Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is the ninth game in the Metal Gear series. Originally announced at E3 2009 under the title Metal Gear Solid: Rising, the game went through a long development process at Kojima Productions, who struggled to fully develop the game. At the beginning of 2011, Hideo Kojima decided to hand the development of the game over to Platinum Games who revamped the entire game. This switch in developer was formally announced on December 10, 2011. The game was released for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Microsoft Windows. The Japanese Xbox 360 version of Metal Gear Rising was cancelled, though it was still released in other territories.

Plot/Setting
The events of Metal Gear Rising are set four years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 4. The Patriots, a powerful shadow organization running the world's war economy, have been destroyed and Private Military Companies (PMC) have splintered into numerous factions. With the elimination of the Patriot-controlled nanomachine technology used to regulate soldiers' abilities, PMCs turn to advanced cyborg technology, creating durable superhuman soldiers.

The player controls Raiden, a former child soldier turned into a cyborg that now works for the PMC Maverick Securities. Raiden is supported by his Maverick colleagues, Russian pointman Boris Popov, military advisor Kevin Washington, computer specialist Courtney Collins, and cybernetics expert Wilhelm "Doktor" Voight.

Rival PMC Desperado Enterprises serve as the game's antagonists; Desperado wants to destabilize peaceful nations and preserve conflict, allowing them to reap the financial rewards and technological advancements of the war economy. Desperado operative Samuel Rodrigues, a.k.a. Jetstream Sam, serves as Raiden's rival with a conversation between the two in the beginning influencing Raiden.

Samuel (Jetstream Sam) Rodrigues is a member of a team of Desperado cyborg assassins named the "Winds of Destruction" and rival to Raiden. Sundowner is Desperado's defacto leader, he wields "Bloodlust". Mistral, the only female member, wields "L'Etranger" and Monsoon, uses a dual sai called "Dystopia". And lastly, LQ-84i, or Bladewolf; a state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Gameplay
Due to this game being action oriented the gameplay is focused on attacking than subterfuge. Players assume control of a character named Raiden, Raiden is a cyborg that is a skilled sword user; the game is more focused on swordfighting and a sophisticated cutting system to fight and defeat enemies, however, Raiden has access to other weapons such as Rocket Launchers and Daggers. The game's system is focused on the melee combat while also maintaining a defense and still being able to do stealthier tactics.

The combat centers around swordfighting with the katana. The "cutting system" uses precise cuts and slashes on anything from enemies to objects. Just about anything can be cut, this includes the environment. One of its main features is called Blade Mode. When this is active a special reticule will appear as a movable transparent blue plane, this plane can be rotated and moved in order to create lines by which a cut will be.

Blade Mode is used for strategic purposes. It can be used for a range of things going from disabling opponents, cutting supports in order to collapse a wall or ceiling on an enemy or even to deflect incoming fire. While in this mode energy is used up so it cannot be used all the time, if the energy is depleted past a certain leven then Blade Mode cannot be used. There is also the ability called "Cut and Take" which allows for taking energy to keep Blade Mode going or taking ammo/items/info, etc while also cutting through the enemy.

For defense there is a parrying system. This allows for parrying oncoming attacks from any direction (even from behind), this allows for countering enemies and doing multiple combos. For the stealth aspect there is a mode called Ninja Dash, it increases speed while giving the ability to climb certain areas. This mode can be used for stealthy attacks using ambushes instead of head on attacks.

And finally the last stealth aspect is the abilty to do reconnaissance. Through the recon visor areas can be verified as to be able to go through it while avoiding contact with enemies. Sneaking is also possibly by classic use of the cardboard box. If spotted then the guards enter Alert Mode thus making the area fill wih enemies for a set amount of time.

Characters

 * Raiden
 * Samuel Rodrigues
 * Blade Wolf
 * Boris Vyachelsavovich Popov
 * Kevin Washington
 * Courtney Collins
 * Doktor
 * Mistral
 * Monsoon
 * Sundowner
 * Steven Armstrong
 * George
 * N'Mani
 * Andrey Dolzaev
 * Sunny
 * Solidus Snake
 * Khamsin

Initial Development
The game was meant to feature The Boss and her comrades, the Cobra Unit, as main characters. However, the lack of experience from the younger staff in charge and the lack of involvement from Kojima resulted in this project being scrapped. Afterwards, a member suggested turning it into a sidestory focused on Raiden since said character was featured in Guns of the Patriots and the staff agreed to develop Metal Gear Solid: Rising.

It was originally conceived as an interquel that would chronicle the series of events that resulted in the transformation of Raiden into his cyborg ninja persona in Metal Gear Solid 4. Rising would have taken place during a point in the series' chronology at which Raiden had already begun his transformation into cyborg form, albeit with a different and somewhat more crude appearance from the one seen in Metal Gear Solid 4.

The game was first hinted during Kojima's keynote presentation at the 2009 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco where the presentation's end showed "The Next MGS" with Raiden as a cyborg standing next to the title. Prior to the announcements of the game, Kojima Productions featured a countdown timer on their website until the day that Rising was announced. The series' traditional tagline of "Tactical Espionage Action" was also altered to "Lightning Bolt Action," a play on the fact that Raiden's name is Japanese for "thunder and lightning."

The game was officially announced at E3 2009 at the Microsoft press conference. A teaser trailer was released by Kojima, although he would be serving only as executive producer for the game, as all of his input was with ''Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. ''The game was initially only announced for the Xbox 360 but was later confirmed for the PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows platforms. It would use a brand new game engine, rather than the Metal Gear Solid 4 engine.

