Am I nuts or is Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops impossible to control? I guess I'm exaggerating a bit, if you had three hands, two on the left side of your body and one on the right, it wouldn't be a problem. Come to think of it I guess you'd need to arms too, and either two shoulders or some sort of bizarre shoulder mod...

Anyway, I'm really enjoying the game, the plot is fairly interesting, the cut-scene art is downright captivating, but WTF didn't someone point out to Kojima that you can't play this game properly with the current control lay-out?

There are several ways to play, all of which just don't work. The way I have it set up, I move Snake and crew around with the thumbstick and control the camera with the four buttons on the right side of the PSP. That's all fine and dandy, but as soon as I want to execute a move, like kick someone onto their head, I have to used the D-pad. The problem is I want to actually move around while trying to kick people in the head, because sometimes the person about to receive the back of Snake's foot to his cranium isn't fully cooperative and actually tries to get out of the way.

So this leaves me playing the game with my left hand on the thumbpad and my right reaching over the screen, using the D-pad. But then I sometimes can't see what's going on because I can't control the camera.

They should have come up with a better control system or, perhaps, included a spare person in the box as a control peripheral. The extra body could take control of the camera, which could then be mapped to the D-pad, while I concentrate on delivering those mighty head-kicks.

Reading through the plentiful, and mostly glowing reviews, it appears that most people have their controls set up this way, minus the extra gamer. I just don't see how they're playing the game, because it's nearly impossible to creep by someone when you don't see them because the damn camera is looking straight ahead.

What ends up happening to me is that I have Snake like have way across what I thought is an empty room when that damn sound, you know the one, goes off and someone shouts hey. I quickly scramble to turn Snake's point of view and realize that for the past minute I'd been craftily sneaking right in front of a guard in slow motion.

Oh Snake, why do they mock you so?

Please, fellow gamers, tell me I've missed some little tickable option or set-up. Tell me that in fact this is an issue easily fixed. Brian Crecente

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