There are a number of game series where after their main story is told, they make a pointless prequel or a spinoff featuring a character that isn't worth focusing on. 2013 saw a few of these boring games like God of War: Ascension or Gears of War: Judgment. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance coming five years after the Metal Gear Solid series felt concluded in 2008 by Guns of the Patriots did feel like it was going the boring spinoff route. Fortunately, boring is the last thing you would ever refer to this game as. It takes familiar things from the series and pushes it to an almost parody level and it is wonderful. It's one of my favourite Metal Gear games and one of my favourite games of all time.
It's a Platinum game so you know it feels good to play. The combat is whole lot of fun. Admittedly, I've never been great a learning combos in character action games but it isn't really the focus. There's a few combos that are definitely useful for certain situations but the combat focus is really on the parry. You get a perfect parry and riposte when you attack in the direction of an oncoming attack right at the moment it's about the connect. Once you learn how to do it consistently, it feels amazing and never gets old. Another key element of the combat is the Zandatsu. This is slicing the enemies at their weak points to get their juicy cybourg spines which recharges your health and fuel cells which allows you to get more zandatsus. This keeps you on the offensive and the combat fast paced. There probably could have been a little bit more down with the zandatsu system since there are limited animations for it but it's still pretty satisfying the whole way through.
Boss fights are a crucial part of both character action games and Metal Gear and Revengeance does not disappoint in the slightest. The Winds of Destruction as they're known as (because Metal Gear bosses like to have a gimmick or theme to base their personalities around) are all larger than life characters that, despite having little screen time, are all very memorable. The boss fights generally keep the focus on parrying which feels great to get the timing down. The fights have multiple phases that keeps upping the ante. This is helped by the game's amazing soundtrack. It's so over the top and has incredibly cheesy lyrics but it works so well. The lyrics kicking in during the last phase of the fight also makes them really exciting. The game keeps topping itself with its boss fights culminating in Senator Armstrong who has one of the best boss fights ever.
I said above that Revengeance is essentially a parody of Metal Gear so the story takes itself less seriously which is probably for the better. That said, there is definitely some continuation of the themes from particularly MGS2 and some of MGS4. The man character, Raiden, still generally is a serious character so it's not like it's overly wacky. The main appeal of the story are the fun villains and their ridiculous dialogue which the localisation team might deserve some credit to. It all leads to an incredible climax with Senator Armstrong whose dialogue ended up being weirdly prophetic but also just hilarious. It should also be noted that the optional codec conversations are actually fairly in-depth. There's quite a lot more there than some of the later MGS games even if Raiden's crew aren't as charming as those found in the earlier games.
The game is quite short but it makes for a fun breezy playthrough and I always feel compelled to give the game another run to get some better rankings. There VR missions included are pretty fun and give you quite a challenge if you want to get the best times. The DLC episodes that feature a playable Sam and Wolf are also definitely worth a playthrough. It's an excellent game from top to bottom.
It's a Platinum game so you know it feels good to play. The combat is whole lot of fun. Admittedly, I've never been great a learning combos in character action games but it isn't really the focus. There's a few combos that are definitely useful for certain situations but the combat focus is really on the parry. You get a perfect parry and riposte when you attack in the direction of an oncoming attack right at the moment it's about the connect. Once you learn how to do it consistently, it feels amazing and never gets old. Another key element of the combat is the Zandatsu. This is slicing the enemies at their weak points to get their juicy cybourg spines which recharges your health and fuel cells which allows you to get more zandatsus. This keeps you on the offensive and the combat fast paced. There probably could have been a little bit more down with the zandatsu system since there are limited animations for it but it's still pretty satisfying the whole way through.
Boss fights are a crucial part of both character action games and Metal Gear and Revengeance does not disappoint in the slightest. The Winds of Destruction as they're known as (because Metal Gear bosses like to have a gimmick or theme to base their personalities around) are all larger than life characters that, despite having little screen time, are all very memorable. The boss fights generally keep the focus on parrying which feels great to get the timing down. The fights have multiple phases that keeps upping the ante. This is helped by the game's amazing soundtrack. It's so over the top and has incredibly cheesy lyrics but it works so well. The lyrics kicking in during the last phase of the fight also makes them really exciting. The game keeps topping itself with its boss fights culminating in Senator Armstrong who has one of the best boss fights ever.
I said above that Revengeance is essentially a parody of Metal Gear so the story takes itself less seriously which is probably for the better. That said, there is definitely some continuation of the themes from particularly MGS2 and some of MGS4. The man character, Raiden, still generally is a serious character so it's not like it's overly wacky. The main appeal of the story are the fun villains and their ridiculous dialogue which the localisation team might deserve some credit to. It all leads to an incredible climax with Senator Armstrong whose dialogue ended up being weirdly prophetic but also just hilarious. It should also be noted that the optional codec conversations are actually fairly in-depth. There's quite a lot more there than some of the later MGS games even if Raiden's crew aren't as charming as those found in the earlier games.
The game is quite short but it makes for a fun breezy playthrough and I always feel compelled to give the game another run to get some better rankings. There VR missions included are pretty fun and give you quite a challenge if you want to get the best times. The DLC episodes that feature a playable Sam and Wolf are also definitely worth a playthrough. It's an excellent game from top to bottom.