More Metal Gear Online beta details News

Konami has released a few more details about the Metal Gear Online beta, which is due to kick off on Monday 21st April.

In a post on the PlayStation Blog, Konami Online's Brandon Laurino reveals that each beta participant will have a single character slot to play with, allowing them to personalise an in-game avatar and customise/upgrade skills.

Each player can pick four skills to specialise in out of a list that includes CQC, knife fighting, quickness, alertness, heavy weaponry mastery, demolition and sniper mastery. "Talking for hours about Gozilla" isn't listed.

From there you're taken to a lobby screen for joining a game, and then it's into battle.

Once you're in the fray, you're able to keep up with what your team-mates are up to thanks to the game's nanomachine-based SOP (Sons of the Patriots) System, which identifies your comrades, pinpoints them and even tells you how they are and who they're fighting.

It's also possible to scan the opposing team's SOP link, which is bound to be useful to you and your team-mates.

As previously discussed, the beta features two of the full game's five maps - Blood Bath, a "kill house consisting of both surface and underground areas", and Groznyi Grad, a "now abandoned weapons factory that housed the Shagohod in Metal Gear Solid 3" featuring "open areas offering unobstructed views as well as indoor and rooftop locations".

Gameplay modes are deathmatch, team deathmatch, Base Mission (capture and hold) and Capture Mission (CTF) for up to 16 players, and the PlayStation Blog post also has a list of available items, including all your old favourites - claymores, stun grenades, magazines and cardboard boxes.

As we already know, the beta client file will be available to download from Thursday, 17th April, and the actual test will last from 21st April to 6th May (and not June as we originally said - sorry about that).

And if you'd like to be told some of the above again in far more detail, then check out our Metal Gear Online first impressions from a while back. The full thing - sorry, the Starter Pack - ships as part of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots worldwide on 12th June.