360 Metal Gear Solid Rising announced...starring Raiden?!

Warriorpoet897 wrote:

For some reason the more I think about this game, the more it sort of depresses me. Metal Gear, along with Zelda is one of the few great franchises that isn't being diluted by an influx of spinoff titles. Maybe I'm just getting old and crotchety.

I'm actually happy that this is a spinoff because I've managed to block out a lot of the over the top aspects of previous MGS games. The MGS series has always walked a fine line between a heightened reality and a hyper reality. I can suspend my disbelief for cyborgs, giant bipedal tanks, a bodybuilder shaman carrying a mini gun, etc. All of which I consider to be heightened reality, because they seem to be human but with extraordinary abilities. However when the get into hyper reality scenarios like what Raiden has done in MGS4 the world starts falling apart for me.

Here are some spoilers from what Raiden has done in MGS4 that break a lot of the reality I believe in for the Metal Gear Universe.

Spoiler:

Raiden doing windmills while being bound by the Gekkos and flinging them around as if they didn't weigh a couple of tons has always bothered me. I always imagine the scene happening differently. I picture Raiden wrapping the cables around another Gekko's legs and that Gekko is what flings the other around.

I could probably live with his extravagant fight scenes with Vamp but those start to get out of hand for me as well.

When Raiden stops the Outer Haven from hitting Snake that just made me cringe. That ship is already so massive it is ridiculous and Raiden stops it by putting his foot down. If Raiden had simply thrown Snake out of harms way and been crushed that would have been fine and it would have been a better selfless act because Raiden did this knowing he had no chance to stop the ship.

Hearing about the new direction for the game actually puts my mind at ease because I was so worried that they would try to shoehorn a convoluted story that tied into the Patriots and all of the other MGS games. Now it can be as convoluted and crazy as they want because there's nothing that really ties this to any of the MGS games.

MechaSlinky wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

I already kind of didn't like MGS2 (particularly the last hour or so), and a slow-ass start to 3 killed it. Sorry guys.

Fair enough. Just saying. MGS3 is the anti-MGS2.

+1

In many ways, you could liken it to Witcher. Once you get past the cutscene-laden early parts, the game opens up and gets really amazing, just like Witcher didn't really get good until Ch. 3 or so. I highly recommend giving it another shot, you can even speed through a lot of it since most of the lengthy scenes are codec sequences.

Isn't MGS3 the one that's getting ported to 3DS?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Isn't MGS3 the one that's getting ported to 3DS?

Yup, and it is pretty much the reason I want a 3DS.

ahrezmendi wrote:
MechaSlinky wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

I already kind of didn't like MGS2 (particularly the last hour or so), and a slow-ass start to 3 killed it. Sorry guys.

Fair enough. Just saying. MGS3 is the anti-MGS2.

+1

In many ways, you could liken it to Witcher. Once you get past the cutscene-laden early parts, the game opens up and gets really amazing, just like Witcher didn't really get good until Ch. 3 or so. I highly recommend giving it another shot, you can even speed through a lot of it since most of the lengthy scenes are codec sequences.

Nah, that ship sailed long ago. Once a game loses me I'm usually gone for good. Didn't get past three hours of the Witcher, either! Really liked those books, though. I'm a heathen, I guess. But there's something to be said for putting the fun parts at the front of the game AND at the end.

Gimpy_Butzke wrote:

I stepped on a rant hill.

MGS3 has a man hanging from bees and a dude who gets nutrition through photosynthesis. Your argument is invalid.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Nah, that ship sailed long ago. Once a game loses me I'm usually gone for good. Didn't get past three hours of the Witcher, either! Really liked those books, though. I'm a heathen, I guess. But there's something to be said for putting the fun parts at the front of the game AND at the end.

I'm with you on that one, for the most part. I do feel it's okay for a game to start slowly if it's required to build up to something important, and it's much better if I have the option of skipping this part of the game in subsequent playthrus, like in Bethesda's games. A slow start for no good reason with no way to skip it is the biggest reason I've never replayed Kingdom Hearts 2, and I loved Kingdom Hearts 2 from the point immediately after the first six hours all the way to the very end of the game.

