So, welcome to a new segment I plan on doing on the site for my fellow gamer. In these reviews, I will discuss games I have beaten, what I liked, what I disliked, and then give them an overall score between 1 and 10. Then, for fun, I will discuss how I PERSONALLY felt about the game. Let's kick this show off right with my personal favorite game at the moment; Metal gear Rising!



Metal gear Rising is a spin-off title in the Metal gear franchise, a popular series of stealth based games by Kojima. It follows a story in which Raiden is the main character. Raiden, as you come to learn over the course of the game, was once a child soldier who discovered early in life that he enjoyed killing- A lot. His primary objective pre-game is to establish peace and protect the Prime Minister of a small African nation- A goal which is thwarted by a group of private military personell called Desperado. He loses his arm and his eye to a cyborg named Jetstream Sam, and then receives his own cybernetic enhancements- His second time doing so, if one takes the MGS4 canon here. Which the game does, so I advise you to do so as well.

Throughout the game, you are challenged with the moral conflict of fighting against this group to preserve peace and protect the weak, while simultaneously fighting off Raiden's inner mental anguish and sociopathic tendencies. You fight in many environments, against many enemies, and eventually learn the motives of Desperado- Your mission is to stop them.



The gameplay is incredibly solid. I could go on for hours about this, but I will abridge it as best as I can. Basically, everything feels like it should happen as it does. When you hit an enemy, it feels like you're really hitting them. Parrying is difficult at first, which I liked- It adds a learning curve to the game, because of the importance of parrying to avoid being hurt. Blade Mode feels good because you can control the exact point of your strikes, or you can swing wildly. You can even do both in the same moment. Zandatsus look and feel satisfying to perform because you have to pinpoint a specific area of your enemy to cut, and then you are prompted quickly to act on your cut to perform the move. Everything about the combat feels fluid and satisfying.

And the stealth is fantastic as well. You can play this game exactly as you would play an older Metal Gear game- Hiding in boxes, dodging cameras, throwing stun grenades and-- hentai? Well... it is Kojima. But yes, you can throw holographic hentai to distract guards, just like in previous Metal gear games. The box makes a return and struts it's good stuff, becoming insanely useful. More homages to the old series come from the codec conversations- You can extend your gameplay by up to 10 hours, maybe more, just by listening to all the useful, stupid, and silly things Raiden's teammates have to say. I give Platinum two thumbs up for changing the formula of Metal gear, and retaining the spirit of it. That could not have been an easy task.

Speaking of the classic Metal gear games, many people seem to not know this detail, but Kojima went directly to Platinum with the idea, after his team tried it themselves and failed- Yes, Kojima himself wanted Rising to be what it is now. It wasn't just some outsourced game- He and his team still played a huge part in the development. And where they fell short, Platinum picked up the slack. Overall, the two working together just flowed perfectly. There was literally not a single moment that this game took itself too seriously- A trademark of Platinum. And yet, it was at the core a very serious, thought provoking game- A trademark of Kojima.

You go through the game with these moral struggles being thrown at you, desperately trying to survive the enemies and cope with the fact that you yourself may not be the good guy. And even knowing this, having this information repeated to you- You still root for Raiden. This really made me as a player question my own moral stance on war, and that is something a game has not done to me in ages. There was a connection to the hero that a lot of games struggle to manifest these days, not to mention a connection to the villains as well- Every main character, hero or villain, is flushed out. You learn about who they are and why they do what they do, and you really start to feel for them all. Even though you know they are evil, you can't help but wonder if you are too- And enjoying the game as much as I did, this made me question if not only Raiden was a villain in the end, but if I was equally villainous for supporting him to the end.

Lastly, the atmosphere. The music is dynamic, changing when you do something cool, and overall the level design is spot on for what it needed to be- Nothing was out in the open, but it wasn't so hidden that you spent hours searching one area to find it. The enemies navigated the maps very well, adding a lot of difficulty.



I honestly don't have a lot to say for this. But what I do have to say is glaringly obvious during the game.

The camera can be awkward at times, ESPECIALLY in tight hallways. This is a big problem for the fluidity of the game, but I found that avoiding being close to walls generally stops the wonky camera angles. However, I must stress that an action game with wonky camera angles is a very difficult thing to recover from. Thankfully, it isn't too terrible- but it is obvious and it does get in the way sometimes. Just something to watch out for.

My biggest complaint with the game, however, is that it's a collect-a-thon. You have to get this specific item at this location to activate this scene which gets this item four levels from now. And then you have to go back and get everything you missed, because without collectibles, you remain weak, defenseless, skill-less Raiden. It's a fun gameplay mechanic that you have an incentive to explore the level and take in the atmosphere of it, but there is a limit to how much stuff I want to be scattered about a level when I am focusing on beating the tar out of giant robots.

Finally, and this is a small complaint- Quicktime Events. There aren't many, to be honest, but they spring them on you at the strangest times. Like in cutscenes. I mean, I get that Bayonetta did the same thing, but this isn't Bayonetta. And last I checked, that was Bayonetta's biggest flaw. So I don't quite know why they added them, but it doesn't take away from the actual combat too much. There are QTEs in combat as well, but the prompts for them are MUCH more lenient so they aren't as frustrating. There's a difference between hard but fair, and frustratingly difficult for now reason.



Solid 8/10. No game is perfect and this one certainly has flaws. But overall, platinum does something that most games don't these days- make the player feel cool while playing. I can't even tell you how boss it felt to outrun a barrage of missles running straight up a skyscraper. Sure, the game itself is fun, but fun can be more or less satisfying depending on the execution- platinum just gets how to execute a scene and make it as satisfying as possible. They've managed it in every game I've played by them thus far, and even when they were still within Capcom, they knew what it was all about.



Oh my God. I have not put this game down since launch day.

No words can describe my personal connection to this game.

That's really all I can manage to say- There's just so much that I loved that I couldn't cover it all without gushing like a fanboy.

This sums it up nicely though-