Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

This game is a cut above lol lol lol

Every so often a game comes along that I play for like ten hours in a row.  As I am in my late 20s, this does not occur often.  I can't even remember the last time it happened, to be honest.  And then came MGR.  I've been very much looking forward to this game ever since I saw the tech demo where he cuts the watermelon up.  Even though it's been out for a fairly long time I never played it because I just don't play consoles any more.  So no, I wasn't excited enough to bother plugging in my 360, but still.  It very recently came out on Steam and boy have I been playing it.  Boy howdy.

Metal Gear Rising has a very cool gimmick which the game is basically entirely based on.  Every object in the game, not counting level geometry, can be cut.  And I don't mean you can damage it like in Goldeneye.  You can actually cut them in half, then cut those pieces in half, ad infinitum.  Not only that, but the cuts perfectly follow the path of your blade, allowing you to do some pretty insane things with your sword.  You can cut off an enemy's legs, arms, head, bifurcate his torso, whatever.  These aren't preset animations or attacks either.  It's one of the most technically impressive things I've ever seen and really never gets old.  Even though I've already beaten the game I sometimes stop to cut down a tree or slice a car into dozens of pieces just because.  More games need this.

In its prime, this pile of polygons was a watermelon.

Not counting dicing things to oblivion in Blade Mode, the game is, at its core, an action game similar to God of War.  Now, if you added Blade Mode to God of War I wouldn't care all that much because the GoW series has repetitive gameplay that gets stale very quickly.  MGR does not suffer from this.  It would take long time to explain just how it switches things up, but the basic idea is this: standard enemies can be easily dispatched by entering Blade Mode and cutting them in half.  As enemies become stronger, it becomes necessary to parry them first or weaken them or break their armor.  It doesn't take long before simply mashing the attack button stops working.  This may or may not hold true on Easy, but do yourself a favor and don't play on Easy.  

The game isn't particularly hard provided you have quick reflexes.  On Normal the only time I ever died was during the last boss.  MGR is extremely generous with its healing items which, on top of healing you, automatically bring you to full health when you "die".  But surviving isn't the challenge here.  In true Japanese fashion, everything you do is graded.  You need to rack up kills, combos, and other performance-based things in order to get a higher ranking which in turn gives you BP, AKA Raidenbucks (they never actually call them Raidenbucks but that's what they are).  The first time you play through you don't really have to worry about the ranking system, but completionists will love the huge amount of replayability it adds.  There are also VR missions which are basically just mini-levels you do for fun and profit - literally.  They're quite challenging.  You can finish them all easily enough, but getting gold is extremely difficult for most of them.  Again, you have no real reason to do it unless you really love achievements, but the option is there.

This game has crazy-ass cutscenes.

There is also a rather large array of collectible items, of course.  Throughout the game there are hidden chests with maximum health upgrades and data storage units, enemies with left hands you have to slice off and pick up (yes seriously), hostages to save, hidden VR missions, and enemies hiding in boxes.  All of these categories will give you something for completing them, which is good because most of them require a lot of effort to find.  The worst part of the collectibles is that if you miss one and then hit a checkpoint, it's gone.  The only way to get it is to restart the entire chapter.  Once you get good at the game you can blaze through a chapter no problem, but it's really not fun having to do 90% of a chapter over again because you forgot to check every last group for a left hand guy.  I say "having to" even though it's totally optional, but it still feels crappy learning that you can either leave a collection incomplete or backtrack.

I've mentioned optional things a lot in this review, and there's a reason for that.  MGR is absolutely crammed full of content you only have to care about if you want to.  It's perfectly fine to sprint through the game, forgoing stealth espionage action for stabbing everyone to death.  Like in Deus Ex, you're really not going to get much out of the game if you play it this way, but you can if you want.  I'd estimate you could probably complete the game in about three hours if you pretend you're playing God of War: Super Japanese Version.  If you play the way you're supposed to, though, the campaign can range anywhere from six to probably fifteen hours depending on how many of the collectibles you decide to go after.  It's a good way to make a game because it allows you to set your own pace.  If MGR forced you to get all the items to complete the game it would probably be a pretty bad one.  You know, like Donkey Kong 64.  If the items weren't there at all the game would feel hollow.  Options are always good and this game has them in generous helpings.

