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Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Instead of talking about the game, I'll talk about myself))) Basically, 7 years ago I heard the track Nuclear by Mike Oldfield, then found this trailer, was incredibly impressed by it and decided to play through the entire Metal Gear line of games in order to play Metal Gear Solid V with a full understanding of its essence. Which is exactly what I did; my post about the first Metal Gear Solid is one of the very first posts in this thread. Overall, I enjoyed the journey through this series, although the final destination for which it was all started ended up leaving only disappointment and that same phantom pain. I skipped only 4 games — the first two Metal Gears that were on Sega or something like that, Metal Gear Solid 4 which was a PS3 exclusive (and there was no emulator for it back then), as well as Metal Gear Rising. The rationalization was as follows — Rising wasn't made by Kojima, Rising changed the game genre, and plot-wise it continued the events of the fourth part, which I had skipped. Some time later, I did watch a "Walkthrough" of the fourth part on YouTube (essentially 10 hours of cutscenes) and that last point lost its relevance for me. But I didn't want to play a slasher without a joystick and generally it seemed so not urgent... Anyway, I finally played this game.
I played with keyboard and mouse and this was my first experience with a full-fledged slasher in a very long time; maybe the last time I played something like that was as a teenager, or maybe I've never played a "real" slasher before. And I really liked it. At first, I was very afraid that because of the keyboard and mouse I would feel like an invalid, because I constantly hear the opinion that such games are designed for a joystick, but either the devs did a great job here, or the joy-stick is simply overrated, but I didn't feel any problems at all throughout the game, except for one moment right at the end, and even there you can avoid struggling with uncomfortable controls and just choose an alternative option. Playing it is pure and absolute joy; everything is controlled easily, sometimes the camera can act up, but personally, it seems to me that in these kinds of games such moments are inevitable and as long as it's not a problem in every fight — you can put up with it. By the way, there are no puzzles in the game, no platforming elements, only fight, fight, and more fighting, and it is a pleasure. A couple of times they make you run around avoiding pieces of shit flying at you, and you can also bother to collect collectibles, and that's it. Also, in this game you can and should chop enemies into many small pieces; the more pieces you cut — the more money they give you, with additional bonuses for precisely severed limbs (head, arms/legs); essentially, the left arms of some enemies are one of the collectibles, and at the end of the game they proudly show you statistics on the number of severed limbs. Isn't that wonderful? And the boss fights are pure bliss — the combat mechanics + music force you into a kind of battle trance where nothing exists except what is happening on the screen and the rhythm of the music in your ears, and when the fight ends — you feel slight bewilderment at returning to normal reality. Perhaps something similar was experienced by warrior berserkers.
I played on Hard; this is the highest difficulty for a first playthrough, after which Very Hard and "Revengeance" are unlocked — on the last difficulty almost everyone one-shots you, but you can also one-shot almost everyone (as I've been told, a successful move against a boss takes off 50%, though if repeated, the damage is heavily reduced, but still). And overall, I can't say that the game seemed unbearably difficult to me, but! In this game, as a result of battles, both with bosses and some groups of mobs, you are assigned a certain rank. This is done immediately after the fight, while you are given about 2-3 seconds before a new checkpoint is recorded, so if you didn't like the rank — you can quickly reload and try again. The highest rank can only be obtained if the fight is won without taking damage. And in my opinion, this is very good game design, when a game can be "beatable" even for a relatively weak player, but to beat it "perfectly" you need to really try. Classic easy to learn, hard to master. Sometimes you can hear an argument against such things like "yeah, what else should I do, tie my hand behind my back and pass so it counts," but here it's different — the game itself tells you that there is a truly "cool" way to complete an encounter and challenges you, which you can accept or not, depending on your skills and persistence. I myself completed a number of fights for the highest rank without damage — simply because I felt I could do it and therefore it was interesting to try and also because I found some cheat weapon that allows stun-locking groups of low-level mobs. The only complaint, perhaps, is the slightly strange distribution of difficulty; the first boss feels normal, the second feels more difficult, the third and fourth — quite simple (I even beat the fourth completely without damage, although it took a couple of hours, but it was just too tempting), whereas the last one really gives you a hard time; though, after defeating him, it started to seem to me that he wasn't that difficult, but considering that I beat him with difficulty without any artificial restrictions and using all my medkits and even cinematically finishing him off on the last few percent of health — I don't rule out that this is just self-deception.
