After settling down to Fulton some fools from 5pm last night until the early hours of this morning, I have experienced a lot of what Metal Gear Online has to offer. The early signs are that this is a game I am going to be playing for a very, very long time.
In the past, MGS games have been criticised for being light on gameplay and heavy on philosospiel, codec conversations and women parading around with their bits concealed by a centimetre of perfectly placed fabric. However, The Phantom Pain has already given me 100+ hours of murder fun in the single player and it looks like the multiplayer aspect of it will keep me hooked for even longer – it’s just that damn addictive.
As with the launch of most online multiplayer games, Metal Gear Online was, to put it delicately, a clusterfuck. Several hours went by of trying and failing to connect to a match, often coming close but ultimately being booted from the session just as it looked like it was going to load. It wasn’t much of a deterrent, though – nothing was going to stop me from playing this. Many grunts of frustration later, I managed to enter my first match and was dropped straight into a round of Bounty Hunter. Was it worth the wait? Yes.
The three main modes in MGO are Bounty Hunter, Comm Control, and Cloak and Dagger. Bounty Hunter is your team deathmatch with an excellent use of the Fulton to help you regain tickets, Comm Control is your capture the flag, and Cloak and Dagger is pure Metal Gear Solid. You can either play the attackers, who are only equipped with non-lethal weapons, or the defenders, who are packed to the tits with all the hardware you need to bring freedom to a country in the Middle East. It’s an interesting mode, but unfortunately, the odds are always in favour of the defenders so it’s a bit of an inevitability that the winner will be decided by points accumulated over two rounds.
Bounty Hunter is the mode that I, and probably many others, choose as default. Matches can either be quickfire deathmatches with very few tactics apart from kill all of the things, but when Fultons are used by both teams, it’s absolutely enthralling. Imagine watching your tickets tick down to zero only for you to manage to extract a high-target bounty at the last second and save the day. It’s some of the most innovative online gameplay I have experienced in a long while.
Comm Control is probably the mode that I could live without, but still don’t mind playing. There’s not a great deal to it, you just have to capture/defend areas until you take control. It quickly becomes frustrating when none of your teammates stick around to defend areas and instead just run off inside cardboard boxes, leaving it already vulnerable.
On the topic of working together, teamplay is something you have to consider if you want to win – those who run off on their own may not last for long. Buddying up and doing everything as a duo is a great idea for beginners as you will be able to spawn in on their location and also finish off any opposition that they might have been embroiled in a firefight with. There are also a decent range of different soundbites you can choose from to help you communicate with each other, so those who aren’t microphone friendly will still be able to enjoy cooperative play.
One of the only things that detracts from the experience is how much of a grind it is to unlock new weapons and gear. I am many hours in and still only have access to the starter assault rifle (and no, it’s not because I need to get good) along with some very basic appearance choices. It’s good to drip-feed content in during a game that will steal many hours of your life, but it feels almost too gradual here. Just waiting until Konami release microtransactions to “help” speed everything up.
Even though it’s early days and there’s probably a lot of content still to be added, Metal Gear Online is an essential experience for fans of the series and casuals. Download it as soon as you can.
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