few things in gaming as badass as slicing a cyborg in half and ripping its neon spine out in order to recharge yourself up

metal gear rising falls into the same exact hole i'd place vanquish into: a stupidly insane, silly, exhilarating action hiding a fairly politically poignant story that is ultimately let down by some unpolished general gameplay sections. in vanquish, it was the cover system that was a bit of a let down. in revengeance, it's the shoddy free-running mechanic and the poor parry system.

if this were remade today with some quality of life improvements it'd be a real GOTY kind of game. i think ultimately, the best version of metal gear rising: revengeance is what fromsoftware did with sekiro: shadows die twice.

one of the coolest games ever made as is though, no doubt about it.