Metal Gear Online Beta Has Potential
By Connect2Mason reporter Daniel Sims
Since Halo 3 offered a pre-release test to the public with other games like Battlefield: Bad Company and Playstation Home following suit, it seems that letting customers help beta test your game has become the hot new way to hype it, as Konami has chosen to do with Metal Gear Solid 4 – probably the most anticipated Playstation 3 game right now.
A small sample of what Kojima Productions plans to include in MGS4’s multiplayer mode called Metal Gear Online, the beta went live from April 25 to May 11.
Before the beta even began, one peculiar thing proved annoying to the point that many gave up signing up for it: In favor of promoting their own network, Konami has completely circumvented the centralized Playstation Network that Sony built, requiring no less than three separate IDs for MGO, none of which are connected to a PSN account.
Furthermore, Konami’s network infrastructure seems to have been completely unprepared for the traffic it would get at the signup site for the IDs. The overwhelmed servers stopped many from even being able to sign up for days. One can only hope that Konami abandons this system and runs the final game through PSN like every other online PS3 game, but right now one can only hope that their own network will be better prepared when MGS4 releases on June 12.
Despite how frustrating this was, the game itself quickly made us all forget about it. So far the beta shows some much needed major changes from its predecessor on the PS2 as well as some nifty new things that give it its own personality among online shooters.
The multiplayer mode included in Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, was a competent tactical third person shooter not unlike the SOCOM or Ghost Recon games. It was hampered, however, by needlessly complicated controls alienating to anyone who hadn’t played Metal Gear. This area is where Metal Gear Online’s biggest improvement has been made.
Rebuilt from the ground up borrowing things from other third-person action games, Metal Gear Online’s controls run much more smoothly than before with things like aiming and staying hidden feeling much less complex than in the PS2 game. The changes to the controls alone have made me a much better player of this game.
The close quarters combat mechanic which set MGS3 apart - allowing players who grabbed opponents to wrestle down or otherwise incapacitate them, has become a major facet of combat in MGO. Skilled CQC users in the beta have become as hated and feared as snipers are in most other online shooters.
The highlight of my experience with the beta was when I snuck up behind a sniper in a tower, grabbed him, knocked him out, took his rifle, and in essence stole his sniping position.
Like any good tactical online shooter, MGO is supposed to be driven by teamwork. MGO carries this well when enough players have the means to communicate, but most people often don’t. In order to help with that problem, MGO uses a new system called SOP which gives players a constant feed of information on the status, location, and actions of their teammates and visualizes it in the gameworld. It doesn’t make up for straight communication in organizing teams but it does give players a better awareness of what’s going on in each match.
The last new addition made with MGO is the ability to gain points to upgrade weapons mid-match and gain experience points to upgrade character abilities sort of like in Call of Duty 4. So far, possibly because of the brevity of the beta, these features don’t seem to have a whole lot of impact on matches as I’ve held my own against players at far higher levels than me.
The multiplayer mode of Metal Gear Solid 3 proved to be a very fun game that had some potential, but was held back by Metal Gear’s interface issues – issues that are largely being fixed in Metal Gear Solid 4. This along with everything that’s been added might make Metal Gear Online a worthy choice among the PS3’s online shooters with its biggest competitor probably being the upcoming SOCOM Confrontation.