Why Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops is the Best Game in the Series (And quite possibly of all time)

Why Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops is the Best Game in the Series
(And quite possibly of all time)

The fourth in a series of essays by Tyler Clemmons


Series Continuation

Let us just be honest right off the bat: in many ways this is not an easy case to make. Metal Gear Solid started the craze and set the standard for a genre. Sons of Liberty messed with all of us in the most wonderful ways possible and changed what was possible to achieve in a video game. Snake Eater broke new grounds by going backward. How in the world can a handheld game compete with these?

I already established that “Calling to the Night” was an incredible song in the previous essay. Now, it is time to think outside the box. Way outside the cardboard box.

It is a heck of a novelty within a series, if not a genre. Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (referred to as MPO or Portable Ops hereafter in the main text of this essay) is what I like to call a meta-innovation. The Metal Gear series as a whole changed what a video game could be forever. Portable Ops changed what a Metal Gear game could be forever. Whether or not you like the changes that it made really winds up being irrelevant. The merit of Portable Ops as an innovation within the series lies much more in the style and technological differences as opposed to content. As such, its achievements are much more akin to Metal Gear Solid in terms of bringing something new to the table from previous installments, while Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater are more similar in this regard.

This comparison, to me, rings as a rather strong compliment, because I have a hard time thinking that Metal Gear Solid was anything but the most innovative title in the series. Portable Ops just happens to be innovative in the same way.

Now, I am definitely outside the box. In the spirit of the technological differences with MPO, this essay is going to take a different direction from the others in the series. Mentioning the awesomeness of “Calling to the Night” was really the only thing I wanted to put out in writing, and the technological changes were integral to this next part. This more or less concludes the written portion of the essay. The rest of what I want to say about Portable Ops has already been put into a video.

Maybe some of you thought of MPO as a quick-fix excuse to make another game and find a way to stick Big Boss in it. Well perhaps you were half right, with the other half coming in the next game.

About the Author/Disclaimer of Recent Fanhood

Tyler Clemmons is a recreational writer and video game player who daylights as perhaps the youngest on-air personality in all of classic rock radio. He first discovered the Metal Gear series in 2001, was first fully intrigued by it in 2004, and finally became a complete lunatic for it in 2007. Since then, he has worked diligently to gain an understanding of it that can at least coexist with that of the long-time fans. He might be the only person more excited about Rising than Peace Walker – take that, portable games.

He can be reached via e-mail at TylerClemmons@gmail.com or via phone if you happen to have his number.

Tyler knows the rules, and so do I.