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.

Looks very SingStar. Which is not in any way a bad thing.

Behold:

A gift basket of gunpowder and smoked lemmings has been delivered to GamerSyde, who lovingly snapped these screen captures for us to marvel at. Go see their full gallery – they always to a fantastic job of capturing stuff (props to BlimBlim o’er NeoGAF).

If you haven’t been keeping score at home, here’s what you’ll get in multiplayer:

• up to 16 players
• the entire city is available
• 15 gameplay modes (including some co-op’ish stuff)
• customizable characters
• control over traffic levels, police presence, race rules
• a mystery mode that has not been revealed (ooh)

Man, I was stoked when I heard it had a cover system. This… this is a whole new thing.

I feel bad for Bogart. I mean, he was a famous actor and everything, and probably got laid a lot, but it’s gotta suck to have your namesake equated with the inappropriate consumption of communal marijuana. What did he do to deserve that?

Criterion is doing their part to help the guy out. The forthcoming patch for Burnout Paradise is called Bogart. Here’s the full list of changes, and it’s a biggie (also listed below). I’m particularly happy to see the dropped-controller exploit and low-speed takedowns addressed. It should roll out on both Live and PSN on April 24th.

Keep in mind this is not the same as the announced DLC, which should add another island and some more cars to the mix. Rumour mill says it will be free. Nice if true. There’s a little preview video here of the work-in-progress.

A hail of bullet-points after the jump.

The Top 10 problems reported by you have been fixed, these are:

• PS3 game can crash when a player is taken down and the player that has performed the Takedown leaves the game.
• The game indefinitely displays “Connecting to Paradise City Servers” if it’s having problems communicating with the rebroadcast server.
• Disconnecting the controller before a race begins can mean that race timings can be manipulated with players who didn’t cross the line first being awarded the win.
• Repeatedly joining and leaving a game with 8 players can cause the game to hang.
• Hammering the A (360) or X (PS3) after unlocking a car can cause the game to hang.
• East Crawford and Watt St achievements cannot be achieved if the player goes online and sets road rules before attempting them.
• Audio distortion when using 5.1 / DTS and looking back at the car.
• Enhanced 360 streaming performance stops instances where the game seems to pause for a second or so.
• Total time driven in player stats would stick at 145 hours.
• VoIP connection problems with 8 player games. This is now live on the Paradise City servers.

The update also adds the following game experience enhancements:

• We fixed Head-on Takedowns as these seemed generally unfair and unrealistic. Unfair low speed Takedowns have now been eradicated.
• Increase online race timer timeout so players have a greater chance of finishing the race.
• Fix drifting bug when drifting and boosting. There wasn’t any real control on the brake so players would grind around the walls of the corners. Giving you all better control of the car.
• Stabbing the boost has too much of a jerky behaviour in the car handling, when in Stunt Run.
• Surround sound fix – Centre speaker was 4dB louder, ruining the mix. The speech has now been positioned correctly.
• Increase the # of search results returned for online games.
• Increase Picture Paradise timer so it doesn’t kick in so quickly.
• Post event ticker commentary is not now displayed for disconnected players.
• Show player the number of Complete Challenges easily by listing X/50 in the Challenges menu.

Other high priority issues that have been fixed:

• Instances where Barrel rolls were not registering correctly in Stunt Run.
• Takedowns online were not counting towards the Total Takedowns.
• Some instances where Revenge Rivalries desync & don’t get fixed until players are updated online.
• Some instance where the Host couldn’t change the game access if the game was created through an invite.
• Online challenge issues where the challenge couldn’t be completed if it was started at the exact time that a player left the game.
• Incorrect rivalry updates when European players played against English or Japanese players. Online connection issues.
• Rich presence on 360 didn’t change correctly when there is a change in the game parameters.
• Instances where Friends were not being displayed on the mini map.
• Some online race start points face the players in the wrong direction.

(Link > PSU.)

PS3 Rumble Controllers Hit Next Week (Week Early)
By: Dyno (Today, 03:09 PM)
How white is the white controller? Are we taking computer off-white or we talking a Winsconsin (sic) cheese-monger? X-Box is as white as I’m willing to go, anything whiter than that gives me a klan sheet vibe, you feel me?

Also, in that same thread, I cannot let this one go without a mention:

Might as well stop gaming now. All companies are taking advantage of their userbase and getting away with it. On and on. Stick with the sixaxis, pay the fee, or find a new hobby.

You sound like a version of my dad who doesn’t steal stuff. That kind of guy would be seriously annoying.

It’s about frigging time. The old one, while functional, was rather sucky as far as console interfaces go. This new design is a very safe bet, although the lack of flexible 16:9 proportions is irritating. At least we’re not pointing a mouse arrow with a controller anymore. The SELECT nav button at the bottom strongly suggests that they’ve done away with the previous browser-based interface. (This also sort of confirms a long-running rumour that this app has been literally hiding in the PS3 firmware until they were ready to roll it out.)

Sony sez no new updates for the two weeks prior, which both sucks and blows, but as a consolation prize maybe we’ll see the Warhawk Broken Mirror expansion on April 17th with the new Store.

Hi-res screens at CVG.

Liberty City map “leaked“. (> Joystiq)

New trailer. (> Gametrailers)

And now – the RockStar Social Club (> Kotaku). Stat-tracking for all of their games, starting with GTA IV, across Live and PSN platforms. Registration opens April 15th. They’re having a race to see who can finish 100% of the game first for some bonus e-penis cred. They’re also doing a huge virtual map of all crime in Liberty City called the LCPD Police Blotter. This will undoubtedly look like an incomprehensible mash of icons after a week or so. (Or maybe it will be like Bungie’s Halo “heat maps”?)

Also: prepare for the 100% predictable Think-of-the-Children Rightwing Fucktard Backlash that shall invariably ensue with the release of a new Grand Theft Auto, including attendant guest appearances by Jack Thompson, if his preachy ass isn’t already in contempt by then.

This is the footer on the Gran Turismo 5 Prologue page.

Note the rating – E for Everyone and… “Mild Suggestive Themes”? What can that be? They suggest that you might drive quickly on a racetrack? Is that even a theme? What constitutes Mild from Medium or Spicy? These are suggestions? These are whispered furtively in your ear, eminating from the rear left speaker of your surround-sound, as you drift ’round a corner on the Eiger Nordwand in a Mitsubishi Lancer, telling you to, oh I dunno, maybe go forth and kill the unbelievers, if you have time after lunch?

I don’t get it.