This game also has crazy-ass levels.

The BP which I mentioned earlier but never expanded upon add yet another level to the game.  BP is gained naturally as you slice up enemies and collect items, but you also get bonus BP for getting a high ranking or completing VR missions.  As you progress through the story you get the privilege of purchasing new abilities, upgrades, and weapons.  There are several different swords, each with their own idiosyncrasies, and stat upgrades for all of them.  There are also costumes, both functional and not.  You'll be visiting the shop often.  Lucky for you you can enter it at any time from any location via your codec, because apparently it's a phone and a teleportation device.  No matter what items you buy the game doesn't play all that differently, save for the "unique weapons" you get by killing bosses.  One of them, for example, is a grappling hook kind of thing that you can use to fly toward an enemy and stun it.  It makes combat a lot more flowing and fast-paced.

The writing in this game is...odd.  The driving story is a rather serious one involving war and transhumanist moral dilemmas, and MGR never strays all that far from the A plot.  There are tons of lines that are just plain weird and out of place.  Normally I'd pass it off as a translation problem, but they are clearly intentionally weird.  Fans of Kojima will already know what I'm talking about.  There's a healthy dose of self-parody and metahumor mixed with the serious stuff.  It's nice to see a game that's not all dark and edgy as seems to be the norm right now, but I found myself not really caring about the story because I couldn't take it seriously.  There are still plenty of good lines, though.  It's just made very clear that MGR, unlike its parent series, is not about the story.

Beyond the story and VR missions there's still plenty to do.  The PC version comes with all the DLC, which adds two side campaigns and a large array of bonus VR missions.  I don't want to spoil much, but both campaigns involve characters from the game and explains what they were up to while they were offscreen.  They're not nearly as long as the main story, but combined you can expect an additional 50% or so more game time.  Additionally, for the achievement fiends out there, MGR has 60, count 'em, 60 achievements for you to unlock.  A lot of them are so difficult I can't really imagine anyone ever getting them, like getting all S rankings on the hardest difficulty or getting gold on every VR mission.  If you're the kind of person who absolutely adores the concept of practicing a game for hours on end until you're closer to a machine than a human, this game is going to make you very very happy.

Even happier than Sigma, here.

But of course every diamond has a flaw, and oh does MGR ever.  The camera is just...so bad.  It's so, so bad.  It'll have you pining for the days of early PSX games.  The camera in Castlevania 64 is flawless in comparison. It will whip around and cause you to swipe at thin air instead of an enemy.  It delights in arbitrarily filling your entire field of view with a wall in the middle of combat.  When it's feeling feisty it'll force you to do a 180 in the middle of an attack for no apparent reason, wasting your fuel cells and frequently making you miss a Zandatsu.  It is my belief that these issues are primarily caused by using mouse and keyboard controls.  MGR was not ported to the PC particularly well and it doesn't seem to fully grasp what to do about the mouse.  It treats it like a joystick in a lot of ways, leading to a good deal of wrestling with the camera on account of its affinity for returning to a neutral position when you stop moving your mouse.  This issue should be a moot point anyway, because you really ought to play with a controller.  I personally prefer a mouse for just about everything, but MGR really does not control nearly as well with a keyboard and mouse.  I played the entire campaign using that setup but found the first DLC campaign utterly impossible due to how difficult it is to dodge with a keyboard.

Current Price: $30

Verdict: The best deal ever

Thirty dollars is almost insultingly low for a game of this caliber.  I'm sure it was higher at console release, but since the PC version includes all the DLC and enhanced graphics it really is a great deal.  I can honestly say without exaggeration that MGR is one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played and almost immediately became an all-time favorite of mine.  I'd be playing it right now if it weren't nearly 3 AM, so instead I'm writing a review of it.  I have a lot more to say but this article would get far too long, so I'll just summarize: buy this game.  You're gonna like the way you look.  I mean!