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Of course, that was just one of the permutations that played out. There were many occasions when all hell erupted at both of the bases as traps were sprung and ambushes walked into. Frantic, quickfire and very addictive - and all nicely offset by that weird quacking sound as the duck is whisked away from your crumpled body. You’ll learn to love the quacking.
The other map we played (we alternated between the two all day) was a cavernous multi-leveled warehouse situated in the middle of a container depot with towers providing ample opportunity for sniping. The key to survival in this Team Deathmatch variant was to work as a team and sweep the area for the Reds, but this proved a little tricky seeing as our comrades were Italian journalists. Playing in Italy. Badly. So while the other players in the room decided to team up and shout ‘Clear!’ a lot, we went lone wolf, exploring first the exposed yard, where we were able to sneak up the back of a watch tower and kill the sniper waiting there, before picking off another of his team-mates using our assault rifle (you can’t pick up enemies’ weapons).
We held our own, but mics would have been a definite advantage. We’re told Metal Gear Online will support them. They’ll come in especially handy for the best mode we played through, the Defend The Flag/Frog game, which saw one team tasked with attacking a point on the map, marked by said frog, and the other team defending it at all costs. This setpiece saw us working with our squad-mates to take up high covering positions as we prepared to fight off the Red team’s advance, and watching an enemy wander cluelessly into our sights was supremely satisfying and rewarded in a way classic online games often fail to deliver on.
With the boot now firmly on the other foot, mixing up our pattern of attack by taking a long route round to attack a blindside, while another group of allies went for the front-on assault, was equally pleasing. Team-work lays at the heart of MGS Online and this puts it into a genre all of its own.
The following statement isn’t meant as a criticism - far from it. There’s nothing particularly revolutionary about Metal Gear Solid Online. It’s simple to get into, and once you’re into the game proper, there are no gimmicks to try and wrap your head around. It is simply an extension of MGS4, minus the story and with added confrontation. It’s immensely good fun, and well-built with it. Importantly, this feels like it’s ready to go right now. There were one or two teething problems, like the server randomly booting players out of the game for no reason, but this is something easily remedied in time for a May release.
Metal Gear Online will be a basic starter pack bundled with Metal Gear Solid 4 on release. It will be augmented by a load of downloadable content in the months after it launches, most notably in the maps department - as there are only six to start with. However, Konami is staying tight-lipped about the possible cost of this. We’ll fill you in as soon as we uncover the relevant information. But even after a solid day playing a limited version, we can’t wait to get our hands on the finished build of the game. We were worried that this was going to be a boring-old tacked-on extra, but our fears were misplaced. With MGO coming packaged with MGS4, this could rival The Orange Box as the best value bundle on PlayStation 3.
Apr 3, 2008
