First off this game is not for everyone. You either love it or hate it. Me personally I love it. Big improvement over MGS3 Online. Don’t think this will be your standard FPS, it is not! That’s what makes MGO unique and fun. There is a big learning curve if you’ve never played a metal gear game. But there is a training mode to practice your shooting, CQC(close quarter combat), movement, adjusting the settings to your liking, etc. Which you should do before you jump into a live game, because you’ll get slaughtered quickly if you don’t know what your doing.

It still took me some time before I really got used to the controls, and adjusting the settings to my liking. It’s a blast to roll over people in the barrel. But if you roll for to long you will throw up. It works great to hide barrels and boxes. Most of the time people just walk by, but you’ll get people that shoot boxes and barrels just to be sure. The catapult (I call it the man cannon), is so great. You hop on and you can move it to two angles, then just press triangle and off you go flying into the air. I like to rotate the camera in mid air to get a good look at the whole level almost and see if I can spot any enemies while flying. Then you nail the landing on both feet and continue on. You always know when somebody is flying because of the scream they make, lol.

Then there is the magazines with bikini clad ladies. Works the same as usual, but this time you can actually turn the pages and choose which sexy lady you want to “distract” you enemies. I think there is a about 4 pages. The CQC is fun, I finally leveled up my knife skill to lv3 so I can slit throats. So fun to hide around corner and grab a enemy passing by and knock him out or kill him. If you have CQC level 3 you can actually disarm your opponent of his weapons, inject a virus, knock him out, etc. I don’t have this yet, but I’m working on it.

The skill system has 4 slots and 16 skills total. For example you can select a gun type mastery which reduces the recoil and faster reloading or Fast Movement which would be useful for CQC or just getting away from enemy fire. But if you level up a skill to level 2 it will take 2 slots, and level 3 (max) takes 3 slots. Which I wish wasn’t the case. Because if you want to slit throats with a knife. You have to have lv3 knife and lv1 cqc, and that takes up all yours slots. Wouldn’t be so bad if you could swap out your skills after you die. But you can’t until the whole round is over.

The SOP system is great addition. Just press triangle near your team mates and you are all linked to the SOP system. Once you die your not connected and you’ll need to connect again. This outlines them with your teams color (red or blue), and it’s still visible threw walls even. You can tell if your teammates are distracted by a magazine, stunned, being killing etc. There is even a skill that allows you to hack into your opponents SOP system and if the guy you hacked into is connected to his team mates you basically know the locations of everybody on there team!

On Monday Konami released another game mode, Sneaking Mission (my favorite), and a map called Midtown Maelstrom. Somebody at random is picked to be Snake, and if there is at least 11 players somebody gets to play as the Metal Gear Mk. II robot. To win Snake must collect 3 dog tags from enemies without dying, which can be very hard sometimes. While this is going on there are two teaming battling it out. For a team to win they have to kill snake up to 5 times (depending on your server settings). If Snake doesn’t collect his 3 dog tags or he doesn’t die five times from a team. Then the team with the most kills win. It’s a blast.

Snake has Octocamo, which takes the color and texture of whatever he’s against if he doesn’t move for a couple seconds. Sometimes he is extremely hard to see, think of it like trying to find predator cloaked during a fire fight. But for the Octocamo to be truly effective you have to keep changing the suit to match your environment. Snake also has another great tool in his arsenal, the Solid Eye vision system. Which allows him to switch between Night Vision and binoculars. Another cool thing is you can even do a hold up with Snake. Just point your gun at a guys back and he’ll say Freeze!

Playing as the Mk. II robot is a blast too. It’s basically invisible in the shadows, in the sunlight it casts a small shadow. The Mk. II only has one weapon & purpose really, to assist Snake in winning. He can deliver shocks to people to knock them out so snake can collect the dog tags.

Had a epic MGO moment over the weekend! A guy had my team member in a standing choke hold just outside the warehouse doors. I was hidden inside the warehouse with my sniper rifle. I zoomed in on the opponent doing the CQC choke hold and boom head shot. Team member saved. Then he saluted me!

