Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is a Hack and Slash spinoff game from the popular Metal Gear franchise, it focuses on the character of Raiden who's also starred in Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4. It started off development as a Kojima Productions game but was eventually handed to Platinum Games in 2011.
It was released in February 2013 for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, I played the PS3 version so any controls I mention will be different for the 360 version.
Like most Metal Gear games the story is quite involved and has strong ties to the gameplay, it centers around Raiden trying to prevent Desperado from restarting the war economy with cyborgs.
Playing previous games in the series isn't really that important but it definitely helps to understand the history of the setting and the pasts of Raiden and Sunny who are the only returning characters.
The story is definitely an important part of the game even though the setting and events happening are kind of ridiculous.
Like the other Metal Gear games the story is mainly told through cutscenes and codec messages, I think they are well done because they don't go for too long unless it's about something important, they look great, don't take ages to load and you can easily pause or skip them.
Before I talk about the gameplay at large I need to talk about the blade mode because it's pretty much the core mechanic.
Blade Mode is all about cutting up the enemy using either the right analog stick for any angle or the triangle and square buttons for vertical horizontal slashes respectively, most of the time it will be used to quickly kill the weakest enemies and grab their energy or finishing off the tougher enemies who need to be weakened with regular attacks before blade mode is effective.
The rest of the gameplay is a standard hack and slash with a heavy and light attack but it feels really good, almost like you are actually controlling Raiden, there's also a bunch of side weapons like rocket launchers and grenades and unlockable weapons from beating the bosses.
The combat system is also rather flexible, most of the time I was just button mashing, pulling off the same combos I liked, using ninja run to avoid attacks and using aerial moves.
I'm pretty sure the game actually wants you to use the parry counter system which takes a while to get used to because you need to press square and aim the left analog stick in the direction of the attack (there's an auto mode in easy but I haven't tried this), I only learnt how to use it consistently near the end of the game so most of the time I used my bad tactics to defeat the bosses which probably lengthened the fights considerably. I'm sure difficulties above normal put a stop to the kinds of tactics I use though.
The levels are quite linear so you won't get lost and there's some story justification about using forcefields to limit collateral damage, they don't feel too cramped though and you are generally quite free to move around, it's made even smaller in combat segments but it still feels like you have enough to work with. There's not a huge amount of stealth but you can still get through most of the levels by either running around with ninja run or taking enemies out one by one and then sneaking around with a box to make sure you aren't seen.
The graphics look great and they have a nice amount of stylisation so it won't look terribly dated in a few years, unlike games that try to go for a more realistic approach. The animation is really smooth and the models look fantastic even when they are chopped up into so many pieces.
The only issue I saw was the lighting looked a bit blocky when the camera gets close, there's also some walking chat sequences that try to cover loading, which can result in a bit frame skipping and objects popping in, this doesn't affect the gameplay but it can be a bit annoying if you are trying to get through an area fast.
The soundtrack is a mix of heavy metal and electronic music and it complements the speed and the themes of the game pretty well, it's not really noticeable during the normal gameplay but the boss themes are amazing, they start out as an instrumental track and when the boss gets weaker the lyrics kick in and they are always relevant to either the fight or the boss.
It;s a pretty short game but it puts a lot of value into the short time you will spend playing it, the adrenaline rush I had while playing through almost all of it in one night was amazing.
There's quite a bit of replay value like most old games have, secrets to find in levels, a bunch of items to unlock, several difficulty levels and a lot of VR missions.
It only took me 5 hours to beat on the normal difficulty, but that's only counting all the the successful checkpoints cleared, it definitely doesn't count all the time spent in menus, watching cutscenes, listening to codec messages and all the retries.
Overall I'd give it a 9/10 but I'd advise trying to get it for $50 or less because you might not like how short it is for anything more than that.
It was released in February 2013 for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, I played the PS3 version so any controls I mention will be different for the 360 version.
Like most Metal Gear games the story is quite involved and has strong ties to the gameplay, it centers around Raiden trying to prevent Desperado from restarting the war economy with cyborgs.
Playing previous games in the series isn't really that important but it definitely helps to understand the history of the setting and the pasts of Raiden and Sunny who are the only returning characters.
The story is definitely an important part of the game even though the setting and events happening are kind of ridiculous.
Like the other Metal Gear games the story is mainly told through cutscenes and codec messages, I think they are well done because they don't go for too long unless it's about something important, they look great, don't take ages to load and you can easily pause or skip them.
Before I talk about the gameplay at large I need to talk about the blade mode because it's pretty much the core mechanic.
Blade Mode is all about cutting up the enemy using either the right analog stick for any angle or the triangle and square buttons for vertical horizontal slashes respectively, most of the time it will be used to quickly kill the weakest enemies and grab their energy or finishing off the tougher enemies who need to be weakened with regular attacks before blade mode is effective.
The rest of the gameplay is a standard hack and slash with a heavy and light attack but it feels really good, almost like you are actually controlling Raiden, there's also a bunch of side weapons like rocket launchers and grenades and unlockable weapons from beating the bosses.
The combat system is also rather flexible, most of the time I was just button mashing, pulling off the same combos I liked, using ninja run to avoid attacks and using aerial moves.
I'm pretty sure the game actually wants you to use the parry counter system which takes a while to get used to because you need to press square and aim the left analog stick in the direction of the attack (there's an auto mode in easy but I haven't tried this), I only learnt how to use it consistently near the end of the game so most of the time I used my bad tactics to defeat the bosses which probably lengthened the fights considerably. I'm sure difficulties above normal put a stop to the kinds of tactics I use though.
The levels are quite linear so you won't get lost and there's some story justification about using forcefields to limit collateral damage, they don't feel too cramped though and you are generally quite free to move around, it's made even smaller in combat segments but it still feels like you have enough to work with. There's not a huge amount of stealth but you can still get through most of the levels by either running around with ninja run or taking enemies out one by one and then sneaking around with a box to make sure you aren't seen.
The graphics look great and they have a nice amount of stylisation so it won't look terribly dated in a few years, unlike games that try to go for a more realistic approach. The animation is really smooth and the models look fantastic even when they are chopped up into so many pieces.
The only issue I saw was the lighting looked a bit blocky when the camera gets close, there's also some walking chat sequences that try to cover loading, which can result in a bit frame skipping and objects popping in, this doesn't affect the gameplay but it can be a bit annoying if you are trying to get through an area fast.
The soundtrack is a mix of heavy metal and electronic music and it complements the speed and the themes of the game pretty well, it's not really noticeable during the normal gameplay but the boss themes are amazing, they start out as an instrumental track and when the boss gets weaker the lyrics kick in and they are always relevant to either the fight or the boss.
It;s a pretty short game but it puts a lot of value into the short time you will spend playing it, the adrenaline rush I had while playing through almost all of it in one night was amazing.
There's quite a bit of replay value like most old games have, secrets to find in levels, a bunch of items to unlock, several difficulty levels and a lot of VR missions.
It only took me 5 hours to beat on the normal difficulty, but that's only counting all the the successful checkpoints cleared, it definitely doesn't count all the time spent in menus, watching cutscenes, listening to codec messages and all the retries.
Overall I'd give it a 9/10 but I'd advise trying to get it for $50 or less because you might not like how short it is for anything more than that.
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