Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (PC) – this is Jetstream Sam from the DLC Not through storytelling but through gameplay. And despite him still being a bit of a whiner, and sporting the worst hairdo in gaming, they succeed. Instead Platinum indulge their fetish for ever more bizarre and impractical enemies, while concentrating on one of the game’s primary goals: to at last make Raiden a genuine badass.
There’s much more to the story than that, and as usual it makes very little sense, but unlike the Solid games Revengeance doesn’t take itself anywhere near as seriously. As the game opens Raiden is working as a bodyguard-for-hire in Africa and after an initial run-in with a less principled mercenary group dedicates himself to stopping their warmongering activities across the world. Revengeance (no, it’s not a word) takes place after the events of Metal Gear Solid 4 and stars Raiden the cyborg ninja, not Solid Snake. There’s the bizarre characters, superb boss battles, and nonsensical and overlong cut scenes – all of which also happen to be staples of Platinum’s other work. The complaints about Platinum daring to deviate from the normal template seem especially unfair considering that many of the key features of the parent franchise are still here. Instead, this is a straight action game and although some may think that sacrilegious the obvious intention is to open up the Metal Gear franchise to those that would normally dismiss it out of hand. The primary problem was with hardcore Metal Gear fans, some of whom refused to accept that this is a spin-off and so by design bears little resemblance to the original’s stealth-focused gameplay.