This game is so fun, I haven’t even been tempted to try out the new CoD4 maps I bought, or anything else really. A easter egg I found, is when your booting up the game and your on the screen with your character. If you rotate the camera for a while, your character with get dizzy and fall down. If you just sit there he hides in a box. Oh Konami what else have you hidden! lol This is exactly why I love the MGS series! I could go on and on about MGO, but I’ll shut up now.

This is my first time playing a Buzz game and I thought I’d be using the red buzz button more while playing. But most of the time it’s just used as a select button. Which is a little disappointing. It does light up when it’s your turn or when the question is up for grabs which is nice. There are 2 game modes that actually use the buzz button. Pie Fight & Point Stealer. Both are fun modes, but point stealer is by far my favorite. But don’t get me wrong it’s still very fun to play.

You have several modes to choose from:

Single Player - Which is good for practice, but this is a party game and should be played with a group.

2-4 or 5-8 Player - This is where you’ll spend most of your time

Team Play - If you want to do teams I’d recommend to just do the 2-4 player mode. The team play game mode is very slow paced, and no variety either as far as game modes.

Quizmaster - You play as the game show host pretty much. So you make up questions, and the players buzz in. You choose if it’s correct or not. This can be a fun game mode if you have some creative answers thought out in advance, or it could get really crazy on the spot depending on who your playing with.

Custom game - Which is great because you can skip game modes you don’ t like and just do the ones you like.

After you pick your game mode, you can pick your character, and your own buzzer sound. There are a lot of buzzers to pick from too. My favorite character is the one in the swamp monster suit. There are plenty of categories to choose, from Period Dramas to Dumb and Dumber. There is plenty of variety in the game types in 2-4 and 5-8 player mode to keep you entertained. Even if your winning by a long shot, in the last round the last place winner could easily be the first. Also it’s always fun to see the movie related prize when the game is over. There is a Film Fanatic difficulty mode too, you’ll be surprised how much you know sometimes.

Overall it’s a very fun quiz game that will be fun to pull out during parties and get together. I’d rate this a 8 out of 10. I would rate it higher if the movie clips had sound and where longer. Now I want to pick up the Mega Quiz to add to my collection after playing this game.

It should be available now. So go test it out and leave your thoughts on it in the comments. Now the looong day at work begins for me There is a training mode so you can get some practice in before jumping online. If you didn’t update to 1.02 you’ll be prompted before you play.

Just a FYI on the character creation, you can NOT change your face and voice after you register, so choose wisely.

It has a some new footage, can you spot it? I’m pumped for MGS4/MGO. Hopefully this trailer will be up on the Japanese Store today.

Download it here

I lived in Japan for about 2 years (83-85), I was 3 at the time. While living there I spoke fluent Japanese. When we came back my parents had a hard time getting me to speak English. Sadly, I lost my ability to speak Japanese, so now I am slowly re-learning. My parents kept a journal of our life in Japan. Thanks to this I am able to remember our time there. I like the photos of me in my Japanese schoolroom; you see all my Japanese friends, and me with bright blond hair sitting in the middle of them.

While living there we became great friends with the Izawa family. Mr. Izawa came to visit us in 1987, it was great to see him again. After falling out of contact for many years I recently sent him a letter. Our families still have a strong bond, these many years later. Mr. Izawa wrote that he may be able to attend my wedding this Fall.

I’ve been fascinated with Japanese Culture all my life. Last Christmas my mother gave me a home movie of our time in Japan. I was feeding some deer, running around the Todai-ji Temple grounds and even driving a boat by Mount Fuji. It was a great experience to see myself back in Japan having fun.

