The Legend Itself, The Cyborg Chad - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

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Yes, I write this for the memes. The memes that'll carry this post to its highest peak of glory. That'll whisk us away from the mundane existence of the real world, and have us to embrace the nonsensical barrage of slicing our enemies till nothing is left. Till all that left is anguish, the seething rage against hyper-capitalism that ensnares us in this loop of long working hours to spend more on stuff that powers the tiny percentage, the powerful and the wealthy, that is slowly making the government and people's constitutional power itself, obsolete.

Yeah, and well outside that and some wacky memes shared online, this is a pretty dated game. Despite the fact that the controls are sleek, responsive, and well-designed. But that's not why you and me are playing this, no, this game is a rite of passage now.

But is it because this was the last bastion of greatness that is untainted, left by Kojima? Is it because Platinum with their pedigree of making hardcore hack n slash games that people want to check out how amazing it is?

Or is it because someone kept spamming "It has to be this way" in your Discord chat, and you wanted to find out what the fuzz was for? You can find out here. This is a review, but also a cultural dive into this current zeitgeist of a video game.

Spoiler Warning

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The year is 2022, War in Ukraine with Russia has set foot, and put every country's relation with the latter completely tarnished. Because of the sanctions set against Russia, the majority of countries are dealing with resource scarcity, oil demands can't be met, the nuclear build plans in my country got hold off, and now Taiwan just decided not to supply Russia with microprocessors. There's even rumors about China planning an invasion in Taiwan.

Costs have gone up, inflation is high due to supply and demand constraints, mostly thanks to the Pandemic, mental health has been on the decline for the past 18 months, and Elon Musk still thinks going to Mars will solve the population problem....wait, that's not the game's story.

(Throat Clears) The year is 2018, 4 years after the Patriots incident, Raiden now works in a PMC (Private Military Corporations)helping governments rebuild their countries after the civil wars, created by the secret Cabal themselves to control global affairs. The war economy continues as other PMCs moved on from Nanomachines to Cyborg tech. Creating the deadliest soldiers out there, and it's upto Raiden to finally put a stop to it. I skipped quite a bit about this, so here's the link.

Yes, the very medium we cherish that brings us laughter, helped us grow in this broken society, is also an asset, a tool to be used by powerful forces. There's little to no sanctity of anything in the modern world, sometimes believing in good things just isn't enough.

Raiden being a child soldier from Liberia is mentally prepared to take whatever he can sacrifice at the end of the day to do his job. Because he knows how far others are willing to go to fight all kinds of wars. Morality is compromised, and humanity is fleeting, the ceaseless chaos and violence in the world is what he is trained for, but also something he is heavily conflicted with.

Metal Gear games always have this heavy-handed way of storytelling involving a lot of military jargon, and story expositions (with a pinch of humor sometimes added). But it never shies away from dealing with brutal subject matters involving war and politics. Revengeance has the least Kojima-esque storytelling, yet playing this while becoming aware of current world problems, this game fits to be everybody's sh!tpost now.

The main plot revolves around assassinations of country leaders in Africa, children from South America being used as cybernetic tools of war, private military companies continuously looking ways to make war profitable by creating conflicts in other countries, and a Cyborg ninja chopping other Cyborgs to bits and pieces. Forget morality, Raiden is here to channel your inner carnage, against the so-called powers that be.

It gets much more ambiguous when you reach towards the end of the game. You deal with the final boss, he finds a way to justify all of it as a means of letting everyone have their chance in war. On one hand, you can see he is crazy, but on the other hand, is he though? The main theme for the
boss battle tackles this ambiguity, while also helping us players realize that in the end of the day, sometimes this is how the world works. So to cope, we make memes and laugh while also remembering how doomed the modern world can be at times.

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To describe Revengeance, one way of putting is someone sprinting to the grocery store instead of walking there. The game dismiss any need for you to take a momentary break to reel in its setting and atmosphere, because there's only one thing you should do; find the best way to kill your enemies, quickly and surgically.

The fluidity of the combat requires you to be well-trained in its mechanics. It's pretty limited to normal and strong attacks, there's no dodge or block button. You only parry attacks, if enemies flash red, you can parry them with normal attacks. There are some you can't block and so you have to move out of the way. Sounds easy on paper, but how limited mechanically and functionally the gameplay is kind of frustrated me, since I was button mashing like I was cruise control.

Enemies have ways of brutally putting you down a few pegs, they don't hold much back. You get cut off from your flow, enemies take charge and suppress till you're dead on the ground. Boss battles dial that up really high. It took me several tries to learn how to parry, find the right combos to attack, and a whole other approaches to combat that involved tactical strategy alongside the brutal slashing. But the game's biggest signature move, to use when the time is right, is the bullet time samurai mode (Zandatsu).

You have to exhaust enemies till they start glowing, then hold the trigger button while you move the analog stick in different directions as time is slowed to a crawl, slicing enemies in the right direction like Fruit Ninja will let you grab their spinal fluid from their Cyborg bodies which replenishes your health and bullet time meter.

And the neat way to make your actions rewarded is by a score system that gives you points to buy upgrades and weapons. Master the game, master the carnage. You have to learn how to play it right, before you start playing it like crazy.

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Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is no stranger now to internet memes. They're everywhere, and its popularity just keeps growing. A quote here and there from one of the game's boss characters, some analogy about the cycle of violence and suffering seemingly becoming emblematic of today's socio-economical crisis, and the absolute banger of a soundtrack to be the sweetest cherry on top of all of this.

Plus, it also seems the madman, Hideo Kojima yet again predicted the future. He kind of did the same with Death Stranding in 2019, it just can't be this much of a coincidence now, can it? Bless the man. That and these crazy remixes for The only Thing I know for real with Scatman.

I can safely say that this game is forever sealed as a legend, a flawed legend though because I really don't like how the camera works, and how it takes awhile to figure out to properly play it. Even if the tutorial does its job, the game throws a number of curveballs.