The Metal Gear series of shooting games is one of the last big action franchises to offer some kind of online mode, but Metal Gear Online (being developed in tandem with the single-player Metal Gear Solid 4 game) finally rectifies that oversight. It’s hard to do anything perfectly on your first try, though, and Konami definitely has some bugs to work out.

Getting into the game is a pain. You need to get two separate sets of user IDs and passwords from Konami and then access your e-mail to verify your registration before you can play. I’m not opening a bank account, Konami.

Once in the game, you can do some rudimentary character design, although you can’t play (as far as I could tell) as Snake, the famously grizzled hero of the regular Metal Gear Solid games. Then it’s off to hunt and kill human opponents in death-match, team-death-match and other standard-issue game modes.

There are some neat twists — such as a catapult to launch yourself across the game map, and barrels you can hide in — and the controls are familiar and comfortable.

But Metal Gear Solid 4 is going to be one of the biggest games of the year, and hopefully Konami will get a little more creative with the online skirmishes before the final product ships.