Metal Gear Revengeance: Parry or Die

So, here’s Eurogamer’s slobbering review of the game:

The quality of your timing dictates our hero Raiden’s defence; go too early and he’ll block the attack with no advantage, hit it just as the attack lands and he’ll parry into a devastating counterblow that leaves most enemies wide open.

The parry may sound similar to that in other games, but none has ever made staying aggressive so fundamentally important to combat’s flow. It is a design choice with a message: in Revengeance, you find a way to keep Raiden on permanent offence, or you die.

The second innovation is what Revengeance terms, with typical understatement, the Zandatsu. This is a specific aspect of the slow-motion Blade Mode and whoever invented it is a genius. Raiden can cut weakened enemies in specific places, then yank out their dripping android spines and crush them.

Maybe I’ll give that demo a second spin. I stopped playing when I had trouble figuring out how to aim accurately in Blade mode to destroy stationary bottles in the training area.

If Revengeance didn’t have camera issues this would be the easiest 10 I’ve ever given. As things stand it’s still brilliant, staking out new territory in the genre and adapting certain Metal Gear characteristics so well that it makes the competition look outrageously bad. This is simply the ultimate one-man show, worth its ticket price many times over, an experience that improves exponentially as it gets faster and as you get better. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is a thrilling and almost flawless fighting game - come get some.

(ps3 demo)

Someone please tell me how to swing in this game.

The tutorial tells me to hold down L1, then aim using left stick and right stick and finally release right stick to swing. This doesn’t seem to work though as i’m not even pushing right stick at this point. Unless they mean to just let it go back to the center? But that seems super awkward and not at all precise like the system seems to want.

I feel like i’m missing something and the options screen controller setup is garbage, as is the tutorial.

you hold L1 and flick the right stick in the direction you want to swing. Nothing more to it. If you want to do a bunch of fast swings you can flick the stick in a direction, let it recenter, reflick, etc etc.

So, what, you guys were able to get past that puma boss? Seriously? It’s just me who got hung up there? Man, I suck. I’m going back to the Devil May Cry reboot.

-Tom

I can’t decide if I’m going to buy Revengeance or not. Reviews are conflicted on whether the combat is shallow or deep, the secondary weapons are useful or superfluous, the game is too short or just the right length*, the characters and story are good or terrible (I hate Metal Gear’s fluff, but I do see this type of outrageous action game as a much better fit for the universe), the controls are precise or sloppy, the stealth serves a purpose or is vestigial. So I really can’t tell if Revengeance is from the Platinum that made Bayonetta. Or Vanquish. I really like the demo, and any concerns I might have about value or assuaged by the presence of a New Game+ mode with remixed enemy encounters, score chasing, VR missions, and a currency to unlock moves, weapons, and upgrades that persists across all modes, which is a replay incentive Vanquish really could have used. Plus the demo lets me do a slow motion rockstar slide through packs of fodder enemies, dicing them to bits and snatching robo-intestines as I go.

Do you have the dodge-riposte move yet? It helped me avoid that thing’s attacks in the demo. Press ‘A + X + movement direction’ at the same time to get out of the way of its charge attack. Also, I’ve read that the full game is as woefully under-documented as the demo, so make sure to at least familiarize yourself with the move list by pausing and selecting ‘Help’.

*Many players who’ve finished the game are mistakenly judging its length by the time listed on the completion screen, which doesn’t include time spent replaying checkpoints after deaths or watching cutscenes. Instead, they should go by time listed next to their save on the load game screen. I’ve seen 4 hours on the completion screen versus 9 hours on the load screen in screenshots, so the difference can be significant.

You can parry most of his attacks, but it is pretty hard. The easier way to fight him is to use your ninja run to avoid most of his junk, slide in for a quick combo, then run back out.

I think you are making the battle harder than it needs to be.

You can parry most of his attacks, but it is pretty hard. The easier way to fight him is to use your ninja run to avoid most of his junk, slide in for a quick combo, then run back out.

I think you are making the battle harder than it needs to be by trying to parry.

Crap, looks like Platinum will ignore us PC gamers again.

“One question from us is, a lot of users, especially from Europe, have asked us for a PC version. Is it something really that in demand for the European market?” he said.

not only in Europe n00b! :(

Bah. I was going to give this a pass because I have little to no interest in the Metal Gear series, but apparently it’s actually good, and I have to buy it? How inconsiderate.

