Before the release of spin off title Metal Gear Rising there was a lot of backlash from fans about its production. With original developers Kojima Productions hitting a snag in production and eventually handing the majority of the project over to much smaller developers, Platinum Games people were worried about a drastic change in gameplay and style. The project was still overseen by series creator Hideo Kojima but took a very different approach to previous Metal Gear games moving into the hack and slash as opposed to usual stealth action.
The game is slightly awkward to get started with, with fast paced action and a lot of unfamiliar features it takes a level or two to fully get into the games flow. Once you do though Rising is a joy to play. It’s completely over the top in every aspect. The visuals are stunning and the game takes a huge amount of pleasure in bombarding you with ridiculous cut scenes involving lots of slow mo and cheesy one liners. The music is another notable element throughout fusing nu-metal with dubstep and classical its as if it was all designed by an excitable ten year old kid. The blade mode was another factor that had fans worried about how the game would turn out, in the past games that have attempted to involve slow motion fully playable sword fighting have really not worked but the blade mode ends up becoming one of the games most lovable features. As you enter into it you can either opt to slice away every which way you please by swinging the right thumb stick all over the place or just use the attack buttons and let the game do its own thing, when you release from the mode enjoy watching the carnage you’ve caused as your opponent splits into a million pieces often giving you the opportunity to rip their guts out, explode them in your hand and replenish your health by absorbing their energy. The games gore takes everything a step further than it has too making the experience both ridiculous and completely awesome.
It does have its flaws, though. The campaign only consists of seven missions, or eight if you include the short prelude, which can be whizzed through in about 6-7 hours making it annoyingly short. There’s also too much reliance on boss fights throughout, despite all the fights being awesome fun they miss a trick by not letting you wander around slashing lesser enemies which is one of the games most fun features. It’s rescued though by having a great replay value, as you unlock Revengeance difficulty after completing making the game even harder. There’s also 20 VR missions to work through providing another challenge which will improve your technique. Metal Gear Rising is nowhere near as good as any Metal Gear Solid games that I’ve played but it was a refreshingly fun game to play through and acts well as a goofy little brother to the originals that’s extremely hard not to love.
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