Metal Gear Online

While the world still waits for each and every detail about Metal Gear Solid 4 to be revealed by Konami, few gamers realize that Konami is actually developing two versions of Metal Gear. Besides MGS4, Metal Gear Online is being developed on the same amazing engine that powers Snake’s latest single player adventure. Originally hoped to be a multiplayer component of MGS4, Metal Gear Online, or MGO, soon became such a large project that Konami decided to make the product until a separate game.

Visually MGO looks amazing. That is because it is powered on the same engine that MGS4 runs on. Although some Xbox 360 owners protest, I still personally feel like Sony’s PS3 is the only platform that can successfully run the amazing graphical engine of Metal Gear Solid 4 and Metal Gear Online.

As players first enter the world of MGO, they will have to make a new character. To help distinguish your character from others, players will be given a fairly impressive list of features that they can customize. Players can choose what weapon they specialize in, their support skills, and almost complete control over how your face and body look. With these options, it is quite clear that MGO will not only be a very deep online experience but offer plenty of options to keep the game fresh.

The gameplay in Metal Gear Online plays out in the third person and offers several deathmatch and team deathmatch modes for up to 16 players. Before each round and respawning, players will be able to change their primary weapon and secondary skills. In total, over sixteen weapons will be able to be selected. These include submachine guns, shotguns, sniper rifles, pistols, and more. No matter what your primary weapon is, you can always swap out to a secondary weapon. Other items will also appear on the battlefield from time to time. These include the well-known Metal Gear cardboard box, night-vision goggles, and more. Of course, if you do run across a cardboard box and hope to jump inside it–you never know if someone else is in there…

One of the drawbacks to Metal Gear Online being based on the MGS4 engine is that there is no ability to run via a sprint button. This makes the gameplay feel very sluggish when trying to avoid fire on the battlefield. On the positive side, the use of the Metal Gear Solid universe can also give us access to special characters found within the world. While it is still unknown if characters such as Solid Snake, Big Boss, Raiden, or others will appear alongside you during a match, this would be a great addition to the title and I would be very disappointed if Konami didn’t take advantage of their rich universe.

At this time, there is no offline mode but Konami hasn’t ruled out the possibility that there could be one. In addition to this, we still are not quite sure at what price the game will ship at. But if the game does not have an offline mode, a reduced price will probably almost need to be done to ensure that the game can compete against other online shooters with more features.

Metal Gear Online is shaping up to have a lot of potential. While this would be an awesome addition to Metal Gear Solid 4, as a standalone title, MGO is going to have to deliver a lot of extra features to sell well at a regular retail price. Unfortunately Konami ks keeping a lot of things highly secretive. While this is something they usually do, we will just have to wait and see for more details to be revealed. Until then, we remain hopeful that MGO will deliver an amazing experience.