Metal Gear Rising Revengeance Connects the Series' Past With a Radical New Future

Yesterday, I finished Metal Gear Rising Revengeance at a private event held in Santa Monica, CA, but iron clad restrictions say I can't tell you about anything past the third chapter. Not that you'd want to hear it anyway, since the game is best experienced spoiler-free. The story takes place in a tumultuous post-MGS4 world -- one bustling with crazy mercenaries-for-hire and private military soldiers forced to cope with the fallout from the events surrounding the Sons of the Patriots plan. Recapping the finer points of Metal Gear's fiction can lead to confusion, especially given the series' habit of bouncing between a sometimes wacky, sometimes serious tone, but none of that hinders Revengeance. In fact, developer PlatinumGames appears to understand the nuances of MGS4's exaggerated worldview, and they've married its eccentric story arcs and character tropes to a well-made, over-the-top action game.

At this point, you should know all about Revengeance and its obsession with cutting things. Enemies. Pillars. Even, occasionally, watermelons. Using Raiden's high-frequency blade, players can slice lots of things into tiny pieces -- and if you'e played the demo, you already know just a hint of the possibilities here. Alongside Raiden's razor-sharp swordplay and upgradeable skill set, players will find a surprising amount of tools and references back to classic MGS material. Even the obligatory, "Kept you waiting, huh?" gets uttered early on by Raiden's comrade Boris. Obviously, the story takes place in the same timeline as the Solid games, so most of these callbacks aren't a huge stretch, but elements such as stealth and camouflage, radio codec conversations, separate VR missions, and the use of special equipment (like cardboard boxes and smoke grenades) all return for Revengeance.

At first it almost feels odd to see some of these elements, since combat appears geared toward constantly moving forward. However, the devices compliment the fast-paced combat well and offer a quirky alternative to swordplay. For example, smoke grenades can distract a group of enemies and allow Raiden to sneak up close and perform an assassination. Other gadgets provide specific advantages during Revengeance's challenging boss battles, similar to how they would in a classic Metal Gear game. Kojima Productions producer Yuji Korekado has maintained that this isn't merely a side story for Metal Gear, but for the first time I finally see what he meant.

Even with these additional tools, the lighting-fast combat feels satisfying completely on its own and sets up some pretty absurd scenarios -- like the way Raiden tosses a hefty Metal Gear Ray by its wing early on in the first mission, or how the protagonist slices through objects twice his size with a single stroke during cutscenes. But an absurd and often wild sense of fun is something PlatinumGames -- the developer behind Bayonetta and Vanquish -- appears to understand most, and they've put their expertise to good use in Revengeance.

More often than not, I charged head-first into battle cleaved my way through a small army of soldiers, and each combo set up a gratifying slow-motion cut in Blade mode. Here, a player can target a specific area, cut it open, and then rip out the enemy's spine in order to recharge both health and fuel bars. It's a great way to refuel in the heat of a battle without slowing things down to stop and use a health item. The pattern of fighting becomes familiar, but never got dull or repetitive, with each cut and spine-pull feeling as fresh as the last. Once I mastered it use, I tried to line up as many weakened enemies as possible, just to see how many I could slice through at once. I managed a paltry two-in-a-row a few times, but someone at the event told me he got many as four. Even the counter that keeps track of how many pieces you've chopped the enemy up into fits in line with this outlandish approach, as I cut a boss up into almost 200 pieces and, I have to say, it felt really good.

I admired the small touches, the nuanced combat which uses more than just a single ultra high-frequency katana -- you can map a secondary weapon to the heavy attack button, but outside of the pole arm, I'm not allowed to disclose how many weapons are in the game -- and the way PlatinumGames finds ways to work them in that don't feel contrived. In many ways, the world of MGS has an absurd tone that can sit at odds with itself, but Revengeance fearlessly embraces these tropes and presents plenty of wacky ideas to supplement it along the way. This becomes especially true with the cybernetic bosses. Each one sports a long-winded name like "Mistral, The Cold Wind of France," like something you'd expect from a wacky samurai movie -- apt source material given this game's obsession with the art of the sword.

The first three chapters of Revengeance present a well-made action game that manages to be fun and isn't afraid to revel in its nature, and that's refreshing. MGS2 and MGS4's future story lines always had a penchant for the irrational, so I'm happy to see PlatinumGames has found smart ways to have fun with the more absurd ideas in the series. As I see Raiden sail through the air in cutscenes and pull off incredibly acrobatic moves in combat, I'm satisfied by the results. It's radical departure from the slower pacing of a traditional Metal Gear, but everything still manages to fit, and even hardcore series fans will be surprised by what they find and how it all comes together.