I picked this up and really enjoy it so far. This seems like the first time in a long while that I’ve actually enjoyed looked forward to a QTE in a game. It’s also nice to get some of that Metal Gear plot craziness in smaller, more digestible doses. I’ll get below cover before I say that I put it on easy, though. I’ll likely play through it again on medium if it’s a short ride.

The way I use blade mode when I want accuracy is to hold the left trigger(360 here), rotate the right stick to where I want the beginning of the cut to start, then swipe the stick to the other side. I’m on the default control scheme, as well, if that helps.

I watched ManvsGame play and beat this on twitch.tv last night and 90% of it seemed really good. It has an absolutely atrocious ending/final boss, which took the guy playing it several hours alone to beat (on hard), so keep that in mind.

I must be doing something wrong then because half the time i do this, it changes my character’s sword position and doesn’t swing.

Is L1 the left bumper LB, or the trigger LT?

@Murbella maybe your button is broken/flickering?

Which button?

If you mean my L1 (i think that is the trigger on the 360 but ps3 calls it L1), then that can’t be because if my swing mode button came up, i would exit swing mode, not readjust my sword aim.

It seems to me like they bound right stick to both adjust the cut angle and swing, so for me, when i swing, the game has trouble deciding whether i swung or whether i adjusted the slash angle.

I could very well be doing it wrong though. The help/tutorial in the demo is horrible which is a real crime for a game with a non standard control scheme.

PS3’s L1 is 360’s LB, which isn’t the analog trigger. That’s too bad, I’d imagine the trigger is easier to use for this mechanic.
I need to download the demo and try this out. I hope I can do it this weekend!

You can change the assignment of the triggers.

(in the ps3 demo at least) you don’t seem to be able to change the assignment of the 4 front buttons. They are fine though.

But my problem is with the right stick mechanics which don’t seem very smooth/accurate.

Bought this cheap from Gamefly and completed it today on hard. Loved it for the most part, although I do think it would of benefited from having Kamiya more involved, but maybe that’s just the Kamiya fanboy in me. Not having a targeting system or being able to push a button to focus the camera on Raiden’s back created problems at times. There would be enemies zipping all around and I’d be turning the slow camera to try and face them. Really wished I could of canceled out of moves faster. I really didn’t like how the repair pastes were implemented. I wish they just got rid of them altogether. By using Zandatsu moves you never had to use them anyway really except for the boss fights. I loved the Zandatsu mechanic, it never got old. I do wish the hit box for it were in different spots though instead of always being in the middle. I hated how there was no quick way to change weapons. Two of the weapons didn’t have much for move sets, but I would of loved being able to mix them in a bit better. Instead, in order to use them you have to open up the menu to swap out weapons. Oh, and Raiden can’t be moving at all in order to open the menu which is really annoying when enemies are zipping all over trying to murder your ass.

I thought it was strange how even though there were VR missions that taught you stuff, there was still a lack of information. Bought skills don’t tell you how to execute them, you have to go into a help menu to find that out. I made it about 2/3rds of the way through the game without realizing you can move the left stick when slicing in order to target better. I also thought that the X+A dodge slash move only worked in moving you backwards, but then later found out I could move side to side as well with it which turned out to be absolutely invaluable for the last boss. Speaking of the last boss, what…the…fuck. That is the definition of difficulty spike right there. Absolutely brutal. The game was mostly easy on hard except for the boss fights, but I’d often have a lot of repair pastes for the bosses which helped out a ton. On the last boss though there are like 3 forms and I blew all the repair paste on the first form. I got a greater sense of accomplishment killing that guy more than defeating the secret boss in Bayonetta.

Despite all the niggles, I’d love to have a sequel to the game. I ended the game with a C rating overall, so I may go back and try getting a better score now that I’m more familiar with the mechanics. I also liked all the little easter eggs in the game that had Kojima’s humor. The soundtrack is freaking amazing too. Wonder if the DLC is worth getting at all. Got a copy of DMC staring at me too.

So why aren’t more PC gamers gabbing about this? Best release of the year so far, IMO. Fantastic action game with an abysmal (but skippable!) plot and some really dumb stealth. But really all you need to know is that it’s the best Star Wars game ever made.

Try the PC beat 'em up thread. :)

How complicated is this game combo-wise? I’m not a fan of complicated button presses. Also does this game force you to react ultra fast? I did OK with DmC, but I probably didn’t really take full advantage of combat moves.