Metal Gear Online Hands-on Preview

Snake! Snaaaaaake! That’s what most people are saying in the Metal Gear Online beta pre-match lobby right now. And why not. Fans of the series have been waiting for this moment for months. The MGO beta allows us to peer through the Metal Gear Solid 4 keyhole and ask: Who lives in a house like this? And for that reason alone it is deserving of our close attention.

So, how’s it playing? Having overcome the initial technical meltdown that greeted the beta’s opening, the game is at the time of writing running smoothly with little lag. And, hot off the press, Sony has let fly a new map, the excellent Midtown Maelstrom, part of the Middle East stage in MGS4, as well as a new game mode, Sneaking Mission. Now is the perfect time to bring you our impressions of what looks like being one of the PS3’s essential online experiences.

Fans of the series will know how the controls work, but it will still be worth putting half an hour in the game’s training mode since MGO isn’t the most accessible of shooters. As we’ve seen with MG games in the past, the control set up is both a blessing and a curse. In the single-player games gone by it works well and the slow-paced perspective switch-ups are perfectly capable of dealing with computer-controlled guards. But when you add human beings to the mix, up to 12 in fact, things can get extremely fiddly.

Much of this is to do with the fact that you have to press L1 to aim your weapon before you can fire it. Simply pressing R1 on its own will trigger a melee attack. So instinctive firing is initially difficult, and, if you’re new to Metal Gear, your first few games will probably result in embarrassing death after embarrassing death. The clunky controls are made worse by the fact you need to press an additional button, triangle, while aiming to get into the super accurate first person view. When you have a long-ranged weapon equipped pressing two buttons before you can let a shot off can border on the frustrating, especially when you’re in the thick of the action.

The cover system too is fiddly at best. Here you need to press triangle when near cover to stick to it, but half the time you’ll end up triggering the teammate-tracking salute animation instead. Popping in and out of cover makes you feel like a 10 tonne rhino. MGO excels when you run and gun, which is a bit of a disappointment considering the stealthy origins of the single-player experience.

The point to make here however, is that the game’s immense fun factor makes the control issues a much sweeter pill to swallow… just. It’s hard to pin down why, too. It’s a rare occasion indeed when you hear any real communication between players (you can bark pre-made orders, like Go Go Go!, from the d-pad, or speak through a mic – but don’t expect many players to join you), or engage in serious tactics, but that doesn’t prevent most matches we’ve played leaving us begging for more.

Once you get used to the slow-paced combat and start to wrap your head around the aim first firing, killing can be extremely rewarding. Your basic deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture and base missions provide the most accessible thrills, but they also provide the most predictable gameplay, with most games reduced to a straight -up frag fest (I shoot you, you shoot me, hopefully you drop first). It’s the recently added Sneaking Mission game mode, where one player assumes the role of Snake himself as he hunts for dog tags from other players, which provides the most heart-thumping action. Here, Snake needs to stun or hold up other players from the opposing red and blue teams in order to shake out their tags. If you’re not Snake, you need to kill him. Sounds easy, huh? It isn’t. Snake comes with all the super powers fans know well from the main games, including camouflage. And, as Snake, you’ll need to employ the stealthy tactics (moving boxes anyone?) the series is famed for in order to survive and succeed. Here’s hoping there will be more game modes of equal ingenuity added before the game is finished.

Like many online multiplayer shooters proving popular right now, MGO employs an in-game currency called Drebin Points, which you spend on gear before each match and when you die (you can change your equipment load-out from your team’s home base during a game). The better you do in between kills the more points you have to spend, allowing you to equip better weapons. We don’t think this is the fairest of systems since the best players will be constantly powered by the best weapons, but even the worst players will have a decent number of points to play with.

A lot has been made of MGO’s graphics. Many gamers view it as a precursor to MGS4, a game PS3-owners hope will prove to be a showcase for the system. It does look nice, especially when played in high definition, but it’s very grey, gritty and dark in places. I’d even go as far as to saying it can often look uninspired. It’s very detailed, and wonderfully crisp, but we’re sure MGS4 will be even better when it’s released on June 12 this year.

The MGO beta is a strange one. It’s not doing anything particularly ground breaking, can be awfully fiddly, but it’s loads of fun and hugely satisfying. The question I’m asking myself right now is how popular would it be if it didn’t have brand Metal Gear on board?

Metal Gear Online comes with Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, released on June 12 2008. It is not a separate product. Metal Gear Online is the online multiplayer component of MGS4.