Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Review

“Cyborg ninja sword that cuts through anything.”

These are the seven words game producer Hideo Kojima had in his head as he and developers Platinum Games set about creating Revengeance.

Players control Metal Gear mainstay Raiden, who from what can be gathered from his hazy backstory, was experimented on as a child and turned into the cyborg assassin we control in the game.

Revengeance marks a move away from the more nuanced and subtle pacing of

previous games. The Metal Gear Solid series had you sneaking around, employing camouflage and most importantly patience to avoid detection and the certain death that came with it. Stealth has been thrown out the window for Revengeance, and while there are sections where it is needed, they are brief and distract from the core of the gameplay. Revengeance is a true ‘action’ game, explosive set pieces and screeching Japanese metal music giving the game an almost arcade feel compared to previous entries, which were close to being interactive movies.

As the operator of a private military company, Raiden has just stabilised a miscellaneous African nation before he is attacked by a rival company, who allege that his work towards peace is destroying their profits.

This “war economy” has been covered in previous Metal Gear games, but here it seems hackneyed and overplayed. At one point, Raiden discovers the same company that attacked him is stealing the brains of orphaned homeless children and using them for experiments. The nemesis becomes comically, almost laughably evil, it it removes any motivation the player has to ‘beat the bad guy’, because it’s near impossible to take it seriously.

One thing that can be taken seriously though, is the actual gameplay. Slicing through your foes with the aforementioned ninja sword can be very, very satisfying. Sadly, the camera swings around like it’s attached to a fishing rod, at times not even focusing on enemies. This is a major frustration during boss fights, which, had the camera not been a pain in the proverbial, would have made this game absolutely shine.

My favourite was “Monsoon”, whose body was made of magnets that he could detach and put together at will, making it impossible to cut him with your sword. Sadly each environment was as bland as the boss battles were imaginitive; a generic sewer, a generic office building, a generic rooftop.

Overall, Revengeance is a ‘par’ game. It does most of the things it should, without being amazing, or memorable, which is a shame because there is some real potential for this game to be something incredible.

It could have been so much more.