Metal Gear Rising Revengeance [game Review]

Metal Gear Rising Revengeance aka, How I learn to Stop Worrying and Just Let 'er Rip has everything you could possibly want from an action game, mechanical swords powered by pure rage, indie rock that doesn't require you to visit a coffee house or tune into a half static college radio station, a robot *** with hydraulic ***, and the death of uncountable mexican children. Rewarding game play and laughable writing meet in this incestuous mixture of devil may cry and metal gear solid. It's not a "bad, 9 fingers, 12 toes, future green party voter making" kind of *** you normally think of, but more like that one time you shared a sleeping bag with your cousin and she farted right on the tip of your *** so perfectly that you blew a bulos of bubbling boyhood belly butter all over her *** and when she woke up the next day you tried to pretend you spilled a bunch of vanilla pudding on her back by mistake, but she knew the moment someone asked why there was so much blood in the pudding and you had to leave the sleepover early and drive to a urologist and oh god Latoya I'm so sorry I ruined your Quincea�era. The combat is a bit shallow once you get used to it. You can attack quickly, but lightly with X or smash a powerful blow with Y, but you need to press X and towards an attack to block, or X and towards an attack at the last second to parry. On higher difficulty, most enemies have huge health pools and can deplete your entire health bar with a single hit, so you're encouraged to go for one hit killing paries in every fight and you're pretty much *** if you try mix in heavy attacks since you can easily get stuck in a combo and miss your chance to parry. Sub weapons can only be used with the Y button so you're either not using them at all, or simply mashing Y as if your controller suddenly came to life and had an existential break down. The lack of real time weapon switching is inexcusable. For instance, the sai weapon is only good for grabbing a distant enemy, then kicking them square in their rubix cube looking robotic nuts. It really should just be a context sensative attack, but it isn't so you'll never use it. On the off chance you want to use the bow staff for its crowd control capabilities or the machettes for heavy damage, you'd better plan ahead. Swapping weapons requires pressing left or right on the dpad and has a delay before the menu pops up, so often, you'll think to swap weapons at a crucial moment and get smashed dead while waiting for the menu to load. The B button is only used for context sensative instant kills that only occur outside of active battles. You CAN use stealth to one hit kill enemies that haven't detected you, but the game isn't really built around this feature and half the time you'll wind up getting detected at the last second. When your angry emo guy bar fills or you soften an enemy up enough, you can enter "cut *** up like a depressed 15 year old girl's arms" mode and get the tasty hi-c pouches that are hidden in most enemies stomachs that will refill your health. Sub weapons are fairly pointless outside of the monsoon boss fight, but can occassionally help you out of a head scratching scenario. For example, there are a couple of opportunities to save hostages that will be executed if you don't instantly kill their kidnappers. An electric pulse grenade can knock out the enemies just long enough for you to cut them in half, OR you can equip a rocket launcher and just blow them all to bits. However, the lack of real time item swapping comes into play so you'll probably never use them. A ninja run mode is also included that allows raiden to quickly traverse over obstacles and around projectile, but it only works when raiden has his feet on the ground, if you jump manually while holding ninja run, raiden will run head first into walls and fall over rather than grab a ledge that he would have autimatically jumped and grabbed otherwise. Content is slim in terms of locations and enemy types, but rich in the variations of enemy encounters. You'll mainly fight nameless grunt cyborgs that come in several variations of skill and loadout, feminist walking tanks [moo!], sassy cyborgs with back stories and health bars, cheeky little *** berries, and these robotic basketball players that like to grab you from behind like an uncle who's had just the right amount to drink. The story is pure cheese, and that's ok. Revengeance doesn't take itself too seriously and neither should you. Each character on their own is interesting enough with backstories that impacts the plot, but if you try to sit down and intuite what the bad guys actually expected to accomplish you'll just wind up having a good laugh. There are tons of silly lines that make no sense, even when in context, and it only adds to the charm. The only problem I have really is this little trinadadian *** who speaks in vomited up alphabet soup. George doesn't lower my enjoyment of revengeance, but every time I see him I get motivated to mow my own lawn and the border wall gets ten feet higher. Fortunately, genuinly likable characters like the senator balance out the quirks. At times, Revengeance feels like a bigger game was initially planned by Kojima's team, and when Platinum took over, they whittled the game down to just the best parts that their time and budget could afford. The final third of the game is a glorified boss gauntlet and the lead up to the final show down feels a little rushed. The VR missions are pretty cool and offer a fun diversion from the main game. They generally occur in a contained enviroment with a simple goal like, kill all enemies with a certain weapon, reach a check point without being seen, or survive a fight using only zandatsu while the lights are turned off in under one minute while the rest of your peers are out partying and getting laid. Sam's DLC plays more or less like the Raiden. You fight the same old enemies in the same old locations, but with a slightly different move set and a couple of new cut scenes thrown in. His main gimmick is the ability to taunt enemies, which buffs both sam and the enemies' attack power briefly. It's a nice little addition to the plot, but ends quickly and doesn't do much to change up the formula. Blade Wolf's DLC is straight up *** and balls. When you fight blade wolf as raiden or same he zips all over the place like a little kid who drank too much juice, but when you finally get to play as him, he's a gimpy *** that has to run and hide from everything, but at least he gets a unique boss fight at the end so there's that. Overall, scaling difficulty levels, a healthy dose of good cheese, and tons of hidden content make for a brief game that you'll want to play multiple times through. Revengeance is a fair buy or 10 dollars but it regularly goes on sale for much less. Thanks for your time and remember, old enough to make a rocket ship, old enough to take the hottest di-