Metal Gear Rising Revengence Review - One of Platinum's best.

By Sam Coles:

The Metal Gear series has always been known for its bizarre narratives with serious war stories with quirky moments that disarm you for the emotional moments, coupled with great stealth gameplay. Metal Gear Rising was a different take on the series as Hideo Kojima wanted to make a hack and slash action game as originally the game was titled Metal Gear Solid: Rising. However it got stuck in development hell as he struggled to make a good hack and slash system due to the fact he had little experience within the genre. Instead of letting it dwindle in limbo he called in reinforcements in the form of Platinum Games who need no introduction as they have created some of best and over top action games such as Bayonetta and Vanquish they would handle the gameplay while Kojima Productions took care of the story. What we got was an excellent action game with an entertaining and light hearted story for a Metal Gear game with more humour rather than serious moments.

The story of Metal Gear Rising Revengence takes place a few years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots where the war economy has been destroy and the Sons of the Patriots system has been destroyed. Mercenary groups are struggling to find work due to the fact there are no more wars. Raiden is working for a private military company where he is training soldiers in an African nation to protect the region and then a rival company kidnaps the president trying to insight war and succeeds. Raiden battles it out with them where he is then gravel injured with a severed arm. The story is good it has more humour compared to the other games and it made me chuckle in a few scenes.

Gameplay is fast and requires quick reflexes something you would expect from a Platinum Games title with blistering speeds as you run on walls and slice enemies in half. You’ll chain together light and heavy attacks until an enemy is stunned then you can precisely dissect your enemy’s body parts and it is very gory and satisfying with blood flying everywhere. If you are accurate you can pull out your enemy’s cybernetic spine and crush it in your hands and this is how you restore your health and this encourages accuracy instead of turning your foes into paste. The one aspect that took me a while to get grips with was the block ability and that is because there is no dedicated button as it requires skill and quick reflexes as you have to use the attack button and left stick as the enemy is about to strike and this can take a while to get use to but is great once you get into a rhythm.

Metal Gear Rising looks beautiful and to be honest that is not a surprise as it came out in 2013, 2013 was a great year for good looking games like GTA V, Bioshock Infinite and Splinter Cell Blacklist. The character models look great with exquisite detail on Raiden coupled with the over the top gore as you slice enemies in half or decapitate them there is a lot of detail in this game coupled with the blistering frame rate of 60 frames per second.

Metal Gear Rising Revengence is a great spin off to the Metal Gear series and is great if you’re a Metal Gear fan or someone who likes fast paced action games. The game is really cheap these days you can find it on Xbox 360 and PS3 for around £2 and the DLC is now free so there is another reason to pick it up.