Ok, here it goes.
Ease of use:
The game is fairly easy to set up once you have your KonamiID and such. You' ll get to create your own character and his appearance. There aren' t many items to choose from, but there is enough variety that you shouldn' t run into any exact duplicates of you. You also set four skills for your characters. These skills range from proficiency in a certain type of weapon, to other such things, such as being able to see traps, set a network for your team to be able to see the enemies and mastery at hand to hand combat and more. There are about 15 different skills and they all serve their purpose nicely. Some are really hard to use, but they still work. The menus are pretty straightforward and finding your way into a game is relatively painless.
Going online:
There are three choices. You can join an existing game, which is the fastest way. You can have the game find a game for you with people of your same skill. This takes a little more time, but you' ll be pretty much guaranteed that you won' t get an ass whooping on your first couple of runs. You can also join a training server, where you' ll get to learn the ropes with a bunch of dummy targets. The playing modes available are Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Base, Capture the Kerotan (basically capture the flag) and Holding Base (that is not the exact name, but basically you have to capture a base and hold the fort for as long as you can) So far, I haven' t ran into any lag issues and the games have gone pretty smoothly. The game looks pretty good and it sounds good too. Is nothing groundbreaking, but at least is nice too look at and nice to listen too.
The game:
The best way to describe this is Metal Gear mixed with a third/first person shooter. All of the conventions that make Metal Gear are here. Cardboard boxes, porn magazines, close quarter combat, stealth, etc, etc. You can also be knocked out and put to sleep. This works exactly like in any Metal Gear game and its a pretty interesting approach to take. Your inventory is handled with the L2 button and weapons with the R2 button. Close quarter combat is done by pressing on the R1 button (unless you have the CQC mastery skill, you will only be able to punch though, not hold) If you have said skill, then the CQC becomes more in-depth, as you can throw, choke and use your enemies as human shields. Triangle is an action button of sorts and it' ll handle all of your contextual actions, such flattening against walls, hanging and more. Crouch running is new to MG, and it works just like you' ll expect. You can still lay prone, and this has been beefed up quite a bit, as you can now roll, lay on your back, play death and more. Everything is easy to control and is pretty fun overall.
Most fights will end up in firefights though. And the shooting controls work well. You aim with the L1 button and fire with the R1 button. If you press triangle while you are aiming, the game goes into first person mode and it' ll stay there until you let the aiming button go. You can move like in any first person shooter while aiming too. You cannot shot from the hip though, so if you want to use your weapon, you' ll need to aim. The weapons are pretty customizable. My weapon of choice is the M4, and for that one alone you can add a scope, grenade launcher, silencer, laser sight and an extra handle for better recoil handling. For these mods you need Drebin points that are gained performing well in combat and so far I haven' t found a way to keep them after a match is over. The weapon selection is also pretty nice, giving you a good amount of choices between the main types (assault rifle, light machine gun, sniper rifle, etc) You also can chose a side-arm, which basically gives you a couple different pistols as well as a tranquilizer gun and several types of grenades, claymore and magazine.
If you don' t have a mic, you also have access to the Codec, which has a whole bunch of pre-recorded phrases for you to use in different situations. The game comes only with two maps, but they are huge. Each one has several stories, tunnels, sewers and are just pretty big.
So far, it seems MGO will shape to be a good online component. My main complains are that the movement of speed is very slow (you move at Snake' s pace from the single player game) I understand this is supposed to be a more tactical shooter, rather than a fast paced one, but the movement speed can be unbearable at times. Also, the game only seems to support 16 players, 12 in most lobbies. While is not as big a problem with Deathmatch, the arenas are too big and this becomes a problem, specially when playing teams. Add the running speed to this, and you can spend a good amount of time without seeing any action. I think the best thing to do in the final product is either reduce the arenas in size a little bit and/or allow for more players, but judging by the amount of troubles they had just setting up this beta, I find that unlikely.
< Message edited by chimura -- 25 Apr 08 22:43:38 >