Positive
+ Supremely fast and agile hack and slash combat
+ Fantastic and intimidating boss fights
+ Epic soundtrack gets you in a serious mood for a good fight
+ Outstanding visuals and cutscenes
Negative
- Heavily repetitive combat
- As short as 5 hours approximately
This Metal Gear Solid spin-off removed the word ‘Solid’ from the title for a perfectly good reason. Metal Gear Rising is unlike any Metal Gear Solid you have ever played. Unlike the slow, stealth focused series and Solid Snake, Metal Gear Rising ditches the stealth master and uses cyborg ninja Raiden in a fast-paced, truly exhilarating action hack-n-slash game that breaks away from the main series in an exciting, unimaginable way.
Taking a few years after Metal Gear Solid 4, Metal Gear Rising features protagonist Raiden instead of good-old Snake with a fully cyborg Raiden. While on a mission to protect the prime minister of an African country, his group is attacked by Desperado, a rogue PMC involved in terrorism. Outmatched, Raiden is defeated and left for dead, and the prime minister killed. From there, with a new cybernetic body, Raiden heads out to stop Desperado, and a chase against time to save certain things. Despite its short length clocking around 5 short hours, the story and gameplay move at such a brisk pace that none of it feels like meaningless filler. Also Revengeance’s themes are different from your standard Metal Gear Solid affairs. There are still politics and corruption involved everywhere, but this one takes a sarcastic and over-the-top situations, creating a different kind of tension than Kojima’s prime series.
Whether you’ve loved or hated Metal Gear Solid’s stealth gameplay, it’s not to do with Rising. Despite being set in the same world, Rising is a vastly different and almost unrecognizable by its combat, fuelling with lightning fast, dynamic and outrageous combat. Platinum Games ditched the stealth completely, saved for a few small moments, which you can still kill your way through. Raiden is equipped with a katana, and thanks to his cybernetic body, he can easily move and swing at incredibly speed. Based primarily on the square and triangle button, the combat never sacrifices speed between light and weak, and heavy and powerful attack, but mesmerizingly combines the two buttons to create spectacular combinations to unleash upon your numerous foes.
Anytime an enemy is on verge of dying, the game slows down time for an instant. At that moment, holding the L1 button with put you into Blade Mode, where Raiden takes a stance and in those few instants, he can easily swing his blade and cut up the foe in front of him, to little bits precisely. This mode allows for some seriously gruesome kills, despite most enemies not being human. Blade Mode can actually be activated anytime, and you can still hit foes even if not at inappropriate moments, where time isn’t slowed and if you don’t have enough charge, time won’t slow. But if done at the right time, cutting your foe exposes their fuel energy which in turn let Raiden replenish his health. Any enemy practically possesses fuel energy, so Raiden can easily replenish his health completely. And practically most items and vehicles can be slashed in the game, which is pretty neat.
One of the best things you’ll find in Rising is its boss fights. Varying from a single one-on-one fight all the way to taking down an actual Metal Gear, Rising’s bosses are awesome. They don’t have the same rarity as bosses in Metal Gear Solid titles, so you can expect quite a few in the story. Each boss (human sized) has their own special abilities. For instance, Monsoon, when in a certain state can split his body into small bits and wonderfully dodges your every sword attack, and it looks majestically. Bosses are tougher than average enemies and will take more than random button mashing and a fair share of parrying to overcome. Plus all are filled with over-the-top costumes and equipment, and impressive looking cinematics.
That said, Rising unfortunately occasionally bogs down to button mashing, and it uses the same tricks, thus the combat becomes repetitive. And you can’t always keep attacking without some sort of defence. While there is no actual stand-still blocking button, the game only allows you to parry, with a perfectly timed press of a button when the enemy strikes, and may give you an opportunity for a good counterattack. Parrying is a vital feature as there is no dodge button. The only things that hamper the gameplay are mainly, expectedly: the camera. By no means game breaking, close-quarter camera doesn’t give the best of views, or while getting knocked down. Another problem is the secondary weapons. As Raiden gains EXP, you can buy new skills, Fuel Cells to boast the Blade Mode, and life gauge, and buy and enhance secondary weapons. One of these secondary weapons severely interrupts the fast-flowing combat since it only uses heavy-type attacks and fails in merge well with the katana.
If Guns of the Patriots looked incredible, Revengeance is no less. The futuristic setting, the first boss against a humongous Metal Gear, and continuous stream of excellently designed and robust looking characters and enemies is only offset but some good-looking, but uninteresting environment designs, which really limit the amount of exploration. Nonetheless, visually, Revengeance is superb, especially when it comes to its long cutscenes, and epic quick-time events cinematics. Ok, but the best part is definitely its soundtrack. By all means, I haven’t heard better soundtrack for a videogame in years! The soundtrack instils life is Revengeance, and fitting with the game’s gory and fast-paced action. Voice acting is good for most part, providing solid performances from the actors. The story doesn’t exactly instil passion like Guns of the Patriots, but serves up well.
It might have been unthinkable for Metal Gear Solid fans to expect something like Rising. Metal Gear Rising is a game that aims at anyone, even if obviously it uses terminology from Kojima’s titles. At any rate, Rising is an exceptional, though brief, hack-and-slash with plenty of style and substance that make it difficult to rival.
Graphics = 9.0
Sound = 9.5
Presentation = 8.4
Gameplay = 8.2
Story = 7.6
Recommendation Level = High
You may require some knowledge of the cannon franchise, but ignoring the story, the combat has no connection to Solid Snake’s saga. Combat is diabolically furious, bizarre but interesting new characters, and a stunning presentation; yes, you should play this game.
Level of Difficulty = Medium
Multiple difficulty settings, but it may require more than a few mindless sword swings to win, especially against the bosses.
OVERALL = 83 / 100
Revengeance is more than just a Metal Gear spin-off, it’s a furious and brisk action game that never disappoints.