Create Your Snake

Metal Gear Online (hereafter MGO) begins with a customizable player creation screen that lets you select the face and voice of your online soldier. You can also customize most aspects of your character’s uniform, from colored ski masks to boots. Only male body types were selectable in the Beta, so here’s hoping that females will not go unrepresented in the final version.

Taking a page from Call of Duty 4, each MGO soldier has four skill slots that can be filled on the fly in-between gameplay rounds. Once equipped, skill cards increase your soldier’s abilities in different areas such as, mastery of various weapon types, movement speed, or close quarters combat (CQC). Each skill card, as well as your soldier on a whole, utilizes a level-up system.

Before each battle (and every time you re-spawn), you must equip three weapon slots for your character. Only one weapon may be selected per category. Standard carries include your stun knife, cardboard box, and scope. Customizable categories are Primary Weapon (rifle types), Secondary Weapon (handguns), and Support Weapon (grenade types).

Controls

Gone are the days of using the circle button to confirm settings (crazy Japanese!). MGO sports a more “westernized” (X button) control scheme that is immediately accessible to both series veterans and fans of FPS games. MGO also waves goodbye to fixed angles with a new fully adjustable camera controllable via the right analog stick.

Another new addition is the now context-sensitive triangle button. No longer does your character automatically press up against any wall or surface with which he comes into contact. Now, players must manually press the triangle button when prompted to use cover, sneak along a wall, or climb up a ladder.

Finally, there are three different aiming modes present in the game to cater to all varieties of players: Auto aim for beginners, the default “over the shoulder” 3rd person aiming reticule, and first-person view.

Game Modes and Maps

Game modes include standard online staples, such as deathmatch (both free-for-all and team based) as well as modes that are similar to capture the flag and capture enemy bases. All modes support up to 16 players.

A neat inclusion to the game modes is the Drebin Points (DP) system. When DP are enabled, each weapon costs points to use. As your round score increases, so do your DP, allowing you to unlock new custom weapons for use. The reverse is also true, meaning that excessive deaths will decrease your total points and cut your weapon options for future rounds.

Impressions

As a third-person action game, MGO largely succeeds in supplying an addictive and fun multiplayer experience that feels rooted in the modern tradition of action games, while still staying uniquely Metal Gear.

In what other online game can you hide in a cardboard box, emerge behind an unsuspecting foe, choke him out with a sleeper hold, and then shoot their unconscious body in the head to score a kill?

However, for every Solid Snake worthy moment like this, there are countless others where the gameplay simply devolves into run-and-gun shooting. Oftentimes, when neck-deep in a timed deathmatch, you’ll opt to empty an entire clip into your enemy over patiently waiting inside a cardboard box. It is only during situations like this, when ones tries to play MGO like a FPS, that some of the game’s shortcomings emerge.

The first note of surprise is the game’s overall speed. My first hour with MGO was spent searching for a “run” button, as both the character movement and aiming sensitivity (even when turned up to the maximum) seems decidedly slow when compared to modern shooters.
Also, an imbalance in weapon strength and abundant health makes characters surprisingly robust in MGO. While headshots yield instantaneous kills, I’ve unloaded five shotgun blasts at point blank range without putting a dent in an enemy’s health bar.

Finally the CQC, while great in theory, needs more refined collision detection. In general, both the gun fighting and hand-to-hand combat begins to suffer as players move closer together. This is particularly apparent with CQC, where attacks will routinely miss if two soldiers are not lined up exactly face-to-face. The result is a comical ballet of jittering soldiers and manly grunts.

However, this is a Beta product and all of these concerns can be addressed before the final version ships. The good news is that the Beta has been running at a stable frame rate with little lag. While some server connection issues persist, it is generally very quick to log into a server and select game matches. There is also little loading time before and in-between rounds.

Likewise, the graphics and sound are both up to par with today’s top online games. MGO runs in certified Dolby Digital and the sound effects in particular are very well done. There are also some nice high-resolution textures and the animation is consistently fluid. MGO runs at full 1080P and has some great visual touches. One such effect covers the camera in a thin film of dirt when an explosive goes off in your vicinity. It is touches like these that keep MGO looking and sounding neck-in-neck with the competition!

All things considered, MGO is an incredibly addictive and fun multiplayer experience. There are certainly some technical issues that could stand adjustment (such as movement speed and CQC collision detection), but this is a Beta after all. Overall, the blend of sneaking and stealth, mixed with traditional run and gun action is undeniably appealing, and the Beta has only added to my excitement for the full release this June.

Till then, happy sneaking everyone!

[Konami's Metal Gear Online site]