Metal Gear Online 3 Gameplay Preview

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Metal Gear Online takes the gameplay and combat tools from Metal Gear Solid V, gives them to two teams, and then drops them into an arena in which they try to wreck each other.

On the surface, it’s a third-person team deathmatch, but with the fine tuning Metal Gear has become known for, it becomes a lot more than that. Naturally, there’s the basic idea that killing people who aren’t on your team is a good thing to do. Verily. If you find yourself in a tight spot without time to be tactical, yes, indeed, shoot the bad guys and hope you get ’em, because that’s good for your team.

But a kill puts a bounty on your head; it makes you worth more to the other team. You’ll become a higher priority target, because if someone kills you, his/her team reaps greater reward. So that sounds like getting punished for being too awesome, right? But shut up, I’m not done.

Players can lower their bounties by capturing opponents instead of killing them. Knock someone out, tie a big ol’ Fulton balloon to them and watch them soar while your bounty plummets. Using a good combination of killing and Fultoning seems the ideal strategy, but of course, it’s much easier said than done.

For that reason, I didn’t see a lot of people able to ride both horses in the demo sessions. Most players were clearly favoring one or the other, but the nice thing is, MGO accommodated whatever play style. If you’re good at what you wanna do, you can do it, and that’s kind of what sandboxes are all about.

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I wasn’t so great at it myself, having not yet played Metal Gear Solid V or any previous Metal Gear Online, but I could see all the many ways in which my goose was getting cooked, and even within my half-hour playing the game, by noob ass was starting find a foothold.

Players didn’t get to experiment much with classes or loadouts. I could see there were several to choose from, but there were only a few different pre-set equipment options, and we were locked into our classes for the entirety of the play session. As much as I loved the giant shield I got as an Enforcer, I would’ve liked to try out the other classes.

So the Bounty Hunter mode I played was interesting and promising, though other huge chunks of the game were withheld. It would’ve been nice to see more of it, since it comes out in like a month.