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Metal Gear Online

Published By: Angus Deacon On: 23/06/2008 10:00

We go online to see how MGO stacks up.

Metal Gear Solid 4 is a game that has been getting an unusual mix of reviews around the world ranging, from “flawless” to “mediocre”. Despite everyone drooling over the graphical prowess of the game, some have been criticising elements of the story-telling or the consistency over the flow of gameplay. If you fall into this latter category, then the online elements of MGS4 are more likely to impress.

Metal Gear Solid 4 offers action-packed online madness for up to 16 players without the frustrating cinematic interruptions. Although it features an impressive line-up of multiplayer game types, most people would benefit kicking off with either the basic Deathmatch or Team Deathmatch modes to get their hands dirty. This is purely because MGS4 is unlike any typical shooter game you have probably played before. Tactics are essential to success, with patience and stealth some of your best weapons.

For those more casual gamers, it is recommended that you turn on the Auto Aim feature initially. It will allow for quicker response times but still give you a decent amount of control while you become familiar with the game, at which point you can turn it off for the proper experience.

If you’re playing for kills in deathmatch, it won’t be long before you realise how important it is to keep your head. That is, head shots in MGS4 usually result in instant death no matter how far away the shooter is. To make matters worse, head shots are also fairly easy to pull off thanks to a first person-type aiming system and a scope for most weapons. Zooming across from rooftop to rooftop, you can quite easily take out opponents who are barely visible with the naked eye.

This realistic mortality of your person changes the speed of gameplay from your standard online shooters drastically. Most of your time will be spent sweating it out behind walls or inside buildings waiting for a clue as to where your targets may be. The brilliant map designs compound this effect too, giving you an amazing array of different hiding spots or sniper positions. Players will need to keep an eye out from all directions with the maps giving you access to multi-storied buildings filled with plenty of windows to poke out from.

Personally, this seat of your pants-like gameplay works better with teams. Having fellow comrades around means you can sweep alley ways quickly and use them to cover your back, so long as your team-mates are being smart about it. Plenty of times you’ll have a member of your squad getting bored and running out for a bit of fresh-air… and a bullet in the face. However, with a team of intelligent gamers, MGS4 offers some excellent co-operative gameplay.

MGS4 also lets you truly bond with your fellow team-mates. If one of your team goes down injured or gets rendered unconscious, you can speed up their recovery by running over to them, kneeling and pressing the triangle button. If you get separated from the rest of your team there is also an innovative way of highlighting players to make them more visible to you when they are in need. Members of your squad in trouble will glow suggestively, alerting any nearby team-mates to rush in and help them. It may sound a bit cheap, but the visual effect is very slick and certainly beats having to lie in a dark basement waiting for help just because no-one can find you.

Seeing a fellow comrade lying on the ground in the middle of a gun-fight can also give you something else to worry about as well. Do you risk your own health to help them? Or use this distraction to try and flank your opponents?

Adding to this dilemma is the ability to lie down and pretend you are a corpse by going prone and holding down triangle. Playing dead is an excellent method of a surprise attack as many newbies or distracted players will simply walk past your body, allowing you to spring to life and shoot them in the back. Experienced players however will place some bullets into every still body they see on the map just to make sure they have definitely bit the dust. Even so, with the use of a team this method could still be used effectively as a decoy to draw fire. Sacrificing one member for the good of the team is a worthy tactic in this game.

Unfortunately the respawning can be a bit of a frustrating issue as it is completely random. Quite often you can be spawned right next to an enemy and instantly killed before you can even gain your bearings. One nifty way past this is to press the select button to pause your re-spawn, giving you time to check your surroundings before materialising. Whether the online community looks down on this little trick is unknown at this stage but for the competitive types, it may make a big difference to your rank.

Like the single-player, there are still some bizarre yet humourous features in the multiplayer of MGS4. This comes in the form of the "Man Cannon". Sexual innuendo aside, the Man Cannon is literally a giant gun that you can get inside and get shot out of in order to reach areas of the map that may be difficult on foot. It is a quick way of covering ground or to gain a higher position on the battlefield. However, a flying man does make for a pretty tempting target so ensure you find cover as soon as you land.

The deathmatch modes are certainly enjoyable, but many gamers have seen similar elements before with games like Rainbow Six or Ghost Recon. The real novel multiplayer experiences are found in the other team orientated modes. The Sneaking mode is where a player controls Snake, the central character from the game, and another supports him as the robotic dog-like Metal Gear Mk II. As Snake, you can still opt to run around shooting like a crazy ninja, but fans will love the stealth approach of sneaking up and violently taking out enemies. The other teams of players must either try to avoid or kill Snake and his tiny metal companion before they collect three dog tags (taken from bodies of the other team) before either time runs out or Snake is killed a certain amount of times. If time runs out, Snake automatically loses and whichever team has killed Snake more times wins; if both teams killed Snake the same amount of times, then whichever team has killed more players from the opposing team will be declared the victor instead. You may think that the poor bugger stuck as the Mk II got the short end of the stick… and you’d be kinda right, but you can still have some fun turning invisible and using your electrically charged tentacle to zap unsuspecting foes.

Moving on, there are other interesting modes such as Base Mission, where teams compete to dominate zones; a Capture and Defend mode, which speaks for itself; and even a Rescue type mode that is along the same lines as what we saw previously in Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. This mode has one team attempting to capture a target object and return it to a capture point like the Capture and Defend type, but this time one team must simply defend that object instead of trying to capture the other team's object as well.

All of these different online modes create enough variation to keep thumbs aching, but the multiplayer has just one irritating feature. The actual process of creating an online account for MGS4 was confusing and long-winded. Before you can even play anything online, you need to supply a wealth of information and all of it needs to be entered in with the clumsy PS3 controller as your keyboard. However, despite the process taking around 20 minutes, once you are finally set up and ready to start a game, the variety of customisation options does make this process forgettable. Even the character creation screens are intuitive and easy to follow. Konami have also promised future downloadable content including new maps, weapons, items and more to keep the online community alive.