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    Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

    Game » consists of 27 releases. Released Feb 19, 2013

    A fast-paced action game co-developed by PlatinumGames and Kojima Productions. It follows ninja-cyborg Raiden's activities four years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.

    I played Metal Gear Rising in 2022 (again) and it's still a complete thrill ride

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    Humanity

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    "The memes!" growls Raiden as a US senator is laying out his plan of world domination through military contracts atop the smoldering remains of a Metal Gear that you've picked up with your bare arms and tossed across the battlefield. Metal Gear Rising was a baffling, exciting mess that was born out of a cancelled project that moved through various conceptual phases until it was once again shelved. Although hard to imagine now, originally Rising was meant to be primarily stealth oriented, and taking a life was supposed to present a huge moral dilemma. This was before the project changed hands and leadership, ultimately landing at Platinum Games known for their over the top character action titles such as Bayonetta. While Rising seems to have very little to do with the core ethos of Metal Gear, or even the original project envisoned by Kojimas then functioning studio under Konami, what finally shipped was altogether more exciting.

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    Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance feels like satire that doesn't know it's actually presenting itsef as satire. Most of the dialog is on this razor thin edge of being self aware yet playing out the absurdity completely straight. Halfway through the game Raidens voice actor adopts an unhinged interpretation of the character influenced by his childhood trauma that is heavily inspired by a theatrical rendition of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. Everything from cutscene direction to the written word that actors were paid to speak aloud is absolutely ridiculous in the best possible ways. Raiden driving a car in a sombrero and poncho, with his augmented cyborg body clearly visible underneath.. a cyborg mercenary with a sword sheath that has a gun trigger which literally shoots his katana out of the scabbard.. a boss that separates into thin slices that jiggle around like a living Mr. Slinky to avoid your sword thrusts. The entire final encounter with the senator which you might have seen on YouTube, most notably for the single line where the very same evil senator proclaims he wants to "make America great again!" It's all absurdist fantasy, a fever dream of real world ideas laced with LSD and spat out in game form. Needless to say it's very Japanese and very good.

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    Rising was no slouch on the gameplay side of things either. Adopting the original "slicing" mechanic from earlier iterations as the primary driver of gameplay, it combines novel new ideas with a classic character action skeleton of light / heavy combo strings. Years before people cursed Sekiro for being a game that revolved around parrying, Rising was laying the foundation for a model that favored a defensive-offense style of gameplay. In a very smart design move low level thugs require little effort for Raiden to dispatch, but as the game ramps up more enemies are introduced that require the particular flavor of directional parry that Revengeance adopted which forced you to attack into your opponents attack in order to interrupt it and engage the signature slow motion free-form cutting. This gradual on-ramp for players is smart as it both helps create a power fantasy from the very start but also makes sure it introduces what will become a necessity in late-game combat at a manageable pace. Even so, one of the first real bosses - a mechanized wolf - proved to be quite a wall for many players. At the time of release I myself spent quite a bit of time trying to best "Blade Wolf" using the elusive parry against its flurry of attacks that thanks to the games rather clunky camera would often come at you off-screen. I recall Rising being challenging even on the normal difficulty but certainly not insurmountable even for a rather middling character action player that I am. So it is very curious that so many years later and after having played and finished Sekiro, I came back to Revengeance over the weekend and was able to easily blow past 3/4 of the story and bosses without much trouble. In fact a lot of Rising seems rather tame in how forgiving the combat is compared to a game like Sekiro or even Jedi Fallen Order. Bosses have checkpoints past certain phases and you are liberally showered with healing items throughout most pivotal encounters. It seems very interesting to see this change of pace where the parry is no longer an exotic concept but has over the years become a common staple of most action titles - one that a lot of being are organically become quite accustomed to.

    Another curiosity is that my own desire to revisit the title has coincidentally ..well.. coincided with a resurgence in the games popularity thanks to, what else, but memes.

    So if you never checked this game out in the past there has never been a better time to play Metal Gear Rising. It's relatively cheap and on PC offers a silky smooth gameplay that was not always the case back when it released on the PS3/X360.

    In the wise words of Jack the Ripper "let 'er rip!"

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    rorie

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    I should really give this whole thing another whirl at some point but I kind of bounced off of it pretty heavily when it first hit PC. Glad people are enjoying it though!

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    judaspete

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    This has been on my list for years, as I'm a big fan of Platinum, but I never got around to it. Maybe I should jump on the bandwagon, but that might hurt my totally edgy sense of self-worth built upon on loving unpopular things.

