This Week In Retro: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Patreon)

February 19, 2013: Revengeance is a dish that is best served cold

by Diamond Feit

I have a complicated relationship with PlatinumGames, a celebrated developer based right here in Osaka. Famously founded by former Capcom employees such as Atsushi Inaba and Hideki Kamiya, the company has built a reputation for its expertise in the field of high-octane action and its mercenary nature, always willing to work with big publishers to produce works for hire. I have purchased several Platinum titles and have met a fair number of their employees (almost all of whom were quite friendly with one exception) but I cannot call myself a Platinum fan as I consistently find their output more frustrating than entertaining. In most cases I hit a wall in the first hour as the demands on my reflexes and fingers overwhelm me and I just give up.

I likewise have an unusual relationship with Konami's Metal Gear series, one of the most celebrated franchises in gaming history. The advertisements for the NES game grabbed my attention, but the gameplay confused me so I never came close to infiltrating Outer Heaven. The hype surrounding Metal Gear Solid rekindled my curiosity, but whenever I watched my friends struggle to sneak past the guards or defeat a masochist ninja, the game seemed out of my league and I declined to play it myself. I did grab a copy of VR Missions at Funcoland and found its bite-size stealth-challenges entertaining, but I never took Solid Snake into any actual hotzones. Viewing the story remotely, I came to know the broad strokes and could recognize most of the major players in the series, but I can neither confirm nor deny love's ability to bloom on the battlefield because I simply don't know.

Suddenly, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance appeared, a spin-off title focused on Raiden, an infamous supporting character from Metal Gear Solid 2. Instead of the usual Tactical Stealth Action genre, Rising was classified as Lighting Bolt Action, with an emphasis on speed and slashing enemies to bits. As a collaboration between Konami and PlatinumGames, one designed to have no narrative barrier to entry, this should have been my opportunity to finally throw myself into Hideo Kojima's crafted world. Yet a challenging demo at Tokyo Game Show in 2012 vilified all my assumptions: This series exists beyond my comprehension and I need not explore it any further.

Since I have publicly vowed to finally slink my way into Metal Gear in 2023, and seeing as how the 10th anniversary of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance arrives today, fate has coaxed my hand to begin not at the beginning with Solid Snake but with Raiden and his twitchy, superhuman agility, as imagined by PlatinumGames.

From minute one of booting up Metal Gear Rising, the protagonist Raiden is, quite literally, in your face. The title screen is a close-up of our hero, more machine than man, as his impossibly shiny cybernetic body gleams in the finest lighting effects 2013 had to offer. Who is this mechanical warrior, and what events drove him to trade his human body for a metallic one? Metal Gear Rising will not answer those questions, expecting the audience to accept Raiden at face value (face being the operative word as the only flesh left on his bones).

As befitting the Metal Gear franchise, the narrative of Revengeance hits the ground running with a lengthy opening cinematic introducing Raiden as a leading member of a "private security provider," one that offers protection to high-profile clients as well as military training for entire nations. Already a veteran when we first see him, Raiden's current mission in an nondescript African nation goes awry when a rival group of cyborgs attack his client's motorcade. The chaos that follows eases the player into the world of Metal Gear Rising both as a story and as a video game, giving them ample time to grasp the mechanics and learn about Raiden's capabilities.

As a newcomer to the franchise I lack the necessary frame of reference to assess Rising's themes and politics as compared to other Kojima-led games, but these philosophical conversations left the biggest impression on me during my initial play session. Controlling a ridiculously-agile protagonist who effortlessly takes on multiple enemies at the same time is standard-fare for PlatinumGames, but Revengeance sounds like it truly has something to say about soldiers, warfare, and the military industrial complex. The villains introduce themselves as literal "warmongers" unhappy with the impact peacekeeping operations have had on their bottom line, unironically asking "What about all the good things war has done for us?"

