Ever since it was first revealed three years ago, inquisitive minds have wondered what a more action packed Metal Gear title would be like. After a few years of silence it was revealed that Platinum Games had begun working on the title under Konami, which piqued fan interest even more. Now that E3 has come upon us, and us at it, Konami has given us a chance to get our hands-on impressions of the title. Now the demo stations that Konami provided for the title could easily be misconstrued as a tutorial, but it did give us a chance to try out nearly everything in Revengeance’s arsenal.
The first technique we were taught to use was the Blade Mode. In this mode time slowed down to a crawl for everyone around us due to Raiden’s acceleration. In this mode we were given full control of Raiden’s sword and were able to guide his slashes in any direction we wanted to. At first it was fine to simply slash away at the targets presented to us, slicing them up into, quite literally, hundreds of pieces. However we were soon shown that sometimes precise slices are necessary to deal with specific targets who may have only tiny openings in their armor.
Through the use of Blade Mode we could easily slice through nearly every object around us, including watermelons, people, large stone pillars, helicopters and even tanks. The visual presentation of slicing through a human enemy and chopping them into tiny little pieces is something many will likely not forget. Sadly however, the Blade Mode did have a few drawbacks as it was not shown whether or not the distance between Raiden and the object being targeted was too far away or not, making entire slashes miss without any actual notification.
There is much more to Raiden’s arsenal than just his sword however, as he is a more than capable fighter with his bare hands and legs as well. Raiden can take on enemies with a standard set of moves with punches and kicks, though nothing is truly standard when it comes to Raiden anymore. His basic punches are quite powerful and easily chained into long combo attacks, allowing me to easily pound our way through a slew of enemies that were thrown at us. Even more impressive is when the player uses Raiden’s powerful (and bladed) legs to deal out damage. Using jumping dive kicks, a standing onslaught of kicks that would put Chun-Li to shame or even just a simple set of kicks could easily decimate foes. However true decimation comes when I approached a near dead enemy and was able to press a button combination to launch him into the air, enter Blade Mode and slice through him as both of us flew through the air, leaving the enemy a pulp upon landing.
Besides the fast paced and bloody melee combat, Raiden can also pick up some secondary weapons around the area as well, including a heat seeking rocket launcher capable of dealing out devastating damage, which was certainly helpful against the first large Gecko enemy I battled against. Now this Gecko only has certain moments of weakness… when the player parries one of its attacks. Oddly enough, the parry button is the exact same as the kicking button, which led to some minor confusion at first. However this confusion may have turned out for the better, as Raiden was grabbed by a large wire tendril coming out of the Gecko. However through the use of a short and simple quick time event, Raiden was able to dislodge the tendril and use it to spin the Gecko around in a circle before slamming it heavily into the ground, making it easy prey for a slicing and dicing Blade Mode.
This impressive demo continued with a helicopter hell bent on slaying Raiden with missiles. However through a slow motion run, quite literally, up the missiles being fired at Raiden, this helicopter was soundly dealt with after doing a large amount of damage before. Now with all this fast paced action and blood flying around, Raiden’s movements always felt relatively fluid and his combination attacks flowed together perfectly, though it feels odd that he is unable to jump just a tad higher. As it stands the visuals of the game are a bit impressive, as the slice-and-dice mechanic is sure to amaze many and give fans of Metal Gear the most action packed game in the franchises history when it releases in 2013.
