Yup

We've heard plenty about the three premium Metal Gear Online expansions released so far - SCENE, GENE and MEME - but there hasn't been a great deal of action in terms of general updates or new content for players who don't want to shell out further cash to Konami. Set up a cheer for today's news then - a completely new game mode, and a time-limited special upgrade, will shortly become available to all players.

The new game mode, called Race Mission, is a variant of capture-the-flag involving the strange duck and frog mascots of the Metal Gear series, GaKo and Kerotan. Each team will collect their nominated mascot and have the location of a checkpoint revealed; the mascot must be carried through each successive checkpoint, revealed one by one, and must be retrieved from a new location if dropped. Naturally, all hell will simultaneously be breaking loose as the two teams engage in friendly competition.

The other new feature is a lottery; each week, random players will be chosen to become Patriots, until their next ranking update. Being a Patriot gives you access to a 5.56mm hand rifle - with unlimited ammunition and no reload time. If this sounds cheap to you, you clearly did not win the lottery!

Both the Race Mission play mode and Patriot feature come into effect from the 26th of May. Metal Gear Online is the multiplayer title bundled with Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.