On the final day of E3 there was one game I wanted to make a sprint for above all others. That was for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Sure enough when the doors flew open I made a sprint towards the booth. I was among the first to get in line to try it out. If I had waited longer, well I would have waited longer to try it. The line grew longer in a matter of minutes.
The whole booth was an amazing display. It's not something that you walk up to and start playing. The booth instead was made to look like an initiation point that had a recruitment room that acted as a mission briefing. You felt like a soldier in this room as a live action video plays that shows Raiden's transformation from man to cyborg. The last thing you're told before moving on to the next room is that you'll get to experience Raiden's skills firsthand, in other words the demo.
I stopped in front of an XBOX 360 version of the demo and was excited to finally give this game that I've been waiting for a shot. What will more than likely be the training mode at the beginning of the full game when it releases, the demo showed me how things work. What you saw in the reveal trailer with Raiden slicing a watermelon and a human into fine pieces was the first thing you can try. That's done by holding down the left trigger (LT). It steadies your blade so that you can then use the right stick to adjust the movement of your blade (a targeting reticule appears when you aim so you know at what axis you'll swing your blade). The right stick also acts as your sword. Once you've situated the position of your blade, Raiden makes the appropriate slash. This all happens really fast. The pace at which you move your thumb on the stick is just like swinging a real blade with your hands.
So in the demo you get to try out this sword focusing technique on stationary dummies, dummies that pop out at you, stone pillars, and yes, there are watermelons you can practice on too. From the get go I was surprised to see just how many times I could reduce an enemy into nothingness. Just as easily as you can tear a piece of paper, there's more than one way to do it. More over, why stop at tearing it in half when you could completely destroy it in dozens of tiny pieces? That's the concept of Revengeance. There's no wrong way to go about slicing and dicing unsuspecting foes. The detail in these segments is astounding. Slicing a person in half slows down the camera so you can see what's going on. Muscle tissue, organs, and hints of bone marrow can be seen with your eyes as you hack away at an enemy soldier.
You won't always have to run up to a soldier and focus your sword to cut them up and then move onto another one, rinse and repeat. No, the X and Y buttons act as light and heavy attacks. Hack 'n slash gamers will understand how forming a multitude of attack combinations by pressing these buttons in a variety of ways is possible. Occasionally a quick time event can pop up during the heat of battle. I believe the button combination was X and A. Pushing these in the right amount of time makes Raiden strike an enemy, launching them into the air. Raiden jumps up and another quick time button press with LT triggers the blade focus mode. Yes, time slows down in midair (so to speak) and Raiden can slash his enemy every which way without ever touching the ground. In this amazing display of Raiden's blade, the sky and ground switch with each other as Raiden vaults over an enemy's body in midair. After dicing them like a blender, Raiden drops down to the ground, does a flashy taunt with his blade, and then gameplay resumes so that you can go back and finish the others off.
Out of curiosity I tried seeing what else in the world could be cut. I approached a seemingly normal column of rock and was surprised to see that I could, in fact, cut it down to size. Surely you'll be seeing more of this kind of interactivity when the full game releases.
Sometimes Raiden will be outnumbered by soldiers with guns. The right trigger (RT) allows Raiden to sprint around the battlefield using his blade to automatically deflect bullets and jump over obstacles, like overturned cars, with ease. This sprint maneuver is a great mechanic to move about without the worry of being shot and to get in close to an enemy to quickly cut them down. It's not only helpful but it looks pretty darn cool.
The demo was mainly to showcase the action segment of this game. It's designed to get you pumped up for the game but also to give the hundreds of gamers waiting behind you a chance to play it too. It's a selling point so the stealth part of this game was left out of this demo, but it was playing on monitors leading up to the kiosks of the demo. Surely those missions will provide a good amount of variety when the full game is available.
Finally I can tell you with good faith that Hideo Kojima's sense of humor, seen in the Metal Gear Solid games is still an underlying theme in Revengeance. For example, in the training segment of the demo a few cardboard cut-out enemies pop up and the trainer off screen tells you "slash the enemy dummy, but don't harm the hostage." Looking closer you can see the cardboard cut-out does have a woman hostage. Walking up close to the dummy I focused my sword so that I would cut only the enemy part of the dummy. I succeeded and that part of the cardboard was cut away. Then another same dummy popped up but this time my thumb must have slipped on the control stick and I accidentally slashed the hostage on the cardboard instead. The result was something totally Kojima. Instead of the cardboard woman getting cut off, her shirt was. So you could see her bra. I started laughing. I'm glad to see this humor is still in the series. Second was when I came across a rather suspiciously placed cardboard box in the middle of my path. Knowing the Metal Gear Solid games, cardboard boxes are a symbol of the series. I walked up to it and focused my blade. I cut at the box to find that an enemy soldier was hiding underneath it. I wasn't expecting it so I can only assume the soldier was doing something he shouldn't have been doing like taking a nap on duty, going to the bathroom (like Akiba in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots), or reading a Playboy magazine. That got another laugh from me and assures me that Kojima himself is really looking at this game being good.
It doesn't handle like Metal Gear Solid if that's what you're thinking. This is spearheaded by Platinum Games. So those of you who have played the brilliant Platinum game, Bayonetta should feel right at home with how this game controls. Of course, you'll need to have played the Metal Gear Solid games to understand the storyline or a term like the "Patriots." The game is in good hands. Having tried it out at E3, I'm absolutely sure of it. I can't wait to own the full game for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance!
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