Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Review

[Updated again: Kojima says the game is a “spinoff”, an “interpretation”, and a “parallel” universe in this interview.  Considering that he’s the final authority on the subject, I guess my initial review was correct after all (I knew he’d said that somewhere before!)  Either way, I’ll leave the review as it is, and you can see my take on the game no matter what they decide in the future.
Thanks to
JMG519 for having my back with the link — go watch his videos!]

Revengeance Review

Bottom Line: Platinum Games does their best with a failed experiment.

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GamesRadar plays the TGS Revengeance demo

Below is a 16 minute play through of the Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance demo at Tokyo Game Show this year.  You really get a sense of what the game will be like when you watch, and the commentary the two guys make isn’t that bad either.  (Except the part where they say “Raiden is such a badass.  People were wrong to hate him in Metal Gear 2!”  As if he’s always been like this?)

Click here for the video

I haven’t talked much about Rising lately, but judging by this demo the whole thing toggles between flat and generic, and over-the-top silly.  So the real question is what kind of boring-to-crazy ratio there’ll be in the final game.  If they keep the player guessing with new gimmicks and set pieces, it might still be an OK game.

At around 10 minutes you see the new robo-dog character, who eventually becomes Raiden’s buddy.  It’s cheesy stuff like this that makes Rising so appealing, but I can’t help laughing at all the game journalists and fans who still don’t “get it”, and think that this is a typical, honest entry in the series.

See also,

A Metal Gear Rising Article

(Updated) Konami’s E3 Show features trailers, Mega64

Konami’s “Pre-E3 Show” is now available.  Interviews, trailers, and a great Mega64 skit are being shown.  We finally get to see more of Rising‘s gameplay, which looks very typical for this genre.  Sadly, level design seems to be ripped from the Nintendo 64 era.  Huge crates scattered around for no reason, allowing you to reach higher areas; generic wide city streets with nothing going on; a train chase; a scripted bridge collapse.  The rushed development schedule is evident, and so is the lack of ideas.

And in case you hadn’t figured it out, the theme of cutting everything and has been cut down as well.  The developers say that only enemies and certain background objects will be sliceable, meaning you shouldn’t be expecting to get too creative with your sword.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

I’ll be talking about the upcoming E3, Zone of the Enders, and a bunch more on my twitter.  I’ve started using it regularly, and I’ll be using it to announce new articles and such for your lazy ass.

Watch this slutty Metal Gear Rising title screen

Yeah, you like that, don’t you?  You know you want it.  Check out his cyborg abs.

I bet you can’t wait until E3 now, where there’ll be a playable demo.  Platinum Games is going to give you a taste of their gratuitous action that Summer is all about.

“War On Our Shores” secret Rising site teases story, mentions the Tea Party?

There’s a new Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance teaser site up now, called “War On Our Shores”.  It features the voice of a character named Senator Armstrong, who seems bent on incriminating himself over the phone to somebody who wrote a speech for him.

I’ll admit it: everything about this game is guilty pleasure to me, and the writing in this is no different.  The speech does a good job nodding to the story of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and provides some decent social commentary as well.  I wonder whether the “Tea Party” mentioned in the trailer is actually supposed to refer to the current-day libertarian movement?  If so, I have to give them big credit.  Maybe Platinum Games can churn out an enjoyable plot in two months after all?

There’s also this trailer, named “Eye”, which was uploaded May 4th.  It’s got more hints, including backwards-audio which I’m too lazy to decode.  The subject is clearly a little boy, and at the end we see the words “Subject Name / Raiden” and “2/3”, indicating that this is a flashback, and that we will have another of these videos.  Something else I noticed is that according to the login data on the screen, the username is “jtripper@216.55.248.24”.  Look up that IP address and it brings you to Valley City, Ohio and a guy who I’m positive has no clue about Metal Gear.  According to the “whois” data it was registered in 1997 by Infonexion Corp..  Hmm, something tells me this isn’t an ARG on par with Portal 2, and I should have stuck with my first instinct, which was to not bother looking deeper.

[“War On Our Shores” heads up via PSU.com]

Rising: full crappy teaser shown, website up

You can go here to see the full Metal Gear Rising live-action teaser, along with the new site.  Seems pretty obvious: this is a distant memory of Solidus and Raiden back in the Liberian civil war, when Jack was first getting his memory screwed with.  Jack’s arms are thin and boyish, and the voice is obviously not raspy and death-like either, as it would be after MGS4.  The appearance of Solidus means it’s not between MGS2 and 4, either.  The African man and shabby tent setup also suggest it’s his child soldier memories.

Did I mention that it’s crappy?  The actors, direction, digital effects — everything looks sub-par.  Not surprising though, considering that Revengeance is a failed project being raced through production.

As for the official site, looks like you can enter commands in the bottom area to unlock easter eggs.  I wonder how long it will take to find the hidden stuff.

Go ahead and search for hints if you care

Looks like my speculation was misjudged.

Finally, I probably shouldn’t show you these pictures because they were tucked away on the site.  The fact that they’re hidden makes them feel less stupid and boring!

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