Be Excellent To Each Other

The best game about cutting dudes up into little pieces you'll ever play.

Demo is out on the Xbox now. I think it has the potential to be Platinum's best game.

Here's a trailer:

'Revengeance'? Really?

That does it, I ain't making another thread. First this and now this. I hate you all.

Well, fuck me if Platinum hasn't gone and done it again. This is going to be forking awesome.

It's rock solid.

It's lovely-looking to a fine sheen.

It's a bit Ninja Gaiden. Y'know, the good one.

It's a bit DmC. Y'know, the good one.

Christ, it's going to be aces init? A good MGS - who knew that was going to happen. Also, chop, chop, chop reet down your face bad guys.

There's loads of times where you can do the slow down choppy chop thing that I didn't realise at first, like after you do the jump kill from above thing.

Amazing game.

If you press LT and hammer X he goes nuts and slices a mo' fo' apart.

That trailer looks exciting.

Is that Raiden? The only Metal Gear game I've ever played is sons of liberty on the ps2 and I recall a lot of hating in Raiden.

Well, that was pretty awful.

It starts off not bad with some decent seeming sword play in the tutorial bit; the slow-down-time-and-swipe-your-sword move makes no fucking sense at all from a control point of view but hey, it'll probably be better during an actual fight right? Anyway, stupid cut scenes with awful characters exactly as expected and then we're fighting three guys! Excellent! I'm hitting th--wait, what, you've wrested control off me literally halfway through slashing a guy and now they're dead and my assistant's telling me more things? Well, alright, let's just get on with it but don't make a habit of that shit. Bounce about a bit and find you can stealth kill guys effectively. The actual slow-mo kill scene takes fucking ages which will be annoying as hell but still, a nice mechanic and something to balance up the bloody murdering with. Do that a few times and get into a fight with a weird robot-with-horrible-human-type-legs thing. Slap it around and manage to accidentally slow-mo sword-slash it effectively. No real idea how I did it but it was pretty cool so that's hopeful. Now the level opens up a bit and I get an idea how things will be put together. I can move through a level stealthing it or just slashing and it'll all be fun. Maybe this'll be alrig--wait, what the fuck? A guy clocked me, I was jumped by two of the weird robots and kicked to death while someone miles away hammered me with fucking rockets! Try again. Nope, pretty much same result. Try again, attempt to use slow-mo sword thing a bit. Same result. I lasted a bit longer this time but with three or four guys on me the combat was horrible and scrappy and button mashy and miserable. You can't seem to nimbly get out of trouble which is critical in this type of game and crowd control is next to impossible (especially when you're getting thudded with missiles from some off-screen cunt at the same time his mates kick you to death). Hmmm. Try again. Nope. Shite. Quit. Delete.

I suspect there might be a good game in there somewhere and it's suffering from not explaining itself very well and maybe the full game will do a better job of that than the demo. Judging purely by the demo though it can GTFF and as I've got plenty of other games to play I doubt I'll be giving it a second chance.

I suggest practising a bit, and using the see through walls thing to see where enemies are instead of walking into their filed of view without knowing where they are.

I did use the tactical vision stuff and successfully stealthed a few guys to death that way which is fine, but it's inevitable that you get spotted eventually and get into a scrap which should also be fun. It's just not though.

I'm totally prepared to acknowledge that, like Vanquish, this is just a game I'm not going to 'get'. Which is a shame because at first I thought it might be good, but dying three times within minutes in the first proper fight of the very first level does nothing to endear me to a game. Properly introduce the various mechanics and let me get into the swing of things and then take the training wheels off; if I get massacred at that point then it's totally on me. We're well past the point though where games get a pass for just chucking you into the deep end and saying, "Fuck you, work it out for yourself."

I couldn't disagree more, to be honest. I'm sick of cloying games treating me like an idiot where you press a button to win, and success is basically inevitable. Almost all action games are like that, which is why Platinum are the best in the industry.

I thought the Revengeance tutorial was fantastic because it was fun, optional, and taught you all the basics. It's absolutely not inevitable that you get spotted in the section of the demo that you're talking about (although that is the case in some other encounters).

I gotta agree with Lewie. This seems destined to appeal to the hardcore crowd which makes me very happy (MGS is essentially as hardcore as games go. Its success has always bemused me for that reason alone. Oh and most of the games being, largely, utter dogshit). It reminded me a lot of Ninja Gaiden 1 for being so brutal and demanding.

Strange camera swap for blade mode though. I wonder if they'd kept the 'slash' on the left thumb the accuracy would have been difficult. I'm assuming someone somewhere tested it.

