsistence gameplay, in your pocket. Aside from that, it's lame.

Peace Walker was great but it's hard to go back to nowadays, in my opinion.

Yes, POPS and Peace Walker are fantastic. Peace Walker has a solid argument to be the best Metal Gear game.