So how do you gather more soldiers for your cause? Well there are a number of ways but the first that you'll encounter is when you capture an enemy in the stealth missions. To do this you have to knock the enemy target out and bring him back to your truck. The first time you do this you'll get a nice cutscene of Snake convincing this enemy to join your side of the battle. After that you just assume this happen every time, but without having to waste your time seeing the same cutscene over and over again. It's a fun little element that has real game value as you add new members to your team.

The recruitment phase isn't confined only to the single-player campaign either. You can recruit new heroes in multiplayer, you can do it by doing a "scan" and nabbing other real-world players' characters or you can swap them directly with other players. There's even a mode where you can set your PSP to swap characters without your intervention, adding a touch of randomness to the whole affair. Multiplayer consists of the usual suspects including deathmatch and capture the flag style play. While the multiplayer could have used a few more modes, what's there works pretty well and is a lot of fun, though urban-based gamers will get far more out of it than those in rural areas for obvious reasons.

At the end of the day, Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops is the defacto PSP game of 2006. Finally the PlayStation Portable gets a game that might be worth buying the system for. With all the variety offered in this game including signature MGS stealth action, recruitment elements, decent multiplayer and a decent and well crafted story, MGS fans would be foolish not to buy this game - it is truly the best PSP game of 2006 and the best MGS game since Snake Eater.