I really like interactive environments, and the ways you can use fire as a weapon. The weapon inventory is great too. Just open your coat jacket to see what you have, very cool.

SPOILER ALERT, SPOILER ALERT, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

! x 100 I love the ending

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.

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.

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!

As we’ve known for a while, Metal Gear Online will be included with MGS4. It will be a basic online service and will be upgraded over time. I know I’m going to like MGO. MGS4 has been in development for 4 years, and they say some stuff won’t be discovered for a long time, months, maybe even years later.

Here are some other details:

The opening credits (of MGS4) were designed by Logan, the people that did the hugely successful ipod ads.

The story visits more locations and embraces more styles than any MGS to date.

A ‘virtual range’ will be included from the main menu. Here you can test the huge amount of weapons in MGS4 as well as the various advanced CQC techniques in the game.

The game will feature various details to play around with such as highly detailed and fashionable consumer gadgets.

There will be one hell of a big bang of a final to the game. Not a whimper. This will blow you away.

Snake is a slave to injections that keep him alive.

The sneaking play of the originals with it’s air ducts and cameras has now become a fast pace living battlefield of traps and innovations.

The control system is ‘revised and improved’

The Gekkou (the mechs with organic legs that make mooing sounds) will work in packs to hunt you down. They can sense past your optic camo if they think something is amiss.

Snake will have two new energy bars that makes Snakes advanced age impossible to ignore:

Stress: This rises in response to fight conditions. This can work with him, giving him hightened senses such as accuracy and sustained damage being halved. But if in this condition for too long, snake will crash causing him to become exposed to his illness. a drag on a cig will help him calm down however.

Psyche: This affects your general state of mind in the field.The balancing of these two bars will affect your progress.

You can use a camera to sneak away from your mission objectives and record incidents happening on the battlefield in secret. Some can be ‘unpredictable and dangerous’ There is something special about the camera this time around but EDGE were not allowed to say what.

There is a “surprising degree of explorative freedom” in the game. You can choose to engage in battles if you wish, or just ignore them. Friends and enemies can be gain this way if you do choose to help one side out.

Drebin (the arms dealer with the small monkey) will be important to the story and will also act as Snakes weapons dealer.

Productions values transcend modern video games: A Hollywood grade surround sound and moving track score by Harry Gregson Williams. Electrifying cut scenes and a sense of closure “more suited to Return of the King than Halo 3″.

MGS4 details from EDGE: This will blow you away

The Sneaking Mission mode is returning with a bang! This was a very fun mode to play in MGS3 Online. They’ve made some great changes for Metal Gear Online. Now you don’t have to get to a certain goal anymore. Snakes objective is to collect dog tags by killing other people, he can even use his Octocam! If there is enough people somebody can even control the Metal Gear Mk.II to assist snake. How cool is that! I don’t think I’ll be playing any other game online once MGO is out

Also there are 2 teams trying to kill snake. If they don’t kill snake enough times before the match is done. Whoever kills the other team more wins. This mode sounds like so much fun. MGO will have online matchmaking too.

MGO will also be getting expansion packs in the future, and will feature anything from new maps, modes, people, weapons, etc. The started pack includes 5 maps.

Be sure to pre-order MGS4 to get the Metal Gear Saga Vol.2 DVD for access to the MGO Beta which you can download April 17th. And check out this Metal Gear Name Generator. Mine is Discharger Squirrel, lol.

Metal Gear Online Makes Drastic Changes to Sneaking Mission