Metal Gear Rising: Revengence (PS3) [Review]

Yay, it's new Metal Gear time! Metal Gear is one of those series that I hold close to my heart.  For all its hour long (or more) cut-scenes, it's nonsensical plot twists, the game's tendency to explain everything away with nanomachines (the Metal Gear version of "A wizard did it"), and the tendency of the game's bosses to go on hour long pseudo-philosophical rants I honestly can't get enough of it.  Metal Gear Solid sits up there with my other all time favorite games, the Marios and Metroids of the world.  It goes without saying I was pretty excited for a new title (albeit a spin-off) in the series.  Not only a new game mind you, a new game developed by Platinum Games-- one of my all-time favorite devs!-- who brought the world the magnificence that is Bayonetta.  Basically, my expectations were high.



But were they shattered on the sharp high frequency blade that is reality?  Not quite, I mean, the game is pretty good, it just has a few stumbling points that keep it from achieving that usual Metal Gear level of greatness.  Let's get into gameplay first.

This isn't Solid Snake's Metal Gear.  You play this adventure as cyborg ninja assassin Raiden (aka Jack, aka Jack the Ripper, aka that whiny pretty boy from Metal Gear Solid 2, aka the badass ninja that redeemed himself in Metal Gear Solid 4.) and while stealth can still be a part of your battlefield toolbox, it definitely takes a backseat to the sword slashing action.  Your primary weapon of course is Raiden's HF blade, that can cut through damn near anything.  And I mean anything.  While you have the standard requisite button presses for a quick attack and a heavy attack, holding the L1 button will initiate "Blade Mode" and give you full control over the direction in which you are choppin', literally allowing you to slice your enemies (and most objects in your enviorment) into ribbons.  It's a pretty rad effect and a fun gameplay mechanic.  This ability to cut your enemies like this is also your main means of restoring your health-- because as long as your blade is charged (by hittin' dudes with it) you can enter blade mode and a red square will show up on your opponent (if you've also appropriately weakened them).  Cutting through this indicator will expose your cyborg opponents electro-spinal column thingie, which Raiden can crush in his hand to absorb its nutrients and restore his health.  It's a pretty fun system and, no joke, looks cool every time.  Another cool feature is Raiden's Ninja Run, accomplished by holding a trigger button while moving.  This causes Raiden to run a high speeds and automatically jump over gaps and slide under stuff.  It makes moving through the game's world feel pretty fun, and when you're making an action game like this, the sheer act of moving should be fun.  So the gameplay is cool, fun, and solid.  The only foible is the camera, which often has no idea where it should be looking and can be a awful big pain in the ass.  There's also a small arsenal of side weapons you can acquire, but the game does little to highlight them-- you could play through the entire game without every having to really make use of them.  Don't expect to have Solid Snake's almost adventure game-like collection of items and tools.

Your in game performance is also ranked, and you are given Battle Points, which is the game's currency you can use to buy upgrades to Raiden's cybernetic body and weapons.  It's a good way to encourage players to learn the intricacies of the game's systems in order to get better scores and upgrade Raiden.  Unfortunately there's just not enough upgrades, especially the alternate bodies (essentially costumes).  There's only a few color swaps and a Mariachi uniform (which is honestly hilarious) and of course a body that can only be obtained via DLC, but there's just not enough there.  Where's my custom body that looks like the cyborg ninja from the original Metal Gear Solid, or maybe something that's a nod to Snake or anybody else in the rather large cast of Metal Gear regulars?  There's new moves you can purchase and weapons too, but it just doesn't seem like enough to validate the whole system.  It just feels like the bare minimum.

The graphics are pretty good and up to the standard one would expect from this generation.  The character animation is flawless as well, with things looking, well, consistently god-darned awesome.  Cut-scenes look good as well, facial animation isn't too creepy and nothing will distract you from the story itself.  No faults in this department.

The worst thing in this game though (besides it's length which I will get to later) is its painfully awful music.  Now Metal Gear has had some awesome themes in the past, but a lot of the songs in this game are just pure ass.  It sounds like the kind of stuff only 14 year olds would think was cool-- it's all some kind of Linkin Park lame ass sound-alike.  The final boss (which is crazy, crazy hard and took me several retries) forces you to hear this obnoxious tune over and over and over:

"Violins breed violins"Pretty much all of the songs in the game are about this good, which is to say, they aren't. I haven't heard a video game song with original lyrics this bad since Sonic Adventure 2 had me escaping from the city.  What happened to great (albeit extremely cheesy) stuff like the Snake Eater theme?

The biggest fault this game has though is it's length.  My first playthrough I managed to complete it in less than eight hours.  That's it.  That's pretty skimpy for a $60 video game.  Sure, there's alternate difficulty settings and some unlockable VR missions, but it's just not enough bang for your proverbial buck-- especially for a game with Metal Gear in the title.  The core series Metal Gear games feel like crazy epic films, whereas Metal Gear Rising: Revengence feels like the made for TV version of a Metal Gear.

Story is a huge thing in a Metal Gear title.  Every Metal Gear has some kind of overblown, over-analyzed, epic plot that effortlessly meshes a sort of Bourne style political military thriller with general all around goofiness.  This is the series that both is constantly discussing "the war economy" and the business and philosophy of war itself, while also having the player roll around hidden in a barrel full of diarrhea.  It's a goofy formula, sure, but god damnit, I love it.  Unfortunately, Rising doesn't quite live up to the other games in the series.  The goofy sort of outweighs the serious, and the plot itself doesn't seem to have the weight of the other games.  Most of the beginning has Raiden tasked with hunting down some orphans stolen brains, who are being fed VR training to become cyborg killing machines much like Raiden himself.  It's a noble mission, and the game does a lot of examination of Raiden himself as a character but it's hard to take the brains themselves seriously when they look like this:

Yeah, they gave'em little googly eyes.  They kinda dart around and look all goofy in motion too.  They remind me of a particular couple of car wash owning brains from an Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode.  After that it's an (extremely) quick trip to Pakistan to thwart an attempted assassination of the US President.  It just isn't as grandiose as the previous games, and it's quite a let down that the final boss (SPOILERS here, by the way) is a Hulk-ed out super strong (because nanomachines, of course) US Senator who's name is (and I'm not kidding here) Senator Steven Armstrong.  That's about the level it gets to and holds through the end of the game.

It's by no means a bad game for it, though.  The gameplay itself is impeccably solid and more or less enjoyable the whole ride, it's just over entirely too soon and just doesn't have as much going on as the traditional Metal Gear title.  While I wouldn't suggest dropping the full $60, it's definitely worth playing especially if you like a good solid action game, like Ninja Gaiden or Bayonetta.  Give it a rental or pick it up when the price goes down a bit, 'cause it's something you'll finish in a night or two, and then it will just sit on your shelf collecting dust.

PXT Final Verdict: 8.0/10