Games Booth

Saturday, 23 February 2013

Metal Gear Rising Revengeance

Thanks to Konami, Metal Gear is back on our consoles with the new title Metal Gear Rising Revengeance. When I received my review copy my first thoughts were, ‘God I hope that this is another great game and not another £40+ rip off.’ Even if I enjoy it, will this be a hit like the classic Metal gear?

We first met Raiden in Metal Gear Solid II, with his cybernetic exoskeleton and now he’s reappeared as the main playable character in the new Revengeance game which focuses on Raiden and his fight against Desperado Enterprises.

What is nice is that you don’t have to leap straight into the game story mode. If you’re not an original player of any games in this series the developer team kindly eases you into all the battle moves by giving you a tutorial. This is particularly useful as you need to learn the new moves like the ‘Blade Run’ and ‘Blade Move’.

Blade Run is basically running around getting past obstacles quicker, while the Blade Move slows time down enabling you to control your blade with finer movement. To be fair these two new moves are really fun and are really addictive, you do tend to use them a fair amount throughout the game – well I did at least.

You also learn to use the additional ‘parry’ action – which is a move that is fairly difficult to master. This one is all about timing. You have to wait for your enemy to ‘make a move’ and then while he flashes read you use your analogue stick and square button (I’m playing on a PS3).

Once you’ve got the hang of these new moves – well once you think you have anyway, you can move onto the main story.

The game starts with a 10-20 minute cut scene that tells you' the player, what is happening in the story line. These cut scenes do take a while, so turn the volume up and go get a drink and snacks. Alternatively skip the cut scenes and get into the action. Worth mentioning that there’s about 4-5 hours of game play, so in effect you can bash this game out in one session (refreshments close by are required for this however!).

The game mode itself didn’t run as smoothly as I would’ve liked it to. The combat moves weren’t flowing right. Maybe that was just me; however there were times when I used the Blade Move yet the enemy was still able to move out of the way and the Parry can be really frustrating due to perfect timings required all the time. But that’s about mastering the moves I guess!.

The camera angles and speed is a little annoying, you can spot and enemy and before you have time to do anything, the camera angle and changed and you have to work out where he is again! Then when you do get a hit off on the enemy, he strikes you back quickly, the camera changes angles again and its back to square one – trying to locate where he going to come at you from. I guess this is about stretching out some of the game play – it wouldn’t be fun if it wasn’t hard would it? But then again there’s a difference between hard and annoying.

There is also some stealth in the game with your own detective mode and killing moves, only problem is I see no reason or need for it, so we’ll move swiftly over it and onto the bosses.

The first Metal Gear Rex is not a bad boss you simply have to chop his legs off, which can be done using the Blade move while he jumps from one side to the next. His weapons are lasers and rockets but they’re not overly distracting! The second boss however, you do have to go one step further, this time it’s about removing the head and it is a little more challenging. Good job on setting the tone, the further into the game the harder the bosses become – that’s what it’s all about!

Altogether Metal Gear Revengeance was enjoyable and the additional new moves do give it some differentiation from the previous ones. It’s a fairly fast paced game with challenging bosses and it’s accompanied by a fantastic soundtrack.

Well done Konami and team, it’s another tick in the box for the Metal Gear series!

Gamesbooth Rating 9/10