Love him or hate him, Metal Gear Solid character, Raiden, breaks away from Metal Gear solid to begin his own adventure in the Metal Gear Solid spin off, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Check out my thoughts on the game below.

Raiden’s first appearance in the Meta Gear franchise was in the PlayStation 2 game, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, in Sons of Liberty, Raiden was the games main character, taking over from the series lead, Solid Snake. The decision to have Raiden as Sons of Liberty main character didn’t seem to make Raiden a popular character in the eye of Metal Gear Solid fans, with many fans out right hating him for replacing their long turn hero, Solid Snake, and many people also disliked him for his feminine appearance. Later Raiden made an appearance as a supporting character in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, in Guns of Patriots Raiden’s feminine appearance was changed and Raiden was introduced as a Cyborg. Even though he was turned into a Cyborg, not all fans had warmed to the character, but in 2009, Hideo Kojima and Konami announced Metal Gear Solid: Rising, an action game featuring Raiden as the games protagonist. After not going anywhere for a while the game was cancelled, but in 2011 the game was re-announced and named, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, the game would be a hack and slash game developed by Platinum Games.

Well enough of this trip down memory lane, let’s talk about the game. First and foremost, Metal Gear Rising is an incredibly fun game; its combat is fast and fluid, and it comes with a great selection of music which works incredibly well with the game, especially during boss battles. But the game does have some not so great moment, with a pretty average story and a poor explanation of some of the games mechanics.

First off let’s look at the combat. Before I started Metal Gear Rising my biggest concern about the game was whether or not the combat would be as good as it looked in the various trailers and gameplay video, I thought it looked brilliant, but I had doubts that it would be anywhere near as great when I actually sat down to play the game. Needless to say my fears about the combat were put to rest pretty quickly, I believe it was around the time when I was sword fight a Metal Gear, chopping away at its armour, running on top of incoming missions, and cutting missiles in half thanks to the game’s free blade mode. What really made the fight with the Metal Gear at the start was the fact at one point you had to run down a crumbling church while dodging missiles and at the same time there was a great action song playing the whole time. I’m sorry if I’m going on for too long about one of the first big fights in the game, but it was a brilliant way to begin the game.

Combat is fluid and easy to use with you having light and strong attacks, and stringing these attacks together in a certain combination made Raiden perform powerful combo skills, it sounds pretty basic for a hack n slash I know, but what makes the combat truly great is ‘Free blade mode’, this mode was one of the games main features as it lets you cut a will, by this I mean when you can control which way you swing the blade, this mode truly shines when you realize you can cut off injured enemies limbs, for example if you are a crazy person like me, you can cut off an enemies arms and legs with the free blade mode and watch them still clinging to life (don’t worry the enemies are either cyborgs or mech). One of the main reasons behind the mode is to extract energy from enemies by cutting the enemy at a curtain point and extracting the energy, extracting energy is an important part for the game as you drain your own energy while in free blade mode.

Metal Gear Rising also features a good number of quick time events, I usually hate QTEs but I didn’t really find them annoying in Metal Gear Rising. They seemed to work well with game and unlike some other games you could fail them.

Metal Gear Rising also features secondary weapons which are ranged based weapons such as grenades, RPGs and stingers. These are a nice inclusion, but I found they did really did slow down the fast paced nature of the combat.

Now let’s look at the not so great thing about the combat. One of the major weaknesses of the combat is how it is explained. Basically the game does a poor job of explaining everything fully in the game, sure there is a tutorial which covers the basics, but the tutorial are incredibly basic, for example parrying which is one of the most important parts of the game is explained poorly, the parrying tutorial doesn’t do the pressure you will be under to parry in-game justice and as such leaves you a bit unprepared.

While on the subject of parrying, the setup for parrying which is move the left analog stick to where you are going to be hit from and press x at the right time is incredibly frustrating, it might have just being me since I’m not used to hack n slash games, but I found trying to time parries and knowing which attacks can be parried extremely difficult, it got to the point where I decided to change from normal mode to easy mode because of the fact easy mode had a parry assist option which auto parries attacks for you.

One last issue with the combat and that is the camera. The camera can become incredibly annoying in combat, especially when you want to look around trying to find an enemy. Luckily the lock on ability does negate some of the camera issue, but even locked on the camera still doesn’t feel great.

Now for the story of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The title really says everything you need to know about the story, the game is about vengeance and revenge. The main plot of the game is to free children who have being kidnapped and turned into nothing, but cybernetic brains being trained to love violence and fighting. Raiden’s job is to rescue the children, stop another proxy war and kill those behind everything that is going on. The game also touches on Raiden’s past in an attempt to give Raiden a more expanded back story.

Overall the story isn’t bad, it isn’t brilliant and some part of it makes no sense, in cutscenes Raiden is shown to have some remorse for all the killing he is done in the game, but after this he continues killing with no problem. Another problem are the characters in the story, we are given very little information about them and have no reason to care about them, even near the end the game tries to make you feel sorry for one of the enemy bosses you killed, forgetting the fact that the person you just killed is reason why you are a Cyborg.

Metal Gear Rising also has some customisation options. Customisation includes increasing Raiden’s health, unlocking new skills, unique weapons and more. To unlock items in customisation mode you need to collect BP, BP is collected from killing enemies, collecting objects etc. in the game. I recommend customising your character when you can, especially when it comes to increasing your health and the power of your sword, because you will need all the power you can get as you go further into the game.

Revengeance has a total of eight levels and it takes about 4-5 hours to complete them all. Each level bar one or two end with a boss battle of some description, personally I enjoy the fact levels that end with a boss fight because you have tangible evidence that you are now one step closure to completing your revenge. The bosses do vary in difficulty with some bosses being a nightmare to fight and other being a cake walk.

Overall

Metal Gear Rising is a fantastic game, while it may not excite existing fans of the Metal Gear series. I found it was thoroughly enjoyable spin off, with great action and a soundtrack which makes you want to keep fighting.

Score: 80%

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Information

Developer: Platinum Games
Publisher: Konami
Genre: hack n slash
Rating: 18+
Platform: PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (reviewed on)
Release date: out now
Website: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance official website