Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

MGR always seemed to me to be based on the fight Raiden has with the Gekko's in MGS4 turned into a game and that concept doesn't disappoint.

Starting off you begin your quest as a slightly improved Raiden from MGS4, from which the game drops you off at the deep end and it only gets deeper until essentially Raiden is 'reborn' as MGR Raiden. To be honest they seem to have 'cut' right from one version to the other with little pace between, it would have been nice if they had made the progression from one to the other playable and done with upgrades, like the Assassins Creed games. But what that does is immediately give you more crazy powers to pretty much destroy everything around you with, be that people, robots or otherwise.

Destruction and cutting things into tiny pieces is what this game is all about, and it makes it joyful. Being able to slow down time and rip apart enemies, while moving in and out of combo's is very, very well done and is so much fun to do. Because of this the stealth sections of the game you end up ignoring and instead just running in head first because it's just so much more fun.

It kind of reminds me of the Modem Warfare series, everything is always at 11... well in MGR, everything is always at 12, each stage has essentially two bosses and they get more silly and insane as the game progresses.

The game also does a really good job of allowing people like me (MGS fanboys who can't play a HnS game to save their life's) of allowing you to just jump in the game on easy mode, enable a semi-auto parry assist and just have fun with the game, you can use that play though to essentially learn how to play the game for any future play through, of which you will WANT to do as soon as credits roll. Speaking of credits, the game is, at least on easy mode with parry-assist, short. My finish time clocked in at 3hrs 41mins, which is short, that said easy mode with parry assist did mean that I blazed through battles that I'm assuming using more skill and ability would last longer (people playing on normal for example have already posted times on 10+ hours). Though this isn't an MGS type 20+ hour marathon first play though because it just isn't that kind of game.

And if value for money is a thing that now has you worried with MGR, don't be. The game has a lot of extra's tucked away; VR missions you unlock via secret items in the main story mode, 'dog tags 2.0' that give you concept art and other cool items and upgrade unlocks.

Technically the game is wonderful, I played the PS3 version and it looks great, really great (and I'm a PC gamer most of the time), not only does it look great but by enlarge the whole game ran at 60fps almost constantly and I never had a frame-drop mid battle.

It's not prefect though, the camera can freak out and get stuck especially in blade mode making cutting with any accuracy difficult.

Other than that though it has some small strange voice over moments but keeps up with the Metal Gear standard of voice acting and writing, be that something you like or dislike.

Overall MGR:R is joyous, it's fast, insane, over the top (even for MGS) and just hella-fun. If you're a HnS fan, an MGS fan, a video game fan or just like nonsense this is a must own. It's a credit to Platinum and Kojima Productions that this game came out, let alone came out as well as it did.