Metal Gear Online 3 Is a Headshot [TGS Hands-On Preview]

I expected the newest iteration of Metal Gear Online, which was being officially called "Metal Gear Online 3" by Konami at this year's Tokyo Game Show, to be pretty much just another team deathmatch game, just with Metal Gear Solid V's skin. It turned out that Metal Gear Solid V's skin is pretty fucking cool.

The goal of the "Bounty Hunter" mode I played was to reduce the other team's tickets to zero. You do this by killing people in the arena stage you're all dropped into. Simple enough on the surface, but there are twists. Every time you kill an opponent, your own bounty goes up, meaning you're a more valuable target to the enemy. Get hot enough, and eventually your ass shows up on the radar like the motherfucking sun, as if to say, "Look at me, everyone. I'm the motherfucking sun. Also I killed a bunch of your friends." If they kill you when your bounty is that high, they'll get a greater reward than if they'd just killed some average Joe from your team.

While that sounds like a penalty for being rad, come on, be real, it's kind of awesome to walk around being cocky as fuck, like you don't even care. Come at me, bro.

But what if you do care that people are coming at you, bro? Good news: you can go non-lethal if you want. Sneak up, knock someone out and tie Fulton balloons to people. Watch them sail away while you may or may not be singing "Come Sail Away," and then watch your own bounty decrease, effectively eating the other team's lunch.

There were lilttle mini Metal Gears that you could get into. That shit was OP as fuck, but probably won't be as much once, people get used to it. The thing about all these trade shows is that all of us were playing it for the first time.

Sadly, Konami didn't let us experiment with different loadouts or classes. There were several to choose from, but the class you picked first was your class during the whole half-hour play session and that was that.

That notwithstanding, the gameplay looked and felt great, basically giving everyone the tools and gameplay from Metal Gear Solid V and allowing us to use them in a new way. It was already fun, and seems like with a little practice and getting used to the system and game flow, it could eventually get pretty damn awesome.

Man I feel like I said fuck a lot in that preview. Someone count how many times and tell me in the comments because I cannot stand reading what I wrote. (I'm probably not alone in that.)