Suddenly, I'll say a bit about the plot. Initially, as you remember, I didn't want to play this game because I wasn't familiar with the events of the previous part. And indeed — to better understand what's happening, it's desirable to know what was in it. But overall, the plot in the game isn't so important that 100% understanding is mandatory, and a general understanding of the essence of events will be available even if this is your first game in the series — in the worst case, if you're curious, you can later read what happened in the fourth part and a couple of gaps in your head will be filled. But what strongly surprised me were the Codec conversations. I'll quickly bring you up to speed — it's like a radio where you can call various characters and talk to them; it was in all previous parts of the game. And if in the early games there were very, VERY many Codec conversations, then in later ones their number was reduced, and in the last part they were removed entirely. Therefore, I was very surprised when in a slasher released, essentially, by a third-party company, the Codec conversations turned out to be higher quality than in the latest games by Kojima himself, roughly comparable in quality to the first three Metal Gear Solids. Here you have both a deeper understanding of what's happening, and reflections on AI and the dehumanization of death, and just random trivia — everything as before; you can again spend a lot of time listening to NPCs. But then again, you can skip them entirely if you're not a fan of that — there is no coercion here. It was very unexpected and pleasantly surprising. Not without flaws, though, which became noticeable closer to the second half of the game, but nevertheless.
The musical accompaniment of the game has been praised by many and absolutely deservedly. I already mentioned in passing the combination of music and action, but I want to praise it in a separate paragraph again — it's very well implemented. This doesn't mean that after the game you will necessarily Download its soundtrack to your player, but within the game everything combines and works great.
And finally — I'm not sure if it's such a good idea to post music from the game out of the context of battle; it might even put some people off, but I was held hostage by this melody for so long that I don't even know — whether I sincerely like it or if it's Stockholm syndrome. But I'll let you listen to it too:
Oh yeah, the regular "Almost Forgot" section. In this game, the very first fight is when you, playing as a cyber-ninja, fight a giant robot the size of a multi-story building. If you can't stand such "anime" elements because you need groundedness and realism — the game is absolutely not for you.
Instead of talking about the game, I'll talk about myself))) Basically, 7 years ago I heard the track Nuclear by Mike Oldfield, then found this trailer, was incredibly impressed by it and decided to play through the entire Metal Gear line of games in order to play Metal Gear Solid V with a full understanding of its essence. Which is exactly what I did; my post about the first Metal Gear Solid is one of the very first posts in this thread. Overall, I enjoyed the journey through this series, although the final destination for which it was all started ended up leaving only disappointment and that same phantom pain. I skipped only 4 games — the first two Metal Gears that were on Sega or something like that, Metal Gear Solid 4 which was a PS3 exclusive (and there was no emulator for it back then), as well as Metal Gear Rising. The rationalization was as follows — Rising wasn't made by Kojima, Rising changed the game genre, and plot-wise it continued the events of the fourth part, which I had skipped. Some time later, I did watch a "Walkthrough" of the fourth part on YouTube (essentially 10 hours of cutscenes) and that last point lost its relevance for me. But I didn't want to play a slasher without a joystick and generally it seemed so not urgent... Anyway, I finally played this game.
I played with keyboard and mouse and this was my first experience with a full-fledged slasher in a very long time; maybe the last time I played something like that was as a teenager, or maybe I've never played a "real" slasher before. And I really liked it. At first, I was very afraid that because of the keyboard and mouse I would feel like an invalid, because I constantly hear the opinion that such games are designed for a joystick, but either the devs did a great job here, or the joy-stick is simply overrated, but I didn't feel any problems at all throughout the game, except for one moment right at the end, and even there you can avoid struggling with uncomfortable controls and just choose an alternative option. Playing it is pure and absolute joy; everything is controlled easily, sometimes the camera can act up, but personally, it seems to me that in these kinds of games such moments are inevitable and as long as it's not a problem in every fight — you can put up with it. By the way, there are no puzzles in the game, no platforming elements, only fight, fight, and more fighting, and it is a pleasure. A couple of times they make you run around avoiding pieces of shit flying at you, and you can also bother to collect collectibles, and that's it. Also, in this game you can and should chop enemies into many small pieces; the more pieces you cut — the more money they give you, with additional bonuses for precisely severed limbs (head, arms/legs); essentially, the left arms of some enemies are one of the collectibles, and at the end of the game they proudly show you statistics on the number of severed limbs. Isn't that wonderful? And the boss fights are pure bliss — the combat mechanics + music force you into a kind of battle trance where nothing exists except what is happening on the screen and the rhythm of the music in your ears, and when the fight ends — you feel slight bewilderment at returning to normal reality. Perhaps something similar was experienced by warrior berserkers.