But I don't fault anyone for a slow start ruining the experience for them.

MechaSlinky wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

Nah, that ship sailed long ago. Once a game loses me I'm usually gone for good. Didn't get past three hours of the Witcher, either! Really liked those books, though. I'm a heathen, I guess. But there's something to be said for putting the fun parts at the front of the game AND at the end.

I'm with you on that one, for the most part. I do feel it's okay for a game to start slowly if it's required to build up to something important, and it's much better if I have the option of skipping this part of the game in subsequent playthrus, like in Bethesda's games. A slow start for no good reason with no way to skip it is the biggest reason I've never replayed Kingdom Hearts 2, and I loved Kingdom Hearts 2 from the point immediately after the first six hours all the way to the very end of the game.

But I don't fault anyone for a slow start ruining the experience for them.

The thing is, it's quite possible to have something exciting happening up front and regularly through the game, the key is to have it be well paced and relevant to the story at that point. I'd say the biggest problem is when a game settles into one 'mode' of play for too long, either too much or too little action for ages, and just because you're level one doesn't mean you have to be killing rats.

MechaSlinky wrote:

But I don't fault anyone for a slow start ruining the experience for them.

Moi aussi. Even though I made the comparison, I still haven't been able to finish Ch. 2 in The Witcher. Someday Geralt, someday...

MechaSlinky wrote:

MGS3 has a man hanging from bees and a dude who gets nutrition through photosynthesis. Your argument is invalid.

I do have a problem with those things from MGS3 too, I just didn't post about it. My argument still stands, and I actually take a little bit of offense when you say I was ranting. I don't feel that I was violently arguing or being extravagant. I was only discussing the extravagant things that Raiden has done.

I've been seeing a lot of people complain about Raiden's new abilities on other sites, but the things that I posted earlier aren't really any different.

This game has been pretty silent... until today:

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/07/20/ra...

Holy freaking cow. It's what Ninja Gaiden should have been. I'm super excited about this now, I can't wait to try cutting dudes up while doing an inverted flip.

GamesCon trailer:

Color me excited. And reminded that I still need to get MGS4.

You should get MGS4. I've been playing it so much lately that my copy of MGS4 is stuck in my dead PS3. Five years of dust, 105 degree weather, and long play sessions of MGS4 this summer have killed my system.

At first I read that as though you were playing MGS4 because you couldn't get it out of the system and thought, "Wow, that's a terrible recommendation."

It's especially nice now that you can do a full install, and avoid the chapter installs. No better time to play MGS 4.

Did anyone get hold of the demo? Came with the Zone of the Enders HD collection on PS3.

GiantBomb has a quick look of the demo - really can't wait for this

So the demo's out now. I played through the tutorial and about 5 minutes of the story (skipping cutscenes because come on. Come on.).

It reminds me a lot of Red Faction: Guerrilla, where I spent a lot of time wandering around looking for interesting things to break in interesting ways. It actually felt a lot like the old Otogi games for the XBox, where my destruction felt more like changing the world than "cleaning" it, which is ironic because Revengeance (which is almost as dumb a name as Ground Zeroes) has so much trouble keeping track of all the little itty bits I create that stuff begins to vanish while I'm hacking away at it.

In the tutorial area, I managed to find a secret box by turning an overhang into a ramp, and I cut a watermelon into about 250 pieces. It's impressive what they manage to do with the current generation of hardware, but every time something disappeared while I was actively cutting it I couldn't help but feel like this is a next-gen game. As in, intrinsically restricted by the limitations of the hardware. I know this game's been cooking for a long time but I kind of wish they'd waited another year to put it on the next generation of consoles and overcome some of the limitations in the one mechanic that sets it apart.

And that mechanic is pretty cool. I like cutting things apart. On the other hand, it's also really clumsy. You hold down L1 and then use the right thumbstick to control the camera and the left one to line up and execute attacks. ...and that means you have no way to actually move while in this mode. I'm not sure how I'd solve that problem, but it reminds me of the control problems in RE4 and RE5; even if there is no elegant solution, it doesn't make a lot of narrative sense. Maybe I need to give it some more time and practice but the system feels clumsy in general. It's a fun toy, but I don't think it's intuitive enough for an action game. I'd like to see if an hour or two of practice changes that any.