Yeah, I admire a lot of what the MGS games do, but don't like them as games at all. This seems to take the bits of MGS I like, and then wrap them around an amazing Platinum action game where you can literally cut guys into hundreds of pieces in slow mo.

It's the game I would have never asked for, but wanted all along.

That's a straw man point to make because I'm not asking for 'press a button to win' throughout the game, indeed my post was explicit that I'm happy to go into the main game and take responsibility for being massacred if I'm shite at it. The only thing I'm asking for is a decently sloped introduction that lets you properly try out and understand the core game mechanics in an environment that's at least representative of what you'll get in the actual game (which the tutorial absolutely isn't). After that of course the gloves can and should come off and each player should stand or fall by their own ability; no one's arguing with that. Basically I think your wider point about the easiness of modern games is a completely separate thing to how well this one specific game introduces itself. 'Accessiblity' and 'challenge' aren't the same thing.

Of course it's possible they've just thrown out this demo with a crapy tutorial stapled on and that the full game will have more time to do a better job of it in which case my objections are moot of course but for the moment the demo's all we've got to go on and it's not doing them any favours in my opinion.

I didn't enjoy the demo.

I love Ninja Gaiden (clocked it ), this game is not Ninja Gaiden.

That's exactly what the tutorial did, for me and many other people at least.

Edit: Oh, I won a competition because I preordered it. I get the game a week early, and also get to host a "Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance party", where they send me 10x a bunch of goodies (T Shirts, posters, tat like that).

Also, if I take a bunch of photos for the company running the competition to use in adverts, then I get a 1/25 chance of meeting Hideo Kojima, although it wasn't at all clear whether that's a trip to Japan, or meeting him when he's in the UK next.

Cool, well we'll just need to agree to disagree about it then.

ETA: Although my point about the 'representativeness' of the tutorial I think stands; the tutorial had you slicing up watermelons and static cardboard cut-outs, surely no one can argue that's the same as dealing with multiple aggressive dynamic enemies?

It pretty much is. You use normal attacks on guys to stun them, and then get up close to them and cut them up just like you did the watermelons.

Edit: Blade mode is like a finishing move, not a primary attack.

Played the first hour of this now. It's astonishingly good.

Is this drenched in Metal gear bullshit? I'm interested in the mechanics of the gameplay but unless the game loads and I press start and begin slicing up random dickheads, I don't want to know. All this "I am Psycho Fish, I am the son of your father's brother's cousin's dad from a game that came out on MSX in 1853. Here is my wife Minigun Chiuahua who was your secret talking woman thing in the last game, which is really the next game, now have a cutscene" bollocks can sod off.

Bayonetta might have similarly fucking idiotic Japanese non-story guff surrounding it, but at least it's apropos of nothing and can be treated with the respect it deserves. Having played the PlayStation game back in the day though, any recourse to loreguff would give me a strange mental itch I don't want.

Just beat this again on hard. What a game.

STARTED: it's "that Platinum game where you whoosh about on your knees"-mental with swishy swords. SWISH!

Why kick someone in the face when you can kick them in the face with a sword strapped to your foot?

I'm quite enjoying this (apart from, hnnngh, Finger. In. The. Ear.) but I'm struggling with the flow of the combat. Jumping from one solider to the next is fine but anything bigger and I'm not getting a decent rhythm. I think it's the lack of a block or roll. I've got a feeling I should be looking to parry, but can I do it? Can I fuck.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Should I be attacking when the limb glows before an attack, getting out the way or parry those attacks?

And if it's a parry: HOW THE FRIG DO I DO IT? Hard attack, light attack? Hold a button? What?

I'm just ducking in and out at the moment and getting stuck in a massive chain attack using the ginormo Bo I pinched off some boss character which invariably means I'm a sitting duck for some attacks. For instance, the gorilla robots are particularly painful to fight when I think I should be standing my ground and getting stuck in.

Move the stick quickly toward the attacker, then press attack.

What the hell just happened there!? You've just turned it into an entirely different game. Every fight makes me think I'm fighting in that famous Street Fighter parryathon.

Amazing! Cheers dude!

And now I've got sai's - fuck yeah!

Make sure to experiment with it, you can get a regular parry, or perfect parry, if you get the timing exactly right. Perfect parry stuns the baddie ready for slicing.

It does explain it pretty badly, doesn't it?

Certainly does(n't). But it's strange because I only needed one line from you and I'm kicking ass. And the parry is so generous and easy to do when you know how!

It's brill and an entirely different beast to, say, Ninja Gaiden's block, wait, wait, wait, attack or, Devil May Cry's dodge, attack, dodge, attack. You feel like a freakin badass soaking up attacks before unleashing.

