Metal Gear Rising Revengence Review

Review originally written in Early March 2013.

It’s probably the first time there’s a video game with a cyborg ninja and a robot wolf as the main characters.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is a spin off title from the Metal Gear Solid series in which the player controls Raiden. Raiden currently is a cyborg ninja that works for a Private military group that focuses on preserving peace and creating defense for developing countries. The game instantly lunches into a fight with a cyborg terrorist group bent on creating war everywhere for the pure purpose of boosting the war economy. Raiden goes after group learning the group is also kidnapping children for military experiments to which begins revenge as he was raised in a military life. He seeks to stop the group so that no child experiences what he had to go through.

The game play is that of a hack and slash game. The player controls Raiden running fast through levels slicing his sword through cyborgs and robots with a series of attacks and combos. It’s a very far off difference from the Metal Gear Solid series which is heavily stealth based on sneaking past enemies and not be noticed.  While there are moments in the game where can choose to use stealth, it’s not as prominent.

One large aspect of the game is Blade Mode. This is when the player stops moving and uses the right control stick to make slices in whatever directions they want to slice enemies into a million pieces. While you need a large amount of cyborg fuel to activate this mode so enemies go into slow motion, you can easily go back to full health and fuel by performing finishing moves on enemies.

There are two major problems with game that can interrupt game play. The camera control is hard to manage as the camera sometimes wants to move in a certain direction, and can through off your direction and leave you open to enemy attacks. The other is blocking enemy attacks. In order to block an enemy attack, the player must press the light attack button and move the left analog stick in the direction of the oncoming attack. When three enemies are surrounding you at once you will block one attack only to be hit over and over without recovery time. It’s especially troublesome with a large number of enemies where it is essential to block before you can attack an enemy.

However overall the progressing game play is amazing. Most hack and slash games can get boring at a point as a player will find themselves doing the same thing over and over again. Revengeance makes it fun, fast, and throws something new in at almost every turn. It’s a game you can’t get bored of, especially when fighting the giant robot you jump across each missile flying at to reach it and slice it in half. Enemies come in a number different fashions and the bosses are all unique and present good challenges. It’s been a while that a game presents a good challenge while not being ridiculously difficult. 

So in the end “Revengeance” is kind of a toss up. If you like hack and slash and/or like the Metal Gear Solid series, this is a definite play, even if Solid Snake doesn’t appear. If you’re more of a stealth player, you may want to skip this once. It’s a solid action game and has probably one of the best stories for a hack and slash recently. 

3.5/5 Stars

SINCE THEN: I still stand where I am about Metal Gear Rising: Revengence (turns out that's a real word) that while the controls can be troublesome, it's still great fun. Not to mention the end boss fight was on such a large scale and so fun to play. If the game was longer and had more fights like that, I would highly recomemend the game to anyone, but it doesn't have that. Since release some DLC has come out for players to control Jet Stream Sam and the robot wolf. While they just take existing maps and change the direction and enemies fought, they do have their own cutscenes and stories, which is actually very nice giving background information on the plot and characters. If they were a part of the game instead of DLC it would have also increased the ratting, but it is a seperate purpose.

However if you're looking for some fun action that's fast paces and has some amazing boss fights, I would still say pick this game up.