I played on Hard; this is the highest difficulty for a first playthrough, after which Very Hard and "Revengeance" are unlocked — on the last difficulty almost everyone one-shots you, but you can also one-shot almost everyone (as I've been told, a successful move against a boss takes off 50%, though if repeated, the damage is heavily reduced, but still). And overall, I can't say that the game seemed unbearably difficult to me, but! In this game, as a result of battles, both with bosses and some groups of mobs, you are assigned a certain rank. This is done immediately after the fight, while you are given about 2-3 seconds before a new checkpoint is recorded, so if you didn't like the rank — you can quickly reload and try again. The highest rank can only be obtained if the fight is won without taking damage. And in my opinion, this is very good game design, when a game can be "beatable" even for a relatively weak player, but to beat it "perfectly" you need to really try. Classic easy to learn, hard to master. Sometimes you can hear an argument against such things like "yeah, what else should I do, tie my hand behind my back and pass so it counts," but here it's different — the game itself tells you that there is a truly "cool" way to complete an encounter and challenges you, which you can accept or not, depending on your skills and persistence. I myself completed a number of fights for the highest rank without damage — simply because I felt I could do it and therefore it was interesting to try and also because I found some cheat weapon that allows stun-locking groups of low-level mobs. The only complaint, perhaps, is the slightly strange distribution of difficulty; the first boss feels normal, the second feels more difficult, the third and fourth — quite simple (I even beat the fourth completely without damage, although it took a couple of hours, but it was just too tempting), whereas the last one really gives you a hard time; though, after defeating him, it started to seem to me that he wasn't that difficult, but considering that I beat him with difficulty without any artificial restrictions and using all my medkits and even cinematically finishing him off on the last few percent of health — I don't rule out that this is just self-deception.
Suddenly, I'll say a bit about the plot. Initially, as you remember, I didn't want to play this game because I wasn't familiar with the events of the previous part. And indeed — to better understand what's happening, it's desirable to know what was in it. But overall, the plot in the game isn't so important that 100% understanding is mandatory, and a general understanding of the essence of events will be available even if this is your first game in the series — in the worst case, if you're curious, you can later read what happened in the fourth part and a couple of gaps in your head will be filled. But what strongly surprised me were the Codec conversations. I'll quickly bring you up to speed — it's like a radio where you can call various characters and talk to them; it was in all previous parts of the game. And if in the early games there were very, VERY many Codec conversations, then in later ones their number was reduced, and in the last part they were removed entirely. Therefore, I was very surprised when in a slasher released, essentially, by a third-party company, the Codec conversations turned out to be higher quality than in the latest games by Kojima himself, roughly comparable in quality to the first three Metal Gear Solids. Here you have both a deeper understanding of what's happening, and reflections on AI and the dehumanization of death, and just random trivia — everything as before; you can again spend a lot of time listening to NPCs. But then again, you can skip them entirely if you're not a fan of that — there is no coercion here. It was very unexpected and pleasantly surprising. Not without flaws, though, which became noticeable closer to the second half of the game, but nevertheless.
The musical accompaniment of the game has been praised by many and absolutely deservedly. I already mentioned in passing the combination of music and action, but I want to praise it in a separate paragraph again — it's very well implemented. This doesn't mean that after the game you will necessarily Download its soundtrack to your player, but within the game everything combines and works great.
And finally — I'm not sure if it's such a good idea to post music from the game out of the context of battle; it might even put some people off, but I was held hostage by this melody for so long that I don't even know — whether I sincerely like it or if it's Stockholm syndrome. But I'll let you listen to it too:
Oh yeah, the regular "Almost Forgot" section. In this game, the very first fight is when you, playing as a cyber-ninja, fight a giant robot the size of a multi-story building. If you can't stand such "anime" elements because you need groundedness and realism — the game is absolutely not for you.
Where do we go?
Where do we end up when we save the world?
Where do we end up when we save the world?