I’ve never had much interest in the Metal Gear franchise — not out of any active disdain, but merely because it exists outside my radar. However, when I was exposed to Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (a spin-off title revolving around the character Raiden that deviates from the format of the main-series games in favor of a fast-paced hack-and-slasher) through a slew of memes and cutscene clips — as well as through the game’s outstanding soundtrack — I was thoroughly impressed and bought the game despite my inexperience with the wider Metal Gear mythos.
Rising is a wonderful experience from beginning to end. With a set of controls that put combat first (your movement carried by Raiden’s Ninja Run), battling your way through the game’s tough learning curve is incredibly satisfying. Rising (heh) from a complete novice flailing in the face of your foes to a master of its systems who can fell bosses without a scratch induces a fist-pumping excitement that I cherish immensely.
But the real stars of Revengeance are the bosses, who provide the most memorable moments of Rising with their volleys of brutality and their impeccable design. They’re able to challenge the player in a way perfectly primed to attain the aforementioned sense of achievement. Through the tribulations they provoke, they force you to master the game’s systems.
Progression in Rising follows two strands. First, through upgrading your attributes (weapon damage, health etc.) via the spending of Battle Points accumulated throughout normal play. You get the option of how to spend these points after every level and may ration them how you wish — giving you some customization opportunity as well as the post-game goal of maxing out all of your attributes.
The second strand is mastering the game’s mechanics. The button-mashing combat is relatively straightforward; as long as you’re able to land hits consistently, dealing damage won’t be a worry. Where the game requires you to properly grasp its mechanisms is in its Blade Mode–a feature that slows down time to allow for precise cuts–and especially the parry maneuver. These tools are essential, demanding that the player master their ins-and-outs until they feel an unrivaled level of satisfaction. The game’s bosses are the vehicle through which the player is forced to learn.
One of my favorite examples of this is with the second boss, Blade Wolf. The prior boss, Metal Gear Ray, started Rising with a bang — establishing Raiden as a tour de force that can wipe the floor with a city-leveling behemoth. Though Ray is terrifying in scope, he can be beaten without the parry maneuver. Wolf, however, demands you use what you’ve learned about parrying through the game’s regular enemies and build upon that knowledge with a brutal fight.
Wolf zips around the arena and lays into Raiden with quick hit-and-run attacks that deal heavy damage. His speed is unprecedented up to this point in the game — a standard that continues to escalate following this encounter. You will need to grasp the parry maneuver by the end of the fight if you want to live. With each attempt you’ll improve your parrying skill until eventually you fell the creature. Wolf is simultaneously a new threat that knocks you for a spin whilst also ensuring that you have the tools to properly progress through Rising.
The ideas of Wolf’s fight (overwhelming speed and attacks combined with a demand for parrying skill) are continued with the game’s penultimate boss, Jetstream Sam. Sam’s fight is without major gimmicks, focusing on pure swordplay. He blazes you with strings of attacks that require absolute mastery over parrying. When you finally slay Sam, it makes you feel more than ready to face whatever the game’s finale has to throw at you.
Not only do the bosses ensure you have full knowledge of its workings and put your resolve to the test, they also offer you opportunities to utilize your ability to think outside the box and use alternative strategies. As I alluded to earlier, Metal Gear Ray is possible to beat without parrying so long as you focus on movement in its first phase and taking advantage of healing items in the next. This lets new players fight the boss even if they don’t yet know that it can be parried, making subsequent playthroughs exhilarating as your newfound experience allows you to demolish Ray further.
Another case in point is the fight against Sundowner. Not only does he serve a similar purpose to Blade Wolf in that he forces you to properly learn a mechanic of the game (this time the aforementioned Blade Mode), but if you’re slick enough you can skip his second phase entirely by side-stepping his exploding shields that would normally require precise dissections via Blade Mode, and stabbing him in the back.
Mechanical complexity combined with testing the player culminates with the fight against Senator Armstrong. Armstrong combines just about everything you’ve learned throughout your journey — the speed of Blade Wolf, the attack strings of Jetstream Sam, the Blade Mode sequences of Sundowner, and more. The fight also introduces Armstrong’s own moves, such as area denial, healing, and forcing you to retrieve your weapon. Moreover, Armstrong has multiple ways of being slain. You can run beneath his onslaught of wreckage rather than slicing them open; you can get easy hits on him before the effects of his area denial attacks go off; even his seemingly unstoppable attacks (normally triggering a quick-time event) can be avoided with clever use of dodges.
Though fighting a final boss in the form of a shirtless, nanomachine-enhanced US senator may sound absurd, I can’t imagine a better finale to the game with its show-stopping stakes that put all your learned skills to the test. It makes that final battle feel like a natural culmination–similar to previous battles yet also distinct–to your journey through this hack-and-slash masterpiece.