Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

Those recruits and points feed into Mother Base, a between-mission management meta-game and unlock hub. Here you can assign (or auto-assign) recruits to combat, mess hall, intel, medical and R&D teams. R&D is the most important, since this opens out a huge unlock tree of tasty weapons, gadgets and upgrades. But you need funds for that, earned by your combat team in turn-based, automatic Outer Ops battles that play out while you engage in the game itself. Medical and mess hall teams support your soldiers, while intel supports you with in-mission strikes and supply drops.

It's an exquisitely balanced and wholly satisfying system; expanding and levelling your teams and fleshing out your armoury has the potential to be a great long-haul hook for multiple playthroughs of the campaign, bonus missions and multiplayer modes. There's potential for true devotees to lose Monster Hunter months to this game.

Here's hoping that it develops an online community to support that, although solo play is hardly short of scope, thanks to the Extra Ops bonus missions in particular. Your best option for on-the-bus, bite-sized play, these set a range of discrete challenges, from boss fights to Fulton recoveries to marksmanship and stealth runs, usually with a minutes-long time limit. Finessing your scores in these is more manageable and fun than in the campaign missions, and they too can be played in co-op.

I've only had the briefest opportunity to try Peace Walker in co-op, but it seems like another very smart addition, if you can cope with the incongruity - delivered in typically tongue-in-cheek style - of having multiple Snakes crawling through a level, perhaps in the cosy two-man Love Box. Most missions support two players, and boss fights four; two players sticking close together share health and can even share moving and shooting duties.

That's an excellent innovation that will do a lot to smooth the sometimes rocky path through the campaign if you can find a willing friend. Because, sad to say, Peace Walker's complexity and ambition fights a manful but losing battle with the PSP's cramped control layout. Of the three options - modelled after Portable Ops, MGS4 and Monster Hunter - the MGS4 "shooter" layout is best, allowing you to adjust the camera or over-the-shoulder aim with the face buttons. But it's still sticky and slow and encumbered with awkward transitions.

It's sad, and not entirely Kojima Productions' fault, that at times Peace Walker is just too much game for the system it's on. But it is so very much game - I haven't even mentioned the competitive multiplayer (it's not that exciting to be fair, only supporting six players) or the fact that, of course, it's riddled with hilarious and strange easter eggs, not least the Monster Hunter cameo stages.

Mother Base, co-op and Extra Ops are great additions to the Metal Gear formula and luxuriously comfortable fits for handheld play. The subdued campaign is not Kojima at his histrionic and surprising best, but it arguably offers the tightest stealth gameplay since Snake Eater or even the first Metal Gear Solid. It's still an acquired taste, but Peace Walker will satisfy fans, embarrass PSP owners with its riches, and ought to inspire curiosity at the very least in everyone else.