I'm in the beta, I just got an email saying the beta has started.

The game download was only around 650MB, rather small. There's a nice title screen complete with your favourite gunshot sound as you hit start.

This beta requires a Konami ID to login, so no sharing like alot did with Warhawk unfortunately.

I'm still playing around, you have character customisation etc, it's pretty interesting.

More later

I don't think I'm allowed to post pics.

The combat is really f**king cool, there's different lobbies, each named after a MGS character ; Snake, Otacon, Liquid etc (yeah, 95% of the people are in Snake lobby).

- It's rather annoying to change to first person mode (L1+triangle) especially when you're fighting people. The box has made a return! It's pretty funny that I managed to kill quite from a cardboard box that totally didn't fit in with the environment.

- There are only two maps in the beta. One looks like the arctic and the other is something like the middle east that we see in the trailers and gameplay footage.

- Voice chat is supported aswell as typing. To bring up chat window is left or right on the d-pad.

- To change to the position on your back once laying down is triangle, tapping triangle and holding the joystick in whatever direction will allow you to roll in that said direction.

- Grendaes are cool, so are stun knifes.

- No slow down, solid frame rate.

- The camera control can be customised in the options menu, at first it was a pain. You can invert etc and if you so wish, have it player controlled entirely.

Difficulty wise, it's not hard to get the hang of at all. It took a bit of 'mashing' to find out how to roll onto the back of your character

The visuals are 'nice' but they seem to be a bit unpolished right now. I can't imagine MGO seeing the same presentation as MGS4 (I guess due to the restrictions that come with an online game?) but yeah, still very very nice. The character models are very detailed too.

There are stat rankings I think (I haven't really looked too much into it but looking at a screenshot I took, i see alot of 0000's next to alot of the players names followed by emblems). More interesting is the way you can customise how your character performs. Think of it something like the talent system in WoW I guess, you can alter how fast you run, skill with certain weapons and whatnot.

As for the 'hacking', If you mean the ability to hack out the nano thingos from enemies, No - Haven't figured it out yet. I've only played for an hour or so, been on the phone with Dell b****ing about my delayed Laptop >Sad

[edit] TTP - you press L1 to change into the aiming mode. you can change to free aim by pressing square

X - crouch > crawl positions (while running: diving roll)
O - reload ammo
Triangle - standing: salute (spreads this aura thing around to local team-mates, it's like a blue mesh so you can see them behind walls etc) crouching: point emote (?)
Square - toggle autoaim

D-pad:

left & right: toggle display of chat window

control sticks: left - move character, right - move camera

R3: toggle over shoulder view in aim mode from left to right.

R1 - fire
R2 - secondary fire while in aim or toggle weapon menu
L1 - aim
L2 - toggle item mini menu