Oh man, I’ve reached that terminal stage with Metal Gear Online where I realize there’s something disappointing coming up. It’s happened before with other games: Burnout Paradise had far too many Freeburn Challenges to bother slogging through, Resistance was lame once you’d figured out how to use Hedgehog grenades and if you were in a Warhawk team with no headsets, you were scuppered.

Alas, Metal Gear Online’s disappointment comes in a different way, namely its DLC. Hit the jump for some expressed disappointment in Konami’s business model, or in layman’s terms, why Metal Gear Online is about to suck.

I wont deny MGO’s got a disappointment here and there. It’s far too easy to line-up headshots, so kills can be as easy to rack up as your death count, and unless you play in a team you’re usually scuppered since most of your team likes to usually go its own way. Save for these occasional struggles, it’s an absolute blast and you’ll catch me playing it every couple of days or so.

There’ve even been some updates from Konami giving us extra modes to play and extra options for games such as the recent addition of Team Sneaking, where one team dons the stealth camo and tries to steal a target from the opposing team. Unfortunately, some of the extra updates have been unnecessarily charged for: I’m calling up paying extra for additional preset messages and for extra characters to play as (not even specific characters but your own custom one; for more info on this check out my MGO review) and its here that the greater level of disappointment set in.

Yesterday Konami’s official site announced Metal Gear Online’s first expansion pack, titled “Gene Expansion” and unfortunately it looks like it’s going down the route Battlefield: Bad Company nearly went down by charging extra for things that really should be available to everybody. Included in the pack are three brand new maps, two of MGS4’s characters (Meryl and Akiba), a new ‘Survival’ game mode and the ability to purchase new equipment for your character using points earned in this brand new mode. Also thrown into the mix are female characters and a second character slot at no extra charge so you can fulfil that secret army girl fetish without having to drop your current soldier.

What worries me is that an extortionate amount is going to be charged for this content, especially since the prices for the aforementioned DLC currently available already costs far too much (up to £5/$10). A scan of the in-game community pages reveals that eagle-eyed MGO players have noted the appearance of the ‘brand new’ maps in trailers from up to a year ago, meaning that these have been held back purely for the sake of profiteering. Charging extra for the ability to change your gender? Come on!

It’s not just the charging that’s starting to get to me, but Konami’s whole utterly GENIUS idea of creating their own login system just so you can play their game. Ranting starts over the page.

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