Review - Metal Gear Rising: Revengance

Raiden has always been the ugly duckling per say in the Metal Gear character roster. He was more-or-less disliked when he first made his first appearance in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, but he did manage to get some fans (including me) with his reappearance in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Now, with Kojima taking a closer look and his story, we get a fresh look at the cyborg ninja.





As we know Platinum is well-known for the crazyness in its games and it definitely shows in Revengeance, right from the Lacking intelligible name of the game to the first boss fight and even some of the weapons you get to handle. Right from the start, the game makes you feel like a super-ninja; it is one of the rare games out there that makes you feel like you’re actually using a real sword, instead of something to just whack enemies again and again with till they collapse and die.

Gameplay

The first boss does a great job of letting you know what the tone of the game is going to be like. You fight what has been established in other Metal Gear games as one of the most advanced and dangerous enemies possible—an unmanned version of Metal Gear Ray. Raiden aka Jack the Ripper makes short work of it in spectacular fashion, with key moments including lifting it up and throwing it into the air while he’s cutting it up, and jumping at the rockets (like crouching tiger hidden dragon) it is shooting from a great distance just to get to it to cut it up some more.

The insanity and blatant disregard for the laws of physics at display, the game ends up feeling much like an episode of some shonen anime. This may very well be one of the most distinctly Japanese games to have been made for this console generation and sits proudly alongside Bayonetta for being completely crazy insane. The action is fast-paced and furious. Raiden, equipped with an awesome sword that supposedly vibrates at a very high frequency (hence letting him cut through giant robots and buildings alike), is an extremely offense-based character, and this can be seen in the control philosophy employed by platinum. There is literally no way of dodging attacks short of just moving out of the way yourself, and the game lacks a dedicated block button.


One of the two defensive moves you get is the parry, which is pulled off by timing your light attack in the direction the enemy’s attack is coming from. Time it right and you get to do a counter-attack that leaves the enemy open to a Zandatsu. Zandatsu is essentially Raiden knocking the enemy’s life down a bit and then letting you go wild in blade mode (which is epic) in the end.


For those who are wondering "What’s blade mode?". Let me explain a bit. Blade mode is one of the selling features of the game. It basically lets you slow down time to a crawl while you pick where and how you want to slice up enemies. It’s blend together into the fights well, with bosses needing you to use blade mode to expose their weaknesses at times.

The other defensive move involves running. Running while holding down the L1(ps3) or LB(xbox360) button (depending on your platform of choice) lets you run around in Ninja Run mode. This mode is special because, first of all, it automates the platforming for you as long as you’re running in the right direction, and second and more importantly, automatically deflects regular bullets as long as the mode is on. You have simple light attacks and heavy attacks, and mixing them up lets you do combos that look spectacular. On the Normal difficulty, the game can be finished by simply button-mashing, but the level of play such as hard or higher and you’ll have to keep an eye on what combos you’re pulling off where and when to get the job done.


Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance isn’t all about cutting enemies into tuna. There are some stealth mechanics in the game. And while it’s not exactly possible to finish the game without being spotted, it’s still been pulled off well. By default, if an enemy hasn't seen you yet, they will be completely oblivious to your presence. There’s no sound mechanic either. You can run around enemies all you like as long as you don’t get in their line-of-sight. Don’t be fooled, though, the stealth mechanics are tertiary at best, with action and minor platforming being the main gameplay elements that the game chooses to focus on. The cool thing about the implementation of stealth in Revengeance is the ability to let you pull off stealth kills. You can sneak up behind, or in some cases, above the enemy and, if you’re positioned well, you can basically finish them off in one hit and use blade mode to get their spines. More often than not, this ends up being more of an opening attack into a large group of enemies, rather than an effective tool for quickly dispatching a room-full of baddies.

Presentation

One of the things that stand out about Revengeance is just how fluid everything is. Platinum made a wise choice to keep the game running at a solid 60 fps. This makes animations feel fluid and the gameplay feel fast. This, along with the great choice of music, makes the whole game feel like an fully stretched adrenaline rush, especially with all the crazy things happening all around you.

One of my biggest pet-peeve about the game is the greatest enemy you end up fighting. Which is the camera, though. The camera controls are stupid awful in the game, with it constantly focusing on inane objects while you’re trying to stay alive through a constant onslaught of Gekkos and cyborg mercenaries. The camera ends up being the cause of death more often than the bosses do, and hopefully, Platinum will fix the problems soon.

While you do get healing supplies that automatically heal you when your health drops too low, the main way of staying alive in the battlefield is to enter blade mode, slice up the enemy in a strategic spot, and rip out its spine to absorb the electrolytes. But, then some fights feel too easy.

Revengeance being a (turn people into tuna per say) action game hasn't deterred Platinum from including a Codec, and by extension, weird comical conversations into the game. The game never pauses for codec conversations, though. Instead, the conversations load up in an augmented reality window and you still have some control over where Raiden moves as he does a (Gears of War) hand-to-ear walk-and-talk sequence. As is usual for a game with the Metal Gear alias, the codec conversations range from being informative about the story to being downright hilarious. In fact, for those who haven’t played Metal Gear Solid games, the codec is a great way to get yourself up to speed in the happenings of the Metal Gear universe. The codec conversations can fill you in about events revolving around Raide