Never enjoyed the game at its popularity peak, so it was very easy for me to jump on the hate-train when people decided it was too kiddy (despite literally being a kid at the time). Then out of nowhere, I started playing this as a joke with friends; it ended up being a guilty pleasure amongst us who stuck with it. This game really ain't as bad as its reputation demands. The addition of vehicles really helped with one of my core issues back in 2018, the slowness and dullness of map traversal outside of combat. More shooter experience and playing with friends also made this much more fun. Looking back, I wish I could play on this map again sometimes.

Kept on with this guilty pleasure with friends since Chapter 2. Not as exciting a map as Chapter 2 was, but still a lot of fun and was our go-to multiplayer for a while. New movement mechanics and zero-build help even the playing grounds a little for terrible builders like me. Best season was 2, where there were airships, tanks and battle buses with guns. Slightly embarrassed by just how much time I put in, but that's what happens when you and your friends only have a handful of go-to multiplayer games.

Came for the "nanomachines, son!" stayed for the "your memes...are over!"

As a chronically online person, it can be quite fascinating to see certain games get a second resurgence. Senator Armstrong memes had been floating around for years, then all of a sudden Max0r makes a video on the game and everything about it goes completely viral. Next thing you know every character, funny scene, song and bossfight has been memed to death. Jestream Sam Bait and Switch, Armstrong Max0r dub, Red Sun, Monsoon, etc, etc.

Metal Gear Rising is a rare piece of media that has achieved what I'm coining "Peak Meme Status", where every single detail is picked apart and stripped into its own separate meme format or topic. Another example of PMS would be Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul, where basically every character death or important scene in the show became its own meme format for a month or more. I think it's a really fascinating aspect of Internet/Meme culture that isn't talked about. It's turned a spinoff of Metal Gear into something that feels like a completely separate entity to the rest of the franchise; the other games having a mostly homogenous appearance on the internet.

That makes talking about MGR unique because it feels like half the people who are fans of this game have never touched another Metal Gear, and the other half are fans who have never actually played this game.

All this being said, it's still a pretty entertaining and fun videogame, albeit not the best hack-and-slash or Metal Gear. The game becomes a lot more fun once you actually figure out how to parry; the game doesn't word it's tutorial very clearly so it wasn't until R-04 that I actually searched up how to do it (yes, I beat Monsoon without knowing how to parry, I am a psychopath). The bossfights are definitely the highlight, because they use the combat system in the most interesting way as well as having the iconic music and characters.