by Finally I caught up to myself and I had some time to sit down and play. This time it was Hideo Kojima’s latest hack and slash called Metal Gear: Revengeance. We play Raiden, a hero that we had gotten used to from the Metal Gear Solid series, especially the second and the fourth installments.
Of course, this game has nothing in common with the original Metal Gear series, except for the fact that both games are set in the same universe, sometime in the not too far future.
If you ask me, my favorite episode of the series was definitely the first one. I loved how it had all these small Japanese elements installed into the story, but I think the episodes since then went a little too far off course with them. However, that’s just my opinion.
Both the characters of Raiden and Snake are more than just likeable, and after Raidens debut in MGS4, I wasn’t at all surprised when I first heard Hideo’s plans to create a separate game series for him.
The Story
Well, truth be told, I didn’t have that much time to play around with Revengeance this week, but at least that means I won’t spoil much for you if your interested. The story is set after the events of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of The Patriots. The world is finally at peace, even in Africa. I don’t know how they managed to do it, but there you have it.
We watch Raiden parade around with the Prime Minister of Africa for a while, but to everyones surprise,(not really) our dear president gets kidnapped and it’s up to us to save the day. Again. After about fifteen minutes into the game, anticlimatically the president gets killed, because a bunch of weirdo cyborgs want to bring war back to earth. Tough plot to swallow if you ask me.
Ahh, at this point I was like… nay. This game doesn’t really feel like it’s gonna have a too engaging storyline. I’m about two hours in the game, and so far, I wasn’t wrong. I’m really surprised though, Hideo Kojima’s known for giving the player an awesome cinematic experience that they won’t want to put down.
One a sidenote, most of the cinematics are still awesome. This time however, they chose to focus on the gameplay element a bit more, rather than cinematics and dialog.
Gameplay
First off, Metal Gear: Revengeance was originally developed for consoles, so it shouldn’t come as a shock that playing with a keyboard and a mouse won’t give you back the same feeling. On the brightside, it’s not a bad port at all, the controls aren’t that bad, and it’s not a power hungry beast either like for example GTA4 was. The fights are fast paced and usually entertaining, the only thing I’m not so sure about is our ability to parry. It’s performed in a weird way, you have to press the left mouse button and the way from which the attack is coming at the same time, it doesn’t always work for me, but oh well.
Another weird thing so far is that boss fights are actually easier than menial foes, which in my opinion is pretty weird.
There are a lot of customizations and additional combos that can be unlocked as we progress further ahead in the story with Raiden. We also get a bunch of extra content outside of the main story through the VR training missions.
Graphics
I’m not all that impressed by Revengeance when it comes to graphics. The game isn’t even a year old yet, it was released in February last year. Raiden does look amazing, but there are just a couple of textures in game that are so freaking low resolution that it really takes away from the game.
I can’t seem to understand why they went and said this is gonna be fine. There are games out there like Witcher 2 which were ported from consoles with such care that makes this game feel unfinished. Let me know if you played the game and felt the same way.
Conclusion
I’m not overly taken with Metal Gear Revengeance to be honest. If I had to say something, it’s that it’s better than Darksiders, but it’s nowhere near Devil May Cry 5. If you want to try a good hack and slash franchise, and aren’t too heavily invested in the Metal Gear universe, then I’d suggest you try out the latter instead. That said, Metal Gear Revengeance is not a bad game, it’s just that there are so many small details overlooked, that the game eventually leaves something to be desired. Also, I haven’t finished the game just yet, but I heard that it’s about four hours long. It’s hard to encourage anyone to buy a game so short. So there you have it.
Anyway, let me know what you guys think!
Rating: (6.5/10)