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    Onemanarmyy

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    #4  Edited By Onemanarmyy

    This game is fun and absurd. But at the same time i remember that so many enemies should be beat the same way (keep parrying and you'll eventually get the super slomo to enter blade mode and deal serious damage). But it's still fun to do so whatever. I will say though that the writing feels like a different brand of absurd than the mainline metal gear games. Although the final boss suddenly manages to come across like a legit metal gear character. Definitly a game that deserves to be seen through to the end. Fantastic music too.

    I didn't know the meme machine powered Metal gear Rising, but that's only fitting. How can we harness such power?

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    Justin258

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    #5  Edited By Justin258

    Well, damn. I also just finished MGR: R. It was the first time for me, though I've seen enough of the memes to know that Senator Armstrong is the villain and the finale is batshit insane.

    I think the whole presentation aspect of it is great. The story they're telling is insane and interesting and weirdly prescient with its main villain being basically what a lot of our far-right politicians think of themselves as. Or it was spending a lot of time thinking about the Bush administration. Or both. Anyway, the game is unabashedly political in a way that almost nothing else is, even if those politics share the stage with a motorcycle-riding cyborg-ninja who cuts off one of the legs of the bad guy's giant fucking robot with his katana and then destroys that same robot with its own leg. This game has zero subtlety and I think it's better for it.

    At one point I stunned a helicopter, leapt up the missiles it had just fired at me, and sliced it into a thousand pieces in slow motion. If you don't think that's fun I'd have to ask you what happened to your soul.

    That said, I think the gameplay is at best OK and too frequently bad (I played on Normal). That parry system you mentioned only seems to work 75% of the time. I was having a ton of trouble with it at first until I realized that I needed to stop holding the analog stick towards the guy I wanted to hit (as in, I was running towards them) and mostly reserve that left analog stick for parries, which got me through the entire game mostly without any significant roadblocks. Still, I was flicking the analog stick and pushing X at the same time, in the same way, every single goddamn time, and sometimes I would still see Raiden get hit anyway. I'm using a controller that works without issue in other games that I'm playing right now so it's not the problem. It might be the PC port, which I had to play in a 1920x1080 window because for some reason this game doesn't play well with 1440p high refresh rate monitors, which speaks to the quality of the port overall being really bad. And I know other people have played this game on higher difficulties and finished it, some of whom might be able to do it without taking damage, so it's not impossible that it's me - but I swear to God, I did that parry precisely all the time and sometimes it just didn't take. While I'm on the complaining paragraph, the parry might somehow be my fault but the abysmal camera isn't, that thing is straight out of a middling PS2 era action game that has been long forgotten.

    I definitely do recommend this game but if, like me, you've never really gotten into the Devil May Cry school of action game design, maybe just play Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance on Easy and enjoy the spectacle. That's what it's best at anyway.

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    FacelessVixen

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    It might be the PC port, which I had to play in a 1920x1080 window because for some reason this game doesn't play well with 1440p high refresh rate monitors, which speaks to the quality of the port overall being really bad.

    Not to be one of those assholes who says "It works for me," but I'm replaying the first 45 minutes of the game on my 3440 x 1440 100Hz monitor while writing this, and I'm not coming across any issues; meaning that it runs in a 16:9 aspect ratio when the game's resolution is set to 1080p with producing a decent enough image, and it's hitting its 60 FPS frame cap.

    That said, either Flawless Widescreen or MGROveride might have been one of the fixes you were looking for.

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    Humanity

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    The camera is pretty bad and the wonky lock-on doesn’t help either but I think after a while you just get a feel for it. That doesn’t excuse it though and it does hamper the already demanding combat. The parry is weird but I think all games that rely on parry windows will feel inconsistent to a certain degree. With a parry you don’t really get a whole lot of feedback on why it’s not working. You’re either too fast or too slow but the game doesn’t communicate which one. Rising is even trickier because you can have the timing down but you’re not flicking the stick in the correct direction.

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    Justin258

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    @justin258 said:
    It might be the PC port, which I had to play in a 1920x1080 window because for some reason this game doesn't play well with 1440p high refresh rate monitors, which speaks to the quality of the port overall being really bad.

    Not to be one of those assholes who says "It works for me," but I'm replaying the first 45 minutes of the game on my 3440 x 1440 100Hz monitor while writing this, and I'm not coming across any issues; meaning that it runs in a 16:9 aspect ratio when the game's resolution is set to 1080p with producing a decent enough image, and it's hitting its 60 FPS frame cap.

