Yeah, definately play this game offline for a smooth menu transition. The online seems to add nothing but load times so far. Very fun game and the stealth feels brilliantly detailed (aside a humourous AI path-finding glitch or two) with sporadic bouts of insanity in some encounters. The script for some of the charaters though, especially Ocelot and his over-acted voice, is often cringeworthy when it isn't directly teaching me something new. He reminds me of that Boss from the IT crowd with the style of pronunciation. It seems to not synch with Sutherland's serious grimble grumbles (good grimble grumbles, of course). Then there is the glaring masculinity of the entire game where it is all big, strong, gruff men doing all the important shit that needs to be done while the only female that appears, has a rather affectionate and somewhat intrusive camera attatched to her. Everyone either loves or fears her, while she wears pretty much nothing and sporting titties each the size of her head. All i can do is quickly explain to whoever walks in that it isn't what it looks like and the actual game part of this game is light years better than this god-awful first impression... then proceed to hang my head in shame. It would appear Hideo finds female characters intimidating to explore. Like he has never spoken to one without bolting towards the nearest bush (unintenional lol) like a startled deer.
In the un-ironic words of people more annoying than most; it is a bit of a sausage-fest in there, it does nothing to hide this. But it is still the best stealth triple A experience for current gen.