I wanted to call this ‘The Konami ID Clusterfuck’ but Kotaku dug into my brain and stole the obvious title from me. That, and I’ve been really slow to get myself together for this one. Strap in for a long ride.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is going to be huge for Sony. Probably one of the biggest things they’ve got going for them through all of 2008, especially with the impact of Grand Theft Auto IV on the PS3 being severely lessened by the simultaneous release of the Xbox 360 version. Unlike previous incarnations of the series, MGS4 comes with an online mode out of the box (based on the well received Metal Gear Online mode that came with the Subsistence version of MGS3 for the Playstation 2).

Metal Gear Online looks to offer a multi-player experience that’s fairly unique, going in a direction far different from what you see in most shooters these days. Not all of the details have been released but thanks to the fictional SOP nanomachine system (used by units like the Rat Patrol in MGS4), there is an unprecedented focus on teamwork and team play as well as planning and tactics over twitch reflexes. Some people (read: me) are really excited by the possibilities this play style offers.

There’s a beta for Metal Gear Online, which you can download the client for right now and will be available for play from April 21st through May 5th. If you live in Japan or Europe, you can go online and get a beta key quite easily. If you live in North America (read: The United States), you can go to your local store, pre-order MGS4 and get yourself a copy of Metal Gear Saga, Vol. 2. Inside the case, you will find a slip of paper with your key to the MGO beta.

If you live in Canada, Konami has a special message for you: Go fuck yourself. Apparently, the Saga disc is as about as common in Canada as a warm breeze in the Bering Strait and anyone who signs up for a Japanese or European key for the beta gets the boot from Konami ID.

Ah yes, Konami ID. ENJOY MORE WITH KONAMI ID.

Konami ID + Game ID + PSN ID = what you need to play Metal Gear Online. Not just the beta, but the full release as well. Yes, you read that right: Your PSN ID is not good enough.

You have two options when it comes to the Konami ID. If you intend to even try MGO at some point and you’re smart, you’ll register for your Konami ID right now from your computer. Here’s the link for you: http://id.konami.net/.

If you’re not smart or you just don’t know about Konami ID beforehand (likely 90%+ of the people who buy the game), MGO will open up the PS3′s browser from within the game when you first try to sign on. If you don’t have a keyboard attached to your PS3, prepare for a lot of pain.

Now, even if you have a keyboard attached to your PS3 or even if you register online from your computer, prepare to be frustrated, because you will be.

First things first, when you get the the page, you sign up for your Konami ID. If you visit their site at the time of this writing, you won’t be able to do that, however as “System is very busy now.”

Once their site is finally working again, you’ll be able to sign up for your Konami ID. First, you pick your username. Once you’ve done that, there’s a helpful little tool to check to make sure your chosen name is available before you fill out the rest of the form. Click that little button, go make a sandwich, and by the time you’re back, you’ll know whether or not you get to use your favorite handle. Then, you get to wait another two minutes after clicking to go back to the registration page. You then have to fill out the standard address, phone number, email, etc, etc.

Then, you get to pick your Game ID. What, you say, not only was my PSN ID not enough but my Konami ID isn’t enough either? I need a third ID? Yes, poor soul, you do. And guess what? It can’t be the same username as your Konami ID so you get to go all of the way back to the beginning and pick a new Konami ID if what you chose happened to be what you expected to be known as online! Joy! Oh, and your password for your game ID can’t have any letters or special characters in it. Only numbers. Thanks to Konami ID originally be a Japanese-only site, the translation that explains this to you is not exactly clear.

Is anyone still with me, here? Anyone?

So now you have your Konami ID and your Game ID. It’s only taken you, what, 20, 30 minutes? Time to download that beta. I won’t bore you with the details for downloading the beta itself, the instructions are on the same sheet of paper as the key for the beta and it’s relatively straightforward and painless, with a very nice download speed in my case.

It’s finally here!

Once you have the beta, you can start it on up (trust me, don’t wait until the 21st) and either watch a trailer or try to play. Yes, you can’t actually play yet. Try anyways. Why? There’s already an update (version 1.01) for the beta. You’re given two options for downloading the beta. The first and recommended option is to get a distributed BitTorrent download, which is actually pretty cool in concept and a great way to distribute future patches to an established community. Unfortunately, there is no established community yet and only a select subset of people who have already downloaded the beta are downloading the patch for the beta.

So, the first time I tried this option, I gave up after five minutes with my progress bar still sitting at 0%. If you cancel an update, you have to quit out of the game to the XMB before you can do anything again. Then, you can reload and try the direct http download. Which failed on me five times, forcing me to close and reopen the program each time with all progress lost.

Distributed downloading ahoy.

After a while, I got lucky and a few people with an ungodly upload speed were going after the patch. It only took me three hours to download the 1.01 patch.

After all this is done, you can finally try to login. You don’t need your Konami ID to login, just your Game ID – which you need a Konami ID to get. Anyways, after you enter in your username and numerical password, you can actually tell it to remember your password, which is a convenience I wasn’t even expecting at that point.

The question is at this point: If the game uses Game ID through your Konami ID, will it do anything at all with the PSN ID you’re signed in through? Will it do anything with your existing friends list? Will you be able to invite people on your PSN friends list to games? Or will there be an entirely new Konami ID friends list that you have to create from within the game? The is where the people who run Xbox Live just point and laugh while counting up the fat stacks of green.

After you do all of this, you finally get to wait for the 21st so you can actually try playing the game. Assuming everything works and the servers aren’t hosed, that is.

Good luck.