Title: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Developers: Platinum Games/Kojima Productions
Publisher: Konami
Genre: Action, Spectacle Fighter, Over-The-Top Insanity
Platforms: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC
Reviewed On: PC
Lately, I've been looking back on my massive Steam library, looking for something different to gnaw on. A quick scan made me remember that I have MGR. I remember when I played it a while back, and how much fun I had with it, so I installed it and got to playing. I've since logged about 50 hours into it, and beat the game on every difficulty. I always knew that the game was damn fun, but I had forgotten how damn satisfying this thing is.
For those of you who may not know about the spectacle fighter genre, games like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, and God Hand, for reference, a quick recap. The games in this genre generally are extremely fast paced third-person action games, full of combos, quick-time events, and sheer insanity. Think God of War, but twice as fast. The genre is also characterized by it's very high skill ceiling. The combat systems in these titles have a serious amount of depth to them, and if you spend the time mastering them, it's amazing to see your inputs turn into amazing fights on screen.
As for the gameplay, it works in a similar way to other third person action games, but with a few core differences. You have multiple types of attacks at your disposal, with a Light Attack, a Heavy Attack, and several other weapons that can be unlocked over the course of the game. Fairly normal stuff, until you get to your defensive abilities. Metal Gear Rising seems to have disdain for people who stop for a defensive position, so you can just throw that idea out. Instead, you get a parry. By pressing the Light Attack in the direction of an attack, you will block the enemy's hit, and allow you to get some free attacks in. Should you parry right before an attack lands, you will counter it, doing massive damage, and may even kill the enemy in one hit. There is also no dedicated dodge button, although dodge does exist as an ability, but it's easier to parry an enemy than dodge them. This change marks a difference in the feel of the game, as constant offense is also your defense, if you are not attacking in Metal Gear Rising, you're probably not playing it right.
What cannot be said enough, is how much fun this game is to play. Enemies recoil from your hits and parries, and the game shows particle and slicing effects for every slash, clashing with a loud metal clash. For crazy parries and counter-parries the game slows for a second, letting you marvel over your skills for a quick moment before going back to killing evil cyborgs. By far though, my favourite gameplay feature is the Blade Mode. Blade Mode slows everything around you to a crawl, letting you control the directions of slices. You can also cut your enemies into pieces. Not 2, not 4, but hundreds of pieces. Even better, you do not heal naturally over time; instead, you slice your enemy through the middle and rip out their robo spine and crush it in your hand, called the Zandatsu in-game, which heals you to full health. I've done this move hundreds of times over the course of my playthroughs, and it has not lost one bit of satisfaction. Seriously, everything in this game is cranked to 11 from the start, and it doesn't ever drop.
By far though, my favourite aspect of the game is the boss fights. Out of the hundreds of games I've played, these boss fights top them all. They're challenging, unique, with each putting a specifc aspect or twist of the gameplay against you, all while providing an amazing spectacle to show. If you want to play a game where a boss fight consists of a three-story death robot, where you grab it by the sword and throw it up into the air, this is the game for you. The final boss lives up to the expectations as well, challenging you in each aspect of the game, testing the skills you've developed over the course of the game.
Topping off the boss fights is the soundtrack. This is the absolute perfect soundtrack for this type of game, with frantic speed-metal playing throughout the fights. The music also dynamically shifts over the course of the fight, with faster verses and vocals kicking in at certain points during the boss fight. This is my absolute favourite soundtrack from any game, and I listen to it out-of-game frequently.
The amazing boss fights and quick gameplay are also helped with incredible replayability. There is an upgrade system, with each weapon in the game having a large amount of upgrades for you to purchase, using a currency you earn based on how well you perform in each fight. These upgrades carry over to new difficulties, and it's a lot of fun to try and upgrade everything to the max. The game itself is also short, around 6-7 hours. This can be a good or bad thing, based on how much you enjoy replaying games after completion. There's 5 difficulty modes as well, with enemies receiving new placements as well as tactics in later difficulties, rather than just a simple health and damage boost.
Next, the story. The story is a continuation of the Metal Gear Solid storyline, picking up some time after the ending of Metal Gear Solid 4. You play as Raiden, a character familiar to Metal Gear Solid 2 players, as he battles a rogue Private Military Company filled with violent, emotionless cyborgs. The story, despite the short length of the game, is entertaining, and while not as deep as the Metal Gear Solid storyline, it does deal with some themes related to child soldiers and the industrialized nature of war in a modern setting. It works for the gameplay and style here.
One other important aspect to mention, is the graphics and technical aspects of the game. This game's main strength is the speed of it's gameplay, and Platinum Games recognized this. They made the wise decision to keep the game running at 60 frames per second, and it feels so good in this title. Input speed is a crucial feature, and the framerate boost means there is little to no input lag here. Despite the need to keep the framerate high, the graphics still manage to look good. They're nothing to write home about, some textures can look kinda dated and blurry to look at, but it does what it needs to, and looks pretty enough to not be a problem.
You probably think this game is damn near perfect, from the previous paragraphs, but sadly, no. There's some issues that have come up in my playthroughs that I do need to talk about, mainly the camera and environments. The main problem with the camera is the third-person perspective of it, and how it affects parrying. An example, you're parrying a series of attacks from an enemy, and the camera swings around to the opposite side of the character, which direction will you push to parry the enemy now? The camera has a nasty tendancy to do this, but I've never had it happen enough for it to be a game-breaking issue. The camera generally functions well, but it could use some improvements.
The environments of the game are, well, generic. You've got a city, a sewer, and other real-world places that just aren't that interesting compared to everything else in the game. To be fair, this might have a lot to do with the Metal Gear setting, you can't have the most interesting environments in a setting based on the real world. It would also seem that much interactivity with the environment was stripped out, possibly to make the framerate possible. I'm sad a lot of that had to go, but I understand that the speedier gameplay was more important.
In conclusion, I absolutely adore this game, despite its issues. Despite the camera being a pain sometimes, the gameplay is just so damn satisfying to play, helped by the incredible soundtrack and insane bossfights. If you are looking for a fast-paced action fighter with a high skill ceiling that doesn't take itself too seriously, look no further than Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The studio also has several other games for both the old and new consoles. If you enjoy Metal Gear Rising, look into the Platinum Games library.
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