Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

Kojima Productions has also devised a leveling system that will feel familiar to Call of Duty 4 ranking addicts. Like Infinity Ward’s game, Metal Gear Online has you leveling up by completing objectives and scoring kills. All the while you will be earning perks, weapons and add-ons. Perks are mostly used to increase health, moving speed or damage. Perks are team based so they are shared upon members. Provided you are a proficient sniper, all team members will see their sniping abilities increased. There is a high degree of weapons customization with no fewer than 70 add-on combinations. All of this feels almost stripped right out of Call of Duty 4 but when you take elements from such a game you can never go wrong.

Remember that wacky sounding Sons of the Patriots system? This wondrous system acts as a HUD shared by all squad members and doubles as a detailed map showing the location of your squad mates. The most useful feature of this HUD is that all enemies in the line of sight –whether it is in yours or your team mates- can be seen by every team member. Other information such as weapons equipped, health or available perks, is shown over your squad member’s heads. With the press of a button, glowing colored auras appear around members from both teams (blue for friends, red for foes) that can be seen through nearby walls. Bullets will draw colored lines so you know whose fire it is you are running away from. There is some risk at possessing this much info on your own team: When a friendly soldier dies, others can hack the Sons of the Patriots system from your team, revealing precious intel.

Camper!

Subsistence had its share of ups and downs. The game encouraged team-play but also allowed players to rush and camp spawn points. It also created huge gaps between skilled and inexpert players. Pros who’d knew there way around maps would make little work of newcomers, making matches a lot less friendly than intended. Metal Gear Online intends to fix this with a skill rating system, added with the sole purpose of creating friendly matches and separating newbie’s from Subsistence veterans and new pros.

We are still holding our breath as to how Metal Gear Online could fare as opposed to former online editions. Metal Gear has always been a plot-heavy IP revolving around one man against many. We are hoping for something (namely Sneaking mode) that recreates the single player experience more than the previous online installments did. Metal Gear might have had a dramatic change in both perspective and controls but it has always been still a stealth game at its core. The developers will need to keep their focus on this. There are multiplayer spray ‘n pray games aplenty and I doubt there is a market for yet another one. Nevertheless, Metal Gear Online is looking great. Kojima Productions seems to be doing everything right with Metal Gear Online and we have no doubt it will find itself part of the collections of most Metal Gear Solid fans.