    That said, either Flawless Widescreen or MGROveride might have been one of the fixes you were looking for.

    I was able to put the game in fullscreen, but it ran at 24FPS. I ran it on my second monitor, which is an older 1080p144 monitor, and there it ran flawlessly, fullscreen, 1080p60. Maybe it was a problem with GSYNC?

    I didn't try flawless widescreen, but I did try a borderless window program. Combined with MGR Override, I was able to get it running at 2560x1440, 60FPS, but there was one major problem - all the button prompts were for a keyboard, not a controller. In a lot of games, this wouldn't be a problem, but MGR: R has a lot of quick time events. Even if they do have generous windows, I didn't want to spend brainpower trying to remember what the F key corresponds to on a controller. I don't really want to spend a bunch of time getting games to work flawlessly these days, so I just shrugged, removed all the mods and fixes, and played it in a window. I wasn't terribly bothered by it.

    @humanity said:

    The camera is pretty bad and the wonky lock-on doesn’t help either but I think after a while you just get a feel for it. That doesn’t excuse it though and it does hamper the already demanding combat. The parry is weird but I think all games that rely on parry windows will feel inconsistent to a certain degree. With a parry you don’t really get a whole lot of feedback on why it’s not working. You’re either too fast or too slow but the game doesn’t communicate which one. Rising is even trickier because you can have the timing down but you’re not flicking the stick in the correct direction.

    So if you actually get Raiden in a parry stance, the timing windows are generous. Absurdly generous, honestly, so it's not suffering from the same problem I had with Sekiro. But sometimes I would move the stick in the direction the red flash was coming from, push X at the same time, and watch as Raiden sliced the air with his katana and then took a hit to the face.

    Even when the combat was working correctly, I rarely found it all that exciting. Visually, yes, it's amazing, but mechanically it wasn't terribly engaging. I don't want people to get the wrong impression, I did really enjoy this game, but almost entirely as a spectacle. I'd be tempted to try it again on a higher difficulty to see if it's more interesting to play at a higher level if the parry and camera and enemy targeting were better.

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    Humanity

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    @justin258: What was less exciting for you? I mean in comparison to other parry heavy games. For me there definitely is something about having to wait around in order to react to enemies rather than leading the charge - although as you level up your sword strength there are absolutely encounters you can brute force through sheer aggression rather than waiting for perfect parries. Also I think what you are describing with the generous windows is basically a block. If you’re early on a parry you will deflect the attack but won’t counter attack. The closely timed “perfect parries” are the ones that lead into instant kills and stuns. Unless that’s what you meant, then you’re just much better at the game than me as I would usually get the deflect off rather easy but had a harder time finding the perfect window to get the counter attack.

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    cikame

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    Over the last year i've very much enjoyed watching new reactions to the game from streamers who haven't played it before, in some cases those streamers then go on to check out the Metal Gear Solid games, and i couldn't be happier about that.

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    Justin258

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    @humanity said:

    @justin258: What was less exciting for you? I mean in comparison to other parry heavy games. For me there definitely is something about having to wait around in order to react to enemies rather than leading the charge - although as you level up your sword strength there are absolutely encounters you can brute force through sheer aggression rather than waiting for perfect parries. Also I think what you are describing with the generous windows is basically a block. If you’re early on a parry you will deflect the attack but won’t counter attack. The closely timed “perfect parries” are the ones that lead into instant kills and stuns. Unless that’s what you meant, then you’re just much better at the game than me as I would usually get the deflect off rather easy but had a harder time finding the perfect window to get the counter attack.

    The gameplay itself - not the spectacle, what you as a player are asked to do - wasn't terribly interesting when it was working well for me. It was mostly "whack on dude, sometimes run out of the way or parry, keep whacking on dude". There's no shortage of combos and stuff you can pull off but if you keep up with the upgrades you'll do more than enough damage to get yourself through the game with X X X X Y Y Y Y. Anything in the game that has enough health for you to really get into that combo game will force you to parry or run away long before you can really get deep into something interesting or cool or fun.

    This is why I said I'd be up for replaying this thing on a higher difficulty if I felt like the parry system actually worked as well as it should and if the camera functioned well - to see if higher difficulties are more interesting to play or just more frustrating. Really, though, I'm more interested in playing one of the Bayonettas or DMC5 to find out if I'm just not interested in this style of gameplay.

