POSTED 24/3/13


METAL GEAR RISING: REVENGEANCE

Konami
PS3 (also on Xbox 360)

War. What is it good for? Absolutely the economy, at least according to nasty-pastie private military company Desperado Enterprises. Hey, what’s a spot of genocide when there’s cashola calling?

It’s bullshit, actually, and thankfully our heroic cyborgy protagabloke (and Steve Strange lookalike) Raiden agrees, intending to stop such nefarious skulduggery upon assailing a veritable UNgasmic cornucopia of various ethnicity ne’er-do-wells. True to his roots of being named after a classic shmup – not actually related at all, but we’ve already typed it - he’s a shooty-shooty death-dealy machinetraption (hey, if they can invent the portmanteau ‘revengeance’, we can get language-inventy too – erm, not that we haven’t already since, ooh, about birth)... Umm, where were we?

Oh yeah, Raiden’s packed to the shiny metal bonce with weaponry. There’s trad stuff (heh) like rocket launchers and grenades, but the real action’s with his high-frequency katana blade. This sucker makes your slices/dices/mushes/smushes infomercialistic implements of sharpness – sorry, sharplements - look blunter than James and Emily sitting in a tree. Go bullet-timey and get all vertical/horizontal sluice-master, then watch your enemies kerplunk into zillions of pointy-pointy chunks. You can even wield it on unsuspecting furniture and such if desired.

Between that, switching weaponry, ninja running (hold down R1 then go make a milkshake as Raiden goes auto-modal), nods to the series’ stealth roots, the fabby ‘Zandatsu’ mode (now we are here) and the indispensable parrying mechanism, MGR:R’s initially an absolute controller headbonk. Persist though, absorbing training sub-games, and the innumerable combinations become dealable. Phew!

The sheer craziness while taking on increasingly bonkers cyborgular adversaries of mucho bigness and infinitesimal smallousity can verge on overwhelming, and it’s not helped by the obstreperous, bungiepoopular camera. Still, if you crave challenging, frenetic slashing – and can’t be arsed drinking megalitres of water - you’ll be hard-pressed to get a better fix.

Uh-huh, yeah.

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