Other Possible Titles:

Reflections of Japan
Echos from my life in japan
Lines of a lost life in japan
Japan life to remember
My Japanese childhood
My Young Konnichiwa
Nippon wa Kokoro no Naka (Japan is within my heart)
A Blond Boy in the Land of the Rising Sun
OSU! My Japanese Heart (Osu is what you used to say to greet your friends and they would in return say OSU! It means hey, etc)
The Rising Sun in My Young Heart
My Kodomo Kokoro (My Child Heart)
Itsumo Iru (Always there, always existing - referring to your memories, thoughts, life in Japan)
Gaijin Ja Naku (Not a Foreigner)
My Birth of Japanese Heart (Nihon no Kokoro no Umare)

Some funny titles Rodrigo came up with

My Japanese soul
How i became a ninja
Childhood memory cravings
Before the Dawn of a ninja life
The Dawn of my japanese heart
In the begining there was Japan (or the name of the city you where in)
Behold!
Only left cuz i didnt know better
My parents forced me to leave

I had a feeling it wasn’t going to fully ready by spring. I was thinking there was going to be a open beta at least. Now it’s pushed back until fall. I can see delaying it because it’s not ready. But at least let us look at it. We know it’s Beta, and everything isn’t 100% yet. Home has great potential but Sony sure is taking there time.

“We understand that we are asking PS3 and prospective PS3 users to wait a bit longer, but we have come to the conclusion that we need more time to refine the service to ensure a more focused gaming entertainment experience than what it is today,” said Kazuo Hirai, President and Group CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. “Our overarching objective is to provide users with new gaming experiences that are available only on PLAYSTATION Home. Spending more time on the development and on the Closed Beta testing reaffirms our commitment to bringing a quality service, maintaining the PlayStation tradition.”

Home gets delayed again, open beta scheduled for Fall

I’m looking forward to trying this out. I really like the Hollywood take on this version. I’ll post more info soon. The top 3 mini-game scores win prizes from Sony! Good luck!

As you may have heard the Metal Gear Online Beta is available to download if you have a valid 12 digit beta key. But it seems a lot of people have 9 or 11 digit keys. I got stuck with a 9 digit key. I’ve contacted Konami and this is there response.

Dear Sir or Madam,

Thank you for contacting Konami Support. If your code is appearing with only 9 or 11 digits, then this is incorrect.

Please copy your code exactly as it appears on your voucher in your reply to this email. We’re very sorry for this inconvenience and we will do our best to rectify the situation in time for the Beta start.

Regards,

Konami Customer Support
kdeussupport@konami.com

I’ve sent them my 9 digit key, I haven’t got my valid 12 digit key yet. But I should get it soon I’d assume. Also after you download the Beta you’ll need to download a patch for the Beta. Which can be done via BitTorrent or http. Not sure which is faster, because I can’t download it yet.

This Naruto title is exclusive to the PS3 and it’s looking amazing graphics wise. Looks just like the anime. Now you can watch it in HD too! But if it has English voices and not a option for the original Japanese voices …. forget it! I can’t stand the American voices for Naruto.

I wish they’d bring the Bleach to the PS3, I’d buy that in a heart beat!

Just a friendly reminder that the Metal Gear Online Beta can be downloaded this Thursday. But you can’t start playing until April 21st , and will run until May 5th. Take your chances and enter to win here!

After you download and install the MGO Beta you’ll need to register for a Konami ID . You’ll be taken to id.konami.net when you boot up the Beta. You can get a head start and register now if you want.

In the Beta you have one “character slot” which you can customize to your liking. Your character can have 4 skills and here are a few you can choose from:

Close Quarter Combat (CQC), knife fighting, quickness, alertness, heavy weaponry mastery, demolition, and sniper mastery are just some of the skills you can specialize in.

Again they’ll be two maps in the Beta. Blood Bath & Groznyj Grad but in the full version it’s five maps to start out.

Yay, they kept the Man Cannon, lol. It’s going to be funny to see a guy flying across the level at random during a heated gun battle. Check out the link below for full details of MGO.

ALERT! “Metal Gear Mondays” Begin NOW on the PlayStation.Blog with Metal Gear Online Beta Details!