lol, been a little while since I stopped reading Gamespot staff reviews, huh? Well, the last few months I haven't even been on Gamespot all that much due to a Winter semester that was much busier than my Fall semester. Speaking of critic reviews, my recent playthrough of Legend of Dragoon helped me to take a very progressive mentality towards my self-confidence in game judgement. I actually blogged on this on my main software blog and its one of the most recent entries there if you care to read it. Why I didn't post it here? I dunno...
Anyway, yesterday Sony sent a number of GAP members an invitation to join the Metal Gear Online Beta. It appears even among the subset of us that recieved invitations there were a limited number of allowed acceptions as some were actually denied upon accepting it.
Kinda funny how all of a sudden, i'm finally using my PS3 for something other than a demo kiosk and Blu-Ray player. (I have a number of PS3 games now, I just haven't gotten around them, yet). I recently finished Heavenly Sword, the first full (as in non-demo) PS3 game I've played.
For starters, MGO both looks and sounds great. I dunno if Harry Gregson-Williams composed the music for this or not, but its is of the same essence as Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater. Its very strong and a cool thing is that it blends superbly into the gameplay.
The first things you do is create an in-game persona and customize him..../her?!? lol, now that I think of it, I don't remember if there are female soldiers in the game. Don't take that as final, I simply don't remember if it was an option. But anyway, there are number of ways to customize your gear and give your character (the game refers to them as PCs so i'll do the same) a least some degree of uniqness. You can also customize the skills your character specializes in such as handgun, CQC (Close Quarters Combat), sniping, etc. For example, having a hangun specialty gives your character further accuracy with further range with hanguns in auto-aim mode. CQC I believe is necessary to perform those moves, and I believe sniping allows more precise aiming/less hand shaking.
If you're experienced with the MGS series then this game, control-wise, is practically pick-up-and-play. The only thing I really had to get used to (and still am a bit) is the auto-aim toggling. You actually have 3 degrees of precision when firing a weapon. Auto-aim is self-explanatory. The (IMO, necessary) tradeoff is you have to be reasonably close to your enemy and you have to be properly facing them. Your view and aiming doesn't solidly lock on so one can still evade auto-aimed fire. Without auto aim there is the default over-the-shoulder view and you're given a targeting reticle, and then there's the familiar first person mode which is just like the MGS games.
Now I haven't played many online combat games recently, but I did play the heck outta of SOCOM back on PS2 and the general feel of this easily reminds me of it. Thats not a bad thing, though. Most of the modes seem to be practically your standard online warfare: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, a Domination-type mode, etc. I haven't played them all yet, but from reading their descriptions, none seem really far from what you've seen before. Now this is not to say the gameplay isn't fun because its quite the opposite.
So far i've played about an equal amount of Team Deathmatch and the Domination mode. One of the first I felt about the gameplay is that the game does a great job of creating an exciting, sometimes intense warfare atmosphere similar to the look, sound, and feel of the movie Black Hawk Down. Again, the game looks and sounds great. If this game's visuals are any indication (and they probably are) then MGS4, especially in HD, will be quite the eye-candy. Now imagine that epic action-orient MGS music blending in to the warfare. You end up with quite an exciting atmosphere.
Interacting with your squad is pretty cool. You have your standard dose of general pre-recording messages you can send, but the game also supports voice chat (which hardly anybody I played with used), and the ability to customize messages. There's a really cool system where you can virtually "link" up with any number of your squadmates. If you press and hold triangle, you establish a virtual link with any number of allies within a certain radius. What this link allows you to do is see an almost heat-signature type representation of their location, orientation and status from just about anywhere on the map. You can tell if they're under fire and near death.
Now one area of the gameplay I feel deserves special mention is the execution of CQC. Man pulling off CQC moves on somebody can be one of the coolest, funniest, most awesome...and humilating things in the game, lol. Man you can't imaging the feeling I got when I first snuck up behing an enemy, grabbed him, slammed him to the ground then pumped him full of lead!....but I also remember running through a corridor in a building, thinking there's nobody close, and just before I reach an exit, someone hiding in the shadows grabs me by the neck and chokes me to sleep. He left me there, likely because I was in a deep daze and I'd ultimately have to lie there knocked out longer then if he killed me and I respawned. Now you probably know about the spinning stars thing around your head. Well when you're in this state, all you can do is waggle the left thumbstick to speed up the process of waking up....or one or more of your comrades can find you, especially if you're linked, and they can come and shake you to help you snap out of it....just like one of my comrades did for me. I found that pretty cool.
Adding to the dynamic of the gameplay is the fact that you can pull off most if not all of Snake's moves. I mean hey, hide in a box if you want. As a matter of fact, in the domination mode, one of my comrades did that while camping in the territory to capture it and I don't think anyone noticed, lol! You can line prone underneath a truck and try to pick people off, and i've personally snuck into a territory by way of hanging off a ledge, shimmying across and jumping down.
Performance-wise, the game has been solid for the most part. My first match did end up getting broken up due a broken connection. Not sure why as I the host is able to leave the game and transfer hosting duties to someone else. In another game, there was a very brief connection issue (this time I think it actually was the host leaving) but then the game picked right back up where it left off. I guess the most important thing is, while the game is actually running, I NOTICED NO LAG WHATSOEVER. Save for those two interruptions, this game performs online just as well as it would over a lan. I guess you can probably take that with a grain of salt as the servers aren't really being stressed right now. There aren't are a tremendous number of people playing this game yet so I can only speak for the game in its current degree of use.
Overall, Metal Gear Online is a pretty solid and fun game. It definitely has a Black Hawk Down feel to it that makes it exciting. If any of you have been anticipating it, I think this game will probably justify.