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    FacelessVixen

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    I was able to put the game in fullscreen, but it ran at 24FPS. I ran it on my second monitor, which is an older 1080p144 monitor, and there it ran flawlessly, fullscreen, 1080p60. Maybe it was a problem with GSYNC?

    I didn't try flawless widescreen, but I did try a borderless window program. Combined with MGR Override, I was able to get it running at 2560x1440, 60FPS, but there was one major problem - all the button prompts were for a keyboard, not a controller. In a lot of games, this wouldn't be a problem, but MGR: R has a lot of quick time events. Even if they do have generous windows, I didn't want to spend brainpower trying to remember what the F key corresponds to on a controller. I don't really want to spend a bunch of time getting games to work flawlessly these days, so I just shrugged, removed all the mods and fixes, and played it in a window. I wasn't terribly bothered by it.

    Well, I also tried some other variables that came to mind, such as using my Surface Book 2, multi-monitor configurations, and having first played the game for 20 hours on my old 4690K and GTX 1060 build, sorry that you couldn't get the game running properly.

    The gameplay itself - not the spectacle, what you as a player are asked to do - wasn't terribly interesting when it was working well for me. It was mostly "whack on dude, sometimes run out of the way or parry, keep whacking on dude". There's no shortage of combos and stuff you can pull off but if you keep up with the upgrades you'll do more than enough damage to get yourself through the game with X X X X Y Y Y Y. Anything in the game that has enough health for you to really get into that combo game will force you to parry or run away long before you can really get deep into something interesting or cool or fun.

    This is why I said I'd be up for replaying this thing on a higher difficulty if I felt like the parry system actually worked as well as it should and if the camera functioned well - to see if higher difficulties are more interesting to play or just more frustrating. Really, though, I'm more interested in playing one of the Bayonettas or DMC5 to find out if I'm just not interested in this style of gameplay.

    As someone who has been playing character action games since Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition during the PS2 days, I also can basically biol down the genre to pressing the X, X, X and the Y, Y, Y until you'll be sucked. All of them have the dynamic of waiting for an opening, getting your hits in, and effectively moving away or parrying in order to keep up one style meter or another to eventually earn a letter grade by the end of the level. Like how I accept and eventually complete the challenges of the Souls series and souls-likes, I also accept the various challenges that character action games provide, because I'm apparently one of the few people around here who likes to get though a game gracefully instead of just merely finishing them. And in most cases, when it come to the growing pains of parrying and dodging, I often err on the perspective of blaming myself for not mastering whichever mechanic, and I look at MGR's parry system as being more demanding than dodging with Bayo, but still less demanding than Dante's Royalguard and Nero's Exceed timings which are more akin to fighting games.

    So, I dunno. Maybe you'll acquire the taste and eventually become and enjoy being a style beast, or maybe you won't. In any case, I'd go with either DMC3 or Bayo 1 instead of DMC5. V in 5 is a very atypical character, and I remember people around here, most likely newcomers to the series, having a fair amount of vitriol for him.

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    Humanity

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    @facelessvixen: I agree that basically all of these games boil down to basic combo strings if you want to be that reductive about it. Rising is actually quite unique in a lot of it's systems which is probably why the basic combo strings aren't as important as say a DMC. It's definitely not perfect because I think the camera is fairly problematic considering the way yhe countering works in this game but I don't see anything here less exciting when it comes down to the nitty gritty than any other character action game out there. At least unlike DMC5 is is a spectacles from start to finish and not just a bunch of grey levels that repeat until a final confrontation.

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    FacelessVixen

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    @humanity: I think we can agree to agree on this one.

    I figured that my oversimplified summery of character action is mainly be for newcomers, while those that are more seasoned can point out the various quirks, features and nuances of MGR compared to each Devil May Cry entry. ...and Bayo 1 and 2. ...and The Wonderful 101, modern Ninja Gaiden, Lollipop Chainsaw, Killer is Dead, Nier Automata, PS2 Shinobi and Nightshade, and so on until I can start adding Nano Breaker and random indie games to the list.

    And yeah; I too have had many instances of "camera, why you do this?" It prevents me from perfecting Blade Wolf during his third stage, and there were plenty of times where ripping out spines looked more humorous than intended when the the view was obscured by a wall and Raiden clipping though said wall, and other Zandatsu and wall related camera movements that make me thankful that I am not epileptic.

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