Kimura stated that Rising would carry on the series tradition of encouraging players to progress through the game without killing, noting that there is a moral difference between attacking cyborgs or robots and attacking human beings, and that there is a "certain virtue to simply disabling your enemies instead of killing them." While it was considered important to give the players freedom Matsuyama indicated that players would never be rewarded for killing human opponents, and that the game would be designed so that players would never be forced to do so.

Specifically, the game's stealth elements would have emphasized Raiden's considerable speed and agility through what Matsuyama describes as "hunting stealth." Unlike the stealth of previous titles, in which players remained hidden and avoided combat, players in Rising would instead quickly stalk their enemies and use acrobatic maneuvers to stay out of sight while closing in. This ties in with the game's "cut and kill" feature, allowing them to prey upon enemies to obtain weapons, items, and energy. Kimura noted that he wanted Raiden to be able to move like he did in the Metal Gear Solid 4 trailers, and to show "the stealth of the sword, and the strength of not even losing to the gun, and the fear and power you have with this blade."

In January 2011, several pieces of concept art for Rising were displayed at Yoji Shinkawa's two-week exhibit, The Art of Yoji Shinkawa, hosted by the Konami Style Shop in Tokyo. During late 2011, it was announced over that Matsuyama had moved to a different division within Konami and that Yuji Korekado had taken over as the game's lead producer. Additionally, Kojima said Metal Gear Solid: Rising is "moving forward"; Kojima had stated the game remains significantly different from existing Metal Gear games, although he has retained an element of control over it and will not let it stray too far from the series' roots. He advised fans to try it even though the game would not focus on stealth.

Move to Platinum Games
Despite having thought out stories and scenarios for the game, Kojima Productions were finding it difficult to design the game around the cutting concept. The project was quietly cancelled in late 2010, and whilst Kojima had considered moving the project to developers abroad, he felt that a Japanese developer would be more suited to produce a ninja action game. In early 2011, Kojima met Platinum Games' Atsushi Inaba who asked him about the state of Metal Gear Solid: Rising and Kojima later requested them to work in the game.

Platinum Games requested a change of setting in order to have less restrictions in the creation of the game. Shortly after starting development, Platinum Games discarded the stealth element, with Kojima noting that the original staff did not find it fit with high speed action. However, they were incorporated as Inaba found the original game system too "dull."

The first trailer confirmed that Raiden would once again be voiced by Quinton Flynn, who had previously stated that Konami had not contacted him regarding the game. The game's title was changed to Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance with "Revengeance" coming from Kojima Productions' desire "to get revenge or vengeance on the original failed Metal Gear Solid: Rising project" while the stating "Rising" represents Raiden's character

The rewrite of the game's script took two months for Kojima Productions to make, in contrast to the original one which took ten months. Tamari often discussed with director Santo when the two studios had different opinions regarding the story. The plot was written with the idea of being accessible to people who have not played previous Metal Gear games. There was also a need to reduce the length of cutscenes so that it would balance the playing time. However, no part of the script was removed in the process. Human soldiers were removed from the game to avoid censorship issues in Japan.

Konami's Martin Scheider assured the game was "in safe hands" owing to the collaboration between Metal Gear veteran Yuji Korekado and Inaba, the former supervising the game. Kojima Productions originally planned to release Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance in Japan without a Japanese voice localization but in August 2012, it was revealed the game would have Japanese audio confirming new and returning actors.undefinedThe first Japanese language trailer was released shortly afterwards. Inaba had stated that the PlayStation 3 version would be the lead platform. The decision was made in order to avoid a repeat of the performance issues that Bayonetta had on the console which was that there were issues involving lower frame rate and other glitches.

The game was playable for the first time in the E3 2012 during early June with Kojima having been involved on its making. In promoting the game, during April 2012 Konami sent a replica of Raiden's severed arm to various video game publications. The arm contained a small teaser from the game in the form of a live-action scene. In following weeks, the official Metal Gear Rising website started showing a longer version of the scene as well as new one.

Reception
Before its release it was listed it as one of the most anticipated games of 2012 because it distances itself from previous games in the franchise as well as considering Platinum Games' previous work. However, a common criticism was that its style contrasts sharply with the previous Metal Gear games as a result of the change of developers and player character Raiden. Despite some concerns its demo received positive feedback.

After release the reviews, overall, were positive (most reviews scored into a mid to high 80's in a 0-100 point system). There were some disapprovals (often being it wasn't as interesting as some of the other Platinum Games' work) but in general the game went over well and received good feedback.

Sequel
Hideo Kojima mentioned in January 2012 that depending on the game's popularity, the staff would make a franchise based on it. He has viewed the relationship between Kojima Productions and Platinum Games as very positive and suggested that a sequel to Metal Gear Rising may be possible in the near future. However, Kojima would only approve of a sequel if Platinum Games were to develop it, stating that "no one else could [do] it".

Following the game's release Kojima was impressed with Platinum Games' work in the game stating the franchise had a "lot of hugely, insanely critical fans" who would be harsh on reflecting issues. As the original project from the game was telling Raiden's life before Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Kojima would like the game to be developed although he thought that Platinum Games would have problems with it as a result of being an intersequel. As a result, he is unable to confirm such story could be developed in the future.

In August 2013, Konami posted a survey for Metal Gear Rising in their official site asking fans if they want a sequel and if so what they would like to see in it.

Main Article
For more information please visit the Metal Gear wiki: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance