I don’t want to piss off any Metal Gear Online fans, in fact I wanted to be one.  I mean, I really, really wanted to be one, but I’m not, I’m so not.  And having recently read about Hideo Kojima’s revelation of disappointment at the number of people playing MGO, I felt maybe it’s not just me.

There are a lot of things about the game I could nit pick to death about game play and certain elements of the game (being trapped by porn has to be one of the most annoying things in all of gaming), but to each his own and everything I hate may be something that someone else loves or I just don’t get.  But, to me, there is one painful and almost inexplicable omission to MGO.

You see, from the beginning, and I’m talking 1987, Metal Gear has been as much about acquisition as completion.  That is some of the best moments in the game, haven’t been beating a boss, or even the whole game as it has been about finding that sweet new piece of hardware.  All of the weapons, all of the gadgets, all of the things that made Snake more than just the bad ass soldier that he was.  It is the old comic book rule, “If your hero doesn’t have weapons, they have to have gadgets.”  To this day, the MK 23 from MGS1 holds a special place in my heart.  And (MGS4 SPOILER ALERT) when I found it again on my return to Shadow Moses…total nerdgasm.

So in the months leading up to the MGO beta when I read about these Drebin Points and how they would lead to weapon upgrades in MGS4 and MGO, and how Kojima talked about the huge number of weapons in this game, there was much joy.  I already had my plan, I would save 2,000 Drebin Points and get my MK 23 to take online, and then save about 8,000 and get a fully customized M4 or a G36, and then I would save 10 million Drebin Points and get the stealth camo.  But, it was not to be.

My heart sunk as I played the beta, and again when I found out it used the same system in the final online game.  What was this, anything Metal Gear without the ability to hoard the latest in enemy killing accoutrements?  Temporary weapon upgrades that you lose every time you die?  Say it ain’t so.

Somewhere in the deepest recesses of my nerdness, hope endures.  I still imagine that game, where I outfit my online avatar into a perfect noob pwning assassin in the image of the legendary Solid Snake.  Where in a MMO-like quest for the next best thing, I waste away big portions of my life for those next few points that give me that new piece of the MGO universe I’ve waited so long for.  That game seemed so close, but is now so far away…crap.