Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is an awesome game. It is a third person action hack and slash game with some epic boss battles. You play as Raiden who is a cyborg ninja/human hybrid. The story begins with Raiden working security detail for the president of an African country, they are attacked by the Desperado (A private military company) and their leader Sundowner kills the president N’mani. You fight numerous bosses. I will avoid spoilers by giving the details of the story here.

Graphics:

The graphics in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance are pretty good. It doesn’t have the best looking textures but you won’t notice them unless you go really slow. The game is supposed to be played fast and you’re constantly fighting enemies to notice the texture anyways. Game seems to be locked at 60 fps so I wish it went higher. The game is optimized pretty well as I never dipped below 50 in fps throughout the game, even when a lot was going on screen, it ran very smooth. The game features one of the best looking cinematic cut scenes, I don’t usually take many screenshots in games but this game had me take over 600 screenshots throughout the gameplay. Though the cut scenes are locked at 30 fps for some reason, they’re nothing too annoying but it is definitely noticeable.

There’s the usual options in this game like texture filtering, antialiasing, shadow quality, motion blur etc. Graphics menu image can be seen below:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=685560067

Sound:

This game features an epic sound track. The voice acting is pretty solid. The game features a fast paced heavy metal/rock soundtrack. Even though I am not a fan of this genre of music I thoroughly enjoyed the music. Basically the music really pumps you up, especially during boss battles, you have that high rush and energy going on with this sort of music.

Gameplay:

The gameplay of this game is amazing and one of the best hack and slash gameplay I’ve ever played. Raiden has a basic blade which he uses to slice up enemies, later down the game you gain additional weapons and even a new blade near the end of the game. Raiden can use light and heavy attacks by left and right clicking respectively. You can create a lot of combos using these attack combinations and even unlock new moves with the in-game currency. There’s a Parry move which can be used to block almost every attack in the game (though some attacks will still hurt Raiden, like the last boss battle’s MG Excelsus form). You have to hit the direction of the enemy and your light attack button at the same time to be able to successfully a parry an enemy attack. When an enemy attacks you they’ll have a red light go off in their eyes and this is your chance to parry. A good practice in parrying is your key to beating this game otherwise some of the bosses will have you raging. Successful parrying of an attack will block the enemies’ attack and an electric current can be seen as visual confirmation of a successful parry. When you’ve nearly killed an enemy you can also go into blade mode and try to hit the red box which prompts up on the enemy, upon successful hit on the box Raiden will rip out the enemy’s heart out and crush it with his bare hands, this will refill both his fuel cell energy bar and health bar. When you’ve almost killed an enemy you may also get a prompt in Japanese to attack in blade mode or a series of quick time event moves. A lot of boss battles will also make use of the QTE’s.

When you fight enemies you gain battle points which can later be spent on new weapons, health and fuel cell upgrades and new moves. New suits can also be bought some of which have different feature such as one of the suits can have Raiden carry more grenades etc. Later down the line Raiden gains “Jack the Ripper” mode which can be activated using the R key. When you’re in ripper mode Raiden will start to glow red and his attacks do much more damage and you can easily kill of even the super cyborg mechs with a few hits. There’s also a Nano paste pickup which basically an add-on which refills your health once the whole bar depletes. Having a few of these before boss battles can also be very handy. Raiden’s health upgrades can go up to 150% and the fuel cell upgrades can add four small additional mini bars.

The weapons/recovery menu could’ve used an upgrade as it’s kind of limited. Every time you want to change a weapon you must go through this weapon menu. This is not too troublesome for the health or main weapon but can be annoying if you switch your sub weapons a lot. Even though PC’s have enough buttons to assign every weapon their own button they still decided to use this dumbed down console version of the menu which is quite painful to use. Menu as seen below:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=685560115

Raiden has plenty of abilities such as ninja run which is Raiden running super-fast with his sword out and he blocks bullets with his blade. Basically when someone shoots with guns you can use this to avoid getting hurt. Ninja run will also have Raiden auto jump over obstacles. You can also use this to harass enemies by moving in getting a few hits and then moving away though this method is not as effective as most of the enemies have a lot of HP and can take a long time to kill. There’s a sort of a dodge ability, when you press Z key, Raiden will attack enemy and sort of jump back, it’s not that useful, I mostly used parry throughout the game and found that to be much better. In addition to that Raiden has what is called a blade mode. It basically slows down the game and you can cut up an enemy into many pieces and you can accurately cut up the enemy or objects. When you are in blade mode you can adjust the angle of your blade and make horizontal, vertical or diagonal strikes and at the end of blade mode the enemy/object will be cut exactly in normal time as well. A short gameplay featuring combat, parrying and Ripper mode as well as blade mode can be found below:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=685565658

Every level has you follow a linear path and a bunch of enemies to kill. Leading up to a boss battle. There’s many types of enemies including military guys with guns and rocket launchers, ninjas with blades, heavy armed cyborgs, even cyborg hounds etc. You can hide in cardboard boxes, metal barrels just like other Metal gear games, which can be hilarious. When enemies detect you, you’ll hear the ah-so-familiar exclamation mark sound from other Metal gear games. You can also get stealth kills and do most missions via stealth as well by sneaking behind enemy and pressing F when the prompt comes up.

I played on normal mode, game is not that difficult, though, the last boss can be pretty hard to beat and frustrating, others were not so hard. The game doesn’t require too much time to beat, you can easily beat the game in less than 8 hours of gameplay in normal mode. VR modes unlocks are hidden throughout the levels and must be activated to unlocked in order to play.

Graphics: 7/10
Sound: 9/10
Gameplay: 10/10
Overall: 9/10

Conclusion:

This game is extremely fun and if you’re a Kojima fan or even a fan of action/hack and slash games, you’ll love this game. Awesome soundtrack which will keep you pumped up during intense boss battles, some of which can last up to 10 minutes. Make your way by slicing up everything that moves or go the stealth way and try to eliminate one enemy at a time. The game features awesome cinematics and an interesting story which will keep you hooked and plenty of Kojima humor. I’ll 100% recommend this game. I really hope more PlatinumGames’ games make it to the PC.