Chaos Raiden
Avid Gamer & Reviewer
Play as Raiden to annihilate with stylish katana action.
This is a demo for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, which includes only one playable level. In this level, you will fight some regular cyborg enemies and a boss.The controls are easy, where Square and Triangle buttons are used for Weak Attacks and Strong Attacks respectively, Circle for Actions, and X button for jumping. R1 is used for Ninja Run, where Raiden can run at faster speed and climb walls. R2 is used for locking on targets, L1 for Blade Mode and L2 for Sub-Weapon. The Up Directional button is for Augment mode, where you can view your enemies location in more detail, and Left/Right Directional buttons for you to equip Raiden's main weapon, sub-weapon, and etc.
In combat, you can use both Weak and Strong attacks to defeat enemies. Or, you may also use Blade Mode to kill them as well. Blade Mode allows you to freely cut any objects or enemies within a time duration in slow motion. As you are using Blade Mode, your energy bar will be depleted the longer you uses it. To cut at any specific direction, you need to use the Right Analog Stick to control the sword's movement to cut freely in any directions. For example, push the Right Analog Stick to the left to cut from the left, and push it upwards to cut from above.
You can restore your energy bar and health by cutting a specific enemy body part, and use the Action button to drain enemy's fuel cells. There are three variety of enemies encountered in this demo, which is regular cyborg enemies, GEKKO-like enemies, and finally, the boss LQ-48i (a.k.a. Bladewolf).
In this game, there is only one way to dodge, which is by pressing Square and X buttons at the same time. You can only parry enemy attacks by pushing both Square button and Left Analog Stick at the same time. This parry move will be your only defense against attacks, since there is no way for you to dodge incoming attacks. Perfect timing will result into total parry that stuns your enemy, otherwise it will be regular blocks against attacks. While playing, you may also encounter some items to be used, like sub-weapons such as Rocket Launcher and Grenade, or recovery items. As you complete a battle section, you will be ranked accordingly and will be rewarded BP depending on your combat ranking. I guess BP is used to buy new upgrades for Raiden. You may also kill enemies by stealth from the back or from higher platform, and this is useful since enemies can deal high damage even in Normal difficulty. There are QTEs integrated in the demo, where it is used to kill off enemies quickly or to drain their energy.
The demo's level starts after Raiden gets a new cyborg body, so there isn't much spoilers revealed in the demo. There are also few cutscenes integrated in the game, and Codec is also return in this game. You may use the Codec to contact other people for information or to save the game.
The graphics are pretty impressive, with much improvement compared to Platinum Games' recent games like Anarchy Reigns, and the sound design is pretty good. The voice acting is considered better than all of Platinum Games' voice acting combined, thanks to good dialogue written by Kojima Productions. The soundtrack is pretty good, with ambient, hard rock, and some techno music included.
Metal Gear fans might have qualms in playing this game since it does not include traditional Metal Gear elements like stealth. However, I think this game is meant to be primarily action game instead of stealth game, since the game's concept and story does not cater primarily to stealth game fans or core Metal Gear fans. Instead, this game's target cater for any high speed action fans with stylish combat. I personally do not recommend anyone to download this demo, since it has absurdly large file size of 3.4 GB for only one playable level. Not to mention the game's release date is only within next month. Unless you have a fast Internet speed, then you may be able to download the demo faster than regular Internet users. This is a good demo, but it is overwhelmingly short as it includes only one level with absurdly large file size.
Final score: 7/10
Pros
- Excellent and stylish combat.
- Blade Mode is awesome.
- Easy game controls.
- Intense combat.
- Quite challenging.
- Impressive graphics.
Cons
- Extremely large file size for only one level demo.
- Short demo.
