The PSP continues to draw rave reviews, and here are two of the latest games for the platform: Metal Gear Acid and Lumines. These games are from wildly different genres, but they both demonstrate amazing creativity, quality, and sheer fun on a platform with far too few titles. Metal Gear Acid shows that Solid Snake's stealthy missions can be translated well to a portable format, and Lumines shows that even 2D puzzle games can have spectacular graphics and sound.

Despite their unusual premises, Metal Gear Acid and Lumines are easily the best PSP games yet, and belong in any PSP owner's library.

Metal Gear Acid

A gritty, tough-as-nails mercenary like Solid Snake probably wouldn't be caught dead playing collectible card games. He would probably dismiss them as childish, then sneak up behind an unsuspecting guard and break his neck. Snake is intense that way.

Metal Gear Acid combines the taut, stealth-based action and cinematic, somewhat incoherent cut-scenes of the Metal Gear Solid series with the well-paced, turn-based strategy of collectible card games. The result is a surprisingly solid and entertaining stealth action board game, which successfully captures the satisfying tension of Hideo Kojima's famed game series.

Snake must sneak, shoot, stab, and sometimes even bomb his way through over a dozen levels populated by guards, cameras, turrets, and robots. But instead of controlling Snake directly, the player guides his actions through a turn-based, card-driven system. Cards are used to move Snake around the map, equip and fire weapons, and perform various stealthy and violent actions.

Over 200 cards exist in the game, divided into five types: weapons, items, actions, support cards, and characters. Weapon cards kill or disable enemy soldiers or devices. Item, action, and support cards heal, protect, and augment Snake's abilities. Character cards depict characters from Snake's career, from the original Metal Gear game to Metal Gear Solid 3. They have a variety of effects, from attacking enemies to shuffling the cards. When activated, each character card plays a movie that showcases the character it represents.

New cards are purchased from the game's Card Shop. As the player progresses through the game, additional booster packs and cards become available. At first, only the Metal Gear Solid pack is available, but by the end of the game the player can also buy Metal Gear Solid 2 packs, Metal Gear Solid 3 packs, or the pre-MGS Chronicles pack. The card collection aspect of the game is addictive, and presents some wonderful nostalgia for long-time Solid Snake fans.