What I don't think it can change is the same narrative problem we've seen in every game that tries to map controller movements to actual in-game swordplay: there's no tactical feedback. So either you deal with a clear disconnect between what's going on in your hand and what's going on on-screen (the sword hits something in the game world but the controller continues to provide zero resistance), or you go for a sword that can cut through anything without any resistance (as they've chosen for this game), including enemies. I only fought three enemies in my short time with the game but the combat felt unsatisfying. Lots of blood but I can't say I noticed any limbs flying, which seems counter to the gimmick around which the entire game's been based. The enemies had some sort of cloaking technology that did them absolutely no good. I get the impression that it's used more as a justification to have enemies spawn in from nowhere than any sort of actual tactical advantage.

Anyone else give it a shot?

I gave it a try. The free slicing feels unintuitive but, by the end, I think I was starting to suss it out the way it worked. Two things I noticed:

Taking a practice downward swing on the pier will chopped a section of pier out from under you.

The cat on the beach (close to where you land) is even more nimble than the pedestrians in Driver SF. Not that I tried to kill it or anything.

That's not a cat... It's an Ocelot.

So... I set my PS3 to download Revengeance this morning. I thought it was a 360 exclusive? Or was it that it's just the first MGS for the 360?

I will definitely be trying the demo tonight. I just watched the latest trailer:

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/01/23/la...

which of course contained a ton of cutting, and looked awesome.

Lobster - I'm with you on the tactile disconnect, but it's something I'm willing to forgive simply because the hardware technology isn't there yet. Move wouldn't have the accuracy to do what we want, and Wii Motion Plus is on the wrong console. Maybe the devs will patch in a Kinect mode that does it justice, but I'm not holding out any hope.

I think the reality is that there just isn't enough demand for that type of feature. Would it be awesome? Absolutely. Is it necessary for people to enjoy the game and to get sales? Absolutely not. Until the answer to that second question is "Absolutely" I don't think we'll see any significant push for it.

It's such a strange game, just got the demo. How the hell do you kill the boss he slaughter me. I could only parry one of his attacks and I had no idea what to do on the rest. I tried way to many times and it did not sell the game well at all.

It's very strange and not metal gear really. It really would make a tone more sense on the wii or with kinect.

Given how fast Raiden slashes, I think a Kinect version of this game would be a nightmare to play and a delight to watch someone else play.

So I finished the demo and... yeah. This game isn't very good. The storyline has the potential to be utterly fascinating and the core mechanic could be a lot of fun, but nothing else in the game really feels right. And the music is kind of ridiculous. Maybe they'll be able to polish it before release.

That's surprising, Platinum's stuff is usually super slick. I'll have to try the demo myself, I keep forgetting I have it.

I had to play the demo twice before it clicked. Few things that help.

- When you get enemies weak with a few strikes, going into blade mode (or whatever it's called) and chopping in them half will flash a button on the screen you press to rip out their delicious, glowy spine and get health.

- Forward + parry (square on PS3) is your block, period. It's all about timing. When fighting the robo-cat thing, you gotta press that right when he's launching at you to knock him back. Same generally goes for everything else.

- Enemies tend to flash (especially the big ones) when they're vulnerable to blade mode. That's really meant to be the finisher since it leads to getting health and other special moves you can activate.

- If you're in a sprint, you'll automatically block bullets flying at you.

- Stealth kills are pretty satisfying, even though they can be kind of disorientating once the game speeds up again.

The whole game seems geared toward movement and attack. If you sit still too long, you're toast. I'm hoping the full game is a bit smoother and does a better job explaining things as you go. The tutorial is kind of balls.

Sounds like I need to try it out. I love everything MGS anyway and felt like Platinum was a perfect fit for this game.

I'm not sure what's kept me from trying the demo before now really.

I finally played the demo to make a purchase decision, and it looks like this'll be the first Platinum Games product that I don't buy on launch day. I'm just not feeling the combat, and I already have a ton on my plate coming up (plus DmC is up next and that's the same genre).

Reviews are all popping up and I haven't seen anything below a 4/5 or so yet.