Metal Gear Rising doesn't pull its punches when assessing its leading man, either. By the end of the introductory chapter, Raiden has brutally slain at least a dozen men, likely dismembering them via the game' signature Blade Mode (more on that later). Officially every enemy Raiden faces is a soldier of fortune who, like him, has undergone extensive surgery to become a cyborg and therefore qualifies as not-quite human. This fictional conceit makes the graphic violence in Revengeance just fantastic enough to evade the strict standards of CERO, Japan's version of the ESRB, a body that frowns on in-game mutilation of human beings. Yet the characters on screen make a point of reminding Raiden that the people he's killing are people—if you prick them, they most certainly do bleed—a rebuke that very few video games dare to throw at the player.

Metal Gear Rising has strong opinions about the morality and economics of war, but it also delivers an intense action experience befitting the PlatinumGames brand. Both Raiden and his opponents have long since exceeded all human limits of strength, speed, and athleticism; the game makes the player feel the same as simple button presses empower them to slash their way through outrageous combo after combo. If you thought Bayonetta's high heel pistols were over the top, Raiden can wield his sword just as easily with his feet as he can with his hands.

When he's not acrobatically assaulting his adversaries en masse, Raiden has a special Blade Mode that lets him focus his energy on swinging his sword faster than the human eye can detect. During these moments, time seems to slow down and the player has free reign to dice their target into table scraps. Slicing an enemy combatant into tiny slivers isn't just cathartic, it's strategic, as dicing his foes at the right time and at the right angle can enable Raiden to extract precious electrolytes from their shredded corpses to refresh his own power supply.

While my opinion on Blade Mode has much improved since my first impressions back in 2012, it absolutely does interrupt the rhythm of navigating the battlefield and makes it harder for players to keep track of multiple opponents. Blade Mode also creates a hint of ludonarrative dissonance should players try to use it without first weakening an enemy, leading them to land a dozen ultra-fast cuts only for the recipient to survive the assault unscathed. Metal Gear Rising wants players to only activate Blade Mode at just the right moments, limiting its effectiveness with a strict timer and lessening its damage output; using it sparingly punctuates Raiden's combos with a sensational coup de grâce.

Metal Gear Rising impressed critics back in February 2013 and sold a respectable number of copies but neither Konami nor PlatinumGames has shown any interest in reviving Raiden for another adventure. Revengeance had a famously troubled history, languishing in development hell for years before Platinum stepped in to take over production, so it's unlikely that any retail release could have grossed more than the game cost to complete. With Kojima Productions going independent in 2015 and the Metal Gear brand sitting idle since 2018, I don't think we can expect a Lightning Bolt Action sequel anytime soon.

Yet Revengeance has aged remarkably well. Thanks to a 2014 PC port, the game remains available and quite popular on Steam to this day as more players discover the title. Some of this attention comes from memes featuring the game's more outrageous characters, but whatever draws people in, the numbers show a healthy player base for a now-ten-year-old release.

That group obviously includes me, a Metal Gear outsider who still hasn't managed to complete any game in the decades-long franchise. My 2023 attempt to understand Metal Gear Rising has had its ups and downs—the parrying system confounds me—but I appreciate how the game forgives my sloppy play by making every enemy a potential health recharge. As Raiden himself puts it, "They’re like walking vending machines."

Does this mean I'm no longer a Metal Gear novice? No, Revengeance's spin-off status means I'm still woefully ignorant of Solid Snake, Big Boss, and all the other characters that seem to have stuck a nerve with audiences over the years. But I've spent more time playing Metal Gear Rising than I have any other title in the series and so far, I'm completely sold on its blend of idealistic political pontificating and engaging gameplay. I don't know if the mainline series' dedication to stealth will appeal to me or not, but at the very least, I'm excited to find out why all these colorful characters put their lives on the line to serve on the front lines in the 21st century. I also have to respect a big-budget video game franchise that, no matter how much military jargon and violence it embraces, makes a point of putting the pro-war propaganda squarely in the mouths of the villains.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts about video games, films, and dessert.