Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus
Developer(s)	Kojima Productions
Publisher(s)	Konami
Series	Metal Gear
Platform(s)	PlayStation Portable, PlayStation Vita
Release	JP: September 20, 2007 NA: November 13, 2007 EU: March 28, 2008
Genre(s)	Action-adventure, stealth
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus (officially abbreviated MPO+) is a stand-alone expansion of the original MPO, focused primarily on online play. It was first announced on July 17, 2007 and was released in Japan on September 20, 2007, in North America on November 13, 2007 and in Europe on March 28, 2008. A digital version was released on the PlayStation Store in 2009.

MPO+ include new general and unique character types from other MGS titles, as well as new items and weapons, new multiplayer maps, and new game modes. While MPO+ does not require the original MPO, players who have save data from the original game can transfer their squad to the expansion and any unique character that the players recruit in the original MPO since their initial save file was created will be added automatically in MPO+ if detected. The following changes have been made to the game.

• The player can now recruit up to 200 soldiers. Soldiers now have new careers and skill levels. Players can also obtain textbook items that can raise the stats of their recruits.
• The story campaign has been eliminated and a new "Infinity Mission" mode has been added in its place, consisting of four difficulty levels. The initial Easy setting consists of a tutorial explaining the rules and mechanics of this new campaign, while the three subsequent settings (Normal, Hard and Extreme) consists of a series of randomly generated stages set in locations from the original MPO that the player's team must clear in succession. During certain stages, the player is given a special challenge such as reaching the goal without being seen or survive an alert phase for a certain period. After clearing a special challenge, the player is allowed to sort his team and replace any of its members and gear with soldiers or items procured in previous stages. The player is also given a choice to suspend their game and resume from where they left off at a later time. If the player successfully complete every stage in Infinity Mission or uses a Fulton balloon to escape, they will retain every soldier, item and experience points acquired since the mission started (conversely, any item or soldier lost during the mission will be permanently lost as well). However, if the player fails or aborts the mission, the player's squad will be set to the way it was before the mission began (undoing any deaths that occurred as well).
• If the game detects save data from the original MPO, a boss rush mode will be unlocked in which a team chosen by the player must face against all the bosses from the original MPO successively. Clearing the boss rush will add any boss character from the original MPO who hasn't already been added to the player's team, although any team member killed during the process will be removed from the roster as well.
• Roy Campbell, the player's CO, can now be used as a playable character (in the original MPO, this was only possible by hacking the game). Other new unique characters added to MPO+ include Raiden from Metal Gear Solid 2, Old Snake from Metal Gear Solid 4, and Johnny the Guard from Metal Gear Solid 3.
• The player can now have Elisa and Ursula in their army at the same time. In the original MPO, the player was only allowed to have Elisa or Ursula, but not both, since in the game's story the two characters were different personalities of the same person.
• Any unique characters that is killed in action will be eliminated from the team. However, lost unique characters will have a probability of showing up in Infinity Mission as random prisoners, giving the opportunity for the player to recover any of them when the opportunity arrives.
• New soldier types can be recruited such as female Soviet soldiers, the arctic Genome Soldiers from the original Metal Gear Solid and the various enemy soldier types from MGS2. There are also female members of the Ocelot Unit from MGS3, but these can only be recruited through the game's "AP Scout" feature, in which the player recruit soldiers through LAN access points.
• Five new maps have been added to the multiplayer mode, including a recreation of Rex Hangar from the original MGS. The Western Wilderness and Ravine stages, previously exclusive to the European version of the original MPO, are now available in every regional release as well.