Finished! Very good that. I almost didn't mind the ridiculous philosophical bollocks that takes place just before and after a boss fight. Also, and unsurprisingly for a Metal Gear Solid game, the story is a giant steaming laid of rubbish.

Plus points: it looks lovely, sounds great, character models are, as ever for a Platinum game, awesome, sword-play was great, and, oh, did I mention it looks the bee's knee? Platinum are the undisputed kings of futuristic-jap-manga-mech-stuff. In fact , they're about the only games developers who can pull it off with such aplomb. SOLID 60FPS! Probably.

Negatives: story (Kojima's mitts all over it), the actual environments are actually quite clinical and non-interactive (it's an area that Plat needs to work on) but it's most likely to keep the frame-rate up, it's short (5 hours to finish - say, an hour of guff but at least you can skip it), and the starting levels aren't the best introduction, oh, and the secondary weapons really needed working on; their moves are quite limited and really could have been expanded upon to increase the move set further.

Still, very, very good. Parrying is awesome.

Pretty sure that much of the environment work predated Platinum's taking over the development.

Edit: The VR missions are a mixed bag, but some of them are fantastic. I managed to get a 4x Zandatsu in one of the combat ones!

A. Fighting. Game.

Touché. Only, it ain't, it's got stealth in it.

Then I'm sold! I love hiding - it's the abject coward in me.

Some of the best moments of revengeance come from stealthing an entire area whilst unseen.

The silent takedown's are amazing.

I picked this up for cheaps. I feel very guilty I picked it up for cheaps having played it.

I'm only about 1/3 of the way through by the look of it but it's utterly fucking incredible. The sheer mental nature of the combat that also requires some finesse to actually get spot on but is forgiving enough to just let you be a killing machine that can lop limbs off at will is something that only Bayonetta comes close to (unsurprisingly).

And I keep discovering things about it that make me squee. Like last night I only just realised you can enter blade mode mid finishing move to execute a Zandatsu in the middle of an already fucking cool finishing move.

I am buying Bayonetta 2 at full price on Friday to make up for buying MGR:R cheap.

Yeah it really is the best video game.

Got this on the steam Christmas sale and it's brilliant. Probably the best fighting system i've ever seen. Parrying and counter attacking just gives me a rush that not many games can.

The boss fights are beyond amazing. The one in the desert with the bearded samurai is a classic for the ages.

I'm now at the 7th level which i suppose is the last one.

Much as I love Bayonetta 2 the constant attack and parry in MGR:R probably wins in terms of sheer energy and flat out fun.

Yeah it really is the best video game.

Sequel


YES.

Kind of looks like the sequel was cancelled, what with Platinum taking on so many other projects at the minute. They just shipped Transformers Devastation, they have Nier 2, Scalebound, Starfox Zero and a third unannounced Activision game in the pipeline.

With Konami jetisoning all their console games studios except for the PES team, I wonder if they simply decided to cancel it. The teased 2 suggests it was happening at one point, but who know's what Konami management is planning.

It seems to me that if you are going to continue to make Metal Gear games without Kojima, doing more Metal Gear Rising games seems like the most credible way to do it, but I'm not sure how profitable the first game was.

Anyway, they probably would have got you all excited with an amazing Raiden intro, only to pull a switcheroo and have you play as that wuss Solid Snake for the rest of the game.

Re-reading this thread, I've decided to take the plunge for a whole £2.90 new from amazon.

If it's shit, Sat and LewieP owe me half a pint in London town.

Nier 2? Interesting, I never imagined a sequel to that would ever see the light of day. I heard really good things about it but just couldn't for the life of me get into it and I gave up pretty close to the start during some sort of boss fight where I had no fucking idea what I was supposed to be doing. This seems to be a running theme for me; if your game can't be bothered to explain it's self enough to get me into the swing of things then it can probably get to fuck.

ETA: Although, having just YouTubed the bit I got to out of curiosity it looks like a piece of piss and I can't remember what it was about that encounter that put me off now.

The story goes that a producer at Platinum had an idea for a game that was somewhat inspired by Nier, but didn't know how to get it funded/made.

Then Square Enix approached Platinum and asked if there was anything they could partner on. The producer suggested making his idea into a straight up Nier sequel, and SE obliged.

I finished it last night. Apparently the run took 5 hours. But it felt like longer.

I played it on Easy because I spent most of my time only half knowing what my combos were doing. Got the hang of Blade Mode and tearing out people's spines fairly early on, but never managed to get to grips with parrying.

There were times when I was conscious the challenge was lacking, so I'm contemplating a Newgame+ on Normal.

But it's a fantastically ludicrous game, even if it's last quarter wasn't quite as ludicrous as I was expecting (Bayonetta may have spoilt me in that regard).