YMMV / Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops

• Awesome Music: See here.
• Broken Base: The canonicity of Portable Ops is heavily debated. Some fans still consider the game to be canon because it expands upon some of the details that was referenced in the ending timeline of Metal Gear Solid 3 and the core story foreshadows the events of Metal Gear Solid 4. Others consider Portable Ops to be non-canon because Hideo Kojima didn't direct the game. Not helping matters is how the game has been seen by Konami and Kojima since the release of Peace Walker.^note It is barely acknowledged in official Konami press and media, it wasn't included in the compilations Metal Gear Solid: HD Collection and Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection, and Kojima considers it to be a spinoff.
• Contested Sequel: Portable Ops bears the distinction for being the only mainline Metal Gear Solid game not directed by Kojima himself and has a peculiar position in the series' canon as a result. Initially advertised as the "missing link" between the events of Metal Gear Solid 3 and the original Metal Gear, it essentially tied up all the loose ends between those two games (showing how Big Boss first formed FOXHOUND, met Roy Campbell and Frank Jaeger, and obtained the funds for Outer Heaven) and even foreshadowed the events of Metal Gear Solid 4. However, despite the positive reception it received upon its release, Kojima went on to direct the next PlayStation Portable game in the series, Peace Walker, which he wrote as a direct continuation of Metal Gear Solid 3, ignoring everything that happened in Portable Ops aside from a single reference in which Kazuhira Miller tells Snake that they can finally "leave all the crap in San Hieronymo behind".
• Game-Breaker: The M870 shotgun is ridiculously effective against half of the bosses (namely Python, Null and Gene).
• Good Bad Bugs: The ability to have your squadmates hiding in boxes capture enemies doesn't check to see if you dragged multiple enemies, meaning it's possible to capture an entire level's worth of guards by knocking them out and then dragging near the hiding team member then calling it in, which takes significantly less time then dragging them all to the truck individually.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Possibly intentional given how much Peace Walker borrows from this game gameplay-wise, but three of the major characters in Portable Ops are a man Big Boss defeated in combat and thusly recruited played by Robin Atkin Downes, an antagonist played by Steve Blum, and a girl who sometimes acts as your ally, but is partnered with Blum's character and pilots the Metal Gear of the week in a boss battle played by Tara Strong. Peace Walker has characters who fit this exact same description, voice actors and all. They have differing voice actors in the Japanese version, however.
• Jerkass Woobie: While Cunningham is pretty much a big jerk and somewhat two-faced towards FOX and the CIA, considering what he had to put up with (being forced into a desk job after his leg was amputated, not to mention learning that the CIA basically left The Boss to die, which in his views was an insult to the memory of the Mother of Special Forces), it's kinda hard to blame him for what he did.
• Magnificent Bastard: Gene is the leader of the rogue FOX unit and the insurrection at San Hieronymo. A participant in the Successor Project to create a replacement for the Boss and the Perfect Battle Commander, Gene's natural charisma was enhanced to give him a Compelling Voice. Using this he was able to sway the disillusioned Red Army soldiers to his side, even those resistant to his powers. Wanting Big Boss to join him in forging "Army's Heaven", Gene is nevertheless ruthless in his goals, forcing Big Boss' and his own men to slaughter each other to escape when cornered. When confronted at the finale Gene reveals to Big Boss he knew Cunningham was a traitor all along and played along with him so he could enact his real plan to use Metal Gear to attack the USA and trigger a new world war. Defeated by Big Boss, Gene acknowledges him as the Boss' true successor and gave him a microfilm containing all his resources and contacts he was planning to build his new home for soldiers.
• Paranoia Fuel: Gene's powers create this out of nothing!
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Whose bright idea was it to have your teammates die permanently in combat? Fortunately, this was remedied to be more tolerable in the sequel.
  • The game's controls are clunky and awkward at best, mostly down to the PSP's single analogue stick layout. Better on the PS Vita or (hacked to whitelist the game to be playable) PSTV where you can map the D-pad (digital camera control) to the right stick.
  • Even with the Squad system, the four items slots per character can feel a bit too restrictive.
  • Searching guards, usually something useful in an MGS game, is pretty pointless since all they do is drop massive boxes of ammo that you won't need most of the time, especially once you get enough tech level to start producing your own ammo, notably Plus seems to have realized this, as enemies instead drop randomzied items from a pool of almost every item in the game and copies of their current weapon instead, making searching enemies actually useful. (And re-balancing the ammo counts for weapons so that those now-rare massive boxes of ammo are actually something you'll want to find and are appropriately rare.)
  • In Plus, there is no way to bring gear into runs regardless of difficulty, this means a lot of Portable Ops' weapons will barely be used since they very rarely spawn (such as the Mac 10 or M870) since most weapons you acquire will be from enemies that don't use them, this also means the only way to use unique guns from unique characters (Old Snakes's M4 and Raiden's Socom for instance) is to have them "die" in a run, complete that run, then rescue them from a level in a run after that. (since they'll have another copy of their unique weapon on them.)
  • It hits you that Metal Gear Solid 3 benefited greatly from giving you not only an abundance of slots for food, but also a significant amount of animals, fruit and sometimes even enemy rations on individual soldiers and storehouses per area. This basically ensured, by hunting and foraging, that Snake would never go hungry, and it also prevented other negative side effects like keeping his aim from shaking. By contrast, Portable Ops has no fauna or flora to hunt whatsoever. This means that operatives have their initial stamina bar, and can find some rations in each map with which to replenish it, but that's it. Oh, and the penalty for full stamina depletion? The character becomes knocked out and unusable for the rest of the mission. This is even more annoying with a squad of four members (you may even be discouraged to use some of them when they don't have their stamina depleted if they just stay in their cardboard box). The health and stamina bars of each operative can be gradually upgraded, but it hardly helps with the fundamental issue of the stamina mechanic being a real drag. As a result, most players rely on Snake due to his large stamina bar and only use other characters to a limited extent.
• Signature Scene: Jonathan's death.
• So Okay, It's Average: At worst, the game is regarded as enjoyable or at least accepted as part of the series, just one that doesn't stand out as having that much of its own tone or identity separate from other Metal Gear games.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "Calling to the Night" is often compared to Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On". Reasons for this include a similar opening motif with a piano and a high-pitched instrument, a dramatic key change when the percussion kicks in and a soaring chorus. Kojima is known to like Titanic, so this may not be coincidence.
• Vindicated by History: With certain contested titles in the franchise, depending on who you ask, it's now considered as probably the best of the non-Kojima Metal Gear games, as it's the one that held truest to the series' core concept.