Pros & Cons
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance has entertained console gamers since its February 2013 debut, but PC gamers had to wait a long time to experience the slice and dice action. A very long time. Revengeance finally lands on PC courtesy of steam nearly a year after its PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 counterparts, but developer PlatinumGames makes the port worth the wait by bundling the game with numerous goodies: a lower price point, graphics enhancements, and three DLC packages that were separate console purchases. In short, if you liked the console Revengeance, you'll dig this one, too, despite the occasional rough camera angle and frame rate drop.
Metal Gear Without The Solid (Snake)
Famed video game designer Hideo Kojima first revealed Metal Gear Solid Rising (the game that would become Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance) at a Microsoft E3 press conference in 2009—roughly the halfway point in the last console generation's life cycle—when it was billed as Metal Gear Solid: Rising. Four years later—an eternity for Metal Gear fans—the game finally arrived on console, but with many changes: There's a new title, Platinum Games took over the development duties from Kojima Productions, and the gameplay lost many of its stealth elements in favor of high-octane, sword-based action.It's the melodramatic characters, G.I. Joe-like sci-fi tech, codec calls, cardboard boxes, unnecessary cleavage, and military themes that give Revengeance the Metal Gear touch. Raiden—the long-hated, whiney protagonist who replaced series mainstay Solid Snake in the controversial Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty—fronts Revengeance, and he's essentially a different character. Sporting a high-frequency energy sword, cybernetics, and a darker demeanor, the new Raiden is a futuristic samurai-like warrior who works for Maverick, a private military company.
He's tasked with protecting an African dignitary travelling in a motorcade, but all hell breaks loose when a rival private military company kidnaps the V.I.P. Story-wise, that's all you'll need to know to avoid enter spoiler territory. That said, Revengeance's storyline, like previous Metal Gear Solid games, has its surprises. The tale is far more streamlined than the titles in the convoluted main series—to its benefit.
Jack the Ripper
Revengeance's sword-based, two-button combat is powered by Platinum Games' trademark stylish action. Basic light and heavy slashing blade attacks slice enemies when you tap the respective buttons, but truly amazing combos emerge when you vary the inputs. Three light attacks in a row, for example, produce very different results than three heavy attacks. Mixing the attack strengths together, and even pausing between button inputs, produce additional moves that transform Raiden into a cybernetic Ginsu knife. Raiden not only does slashing damage, he does hacking damage, too, which is heart of the game.Similar Products
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"Blade Mode," Revengeance's defining combat trait, is basically Bullet time with a blade (you activate Blade Mode by holding the L2 button if using an Xbox 360 controller). Blade Mode moves the camera close to the target and lets you make hyper-precise cuts that lop off entire limbs. According to Platinum Games the physics were a challenge to program, but the results are impressive. For example, a diagonal Blade Mode slice through an enemy's torso causes the upper section to "slide" off in the appropriate direction. In fact, the computer A.I. is programmed to "realistically" react to damage. Remove a foe's legs and he may crawl after you or, if he still packs a firearm, shoot. It's incredibly fun to dissect the game's many technology-enhanced mooks, but shredding a Metal Gear's outer armor while hundreds of feet in the air is one of the most thrilling and satisfying moments in action gaming. The carnage left in your wake is both impressive and hilarious.
New to the PC version is the "Zengeki" option that lets you select how fine you'd like to slice. Bump Zengeki to its highest setting and you can slice, slice, slice, slice, and slice some more. In fact, you can chop enemies into fine micro-chunks that comes close to powder. If you have a high-end graphics card, Zengeki will make you feel like an even more lethal agent of destruction. If you have a mid-range GPU, you may see the game's frame rate drop when many enemy fragments linger on-screen. On the topic of graphics, Revengeance runs at 1080p, but the game is capped at that resolution—you can't bump it up.
Blade Mode has its own fuel-cell meter which diminishes as you use it, but you can slowly recharge it by performing combos and "Zendatsu." The latter technique can be performed in Blade Mode if you defeat an enemy and expose its core. You can then rip out the foe's fuel-cell to replenish your health and Blade Meter and continue the high-powered fighting. Even though you're constantly refilling your Blade Mode meter, it never feels broken. As a cyber-ninja badass you should run through the blade fodder with relative ease.
That said, I would've liked more significant items to cut. Though you can slice many incidental environmental elements, major items—like walls—can only be sliced when the game allows it.
Final Thoughts
