Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Trailer

[dlevere]

Raiden returns to get himself a new slice of life in his very own chapter of the Metal Gear saga. See the cyborg ninja in action in this trailer from the Spike Video Game Awards of 2011.

[dlevere]

What Went Wrong With Metal Gear Solid: Rising?

By Mitch Dyer

Indecision killed Metal Gear Solid: Rising. Hideo Kojima, creator of Metal Gear Solid, left his team at Kojima Productions to its own devices when working on Rising. It was an action game unlike anything he'd ever worked on, so the big decisions fell on his 200-strong team of young developers. He thought minimal involvement with the game would give an inexperienced group an opportunity to grow.

In hindsight, Kojima says, he should have stepped in and started calling some shots. After all, nobody else was. Rising encountered numerous issues during its long and strenuous development period. By the time he came to terms with the mess he had on his hands, Kojima canceled Metal Gear Solid: Rising. It was a lost cause. With so much great tech and leftover pieces, the revered designer wasn't content to let it die. His solution? Ask a friend for a favor.

Kojima asked Platinum Games to bring Rising back to life. The Bayonetta developer thought he was joking.

In Kojima's own words, Rising was meant to be "stupid and thoughtless" fun. The ability to cut anything and everything with a katana was a large part of this. In previous demos, we watched Raiden dismember men at all angles, as well as cut elevated objects to crush enemies below. It didn't work. Well, technically the mechanic was fine -- the slice-and-dice physics were quite the accomplishment after a year of tech tinkering. The problem with cutting in-game geometry is that it conflicts with a lot of design ideas. Think about it: As a developer, you can't limit the player when he or she can just carve through the world. There would be no guidance. This was the primary problem with Rising, and certainly not the last.

The frame rate and combat just weren't there when Kojima wanted it to be. This was a weak game with great ideas, but nobody within KojiPro could come to any conclusions about what to do about it. Kojima equates his huge staff to an assembly line; everyone had a specific assignment for the project. There wasn't much room for creative contribution, so Rising stagnated. For this studio, it was dead in the water and beyond repair. Hideo Kojima killed Metal Gear Solid Rising at the end of 2010.

Almost immediately afterward, he started thinking about outsourcing the game. At the very least, it would get done at another studio. Kojima considered bringing it to a western developer, and jokes about returning to a North American developer a year later to find the katana replaced by "a gun with a chainsaw, or something." There's a sense of truth to this, though. The weapon is what kept Rising in the east. "The katana is one of the main concepts for the game, and that's very difficult to explain," Kojima says, "so I thought I would need a Japanese company."

Atushi Inaba, the only producer at Platinum Games, has been friends with Hideo Kojima for more than a decade. He approached his friend with the idea of revitalizing the project, and Platinum promptly agreed. It's a small studio already knee-deep in development on Anarchy Reigns, but it's a small studio filled with Metal Gear nerds. Inaba says the entire team is a Solid Snake enthusiast, which he sees as the greatest strength to creating a Metal Gear game.

Kojima, on the other hand, looks at it a little differently. He sees his studio and Platinum Games as very similar development houses with considerably different work environments. The intimacy of Platinum's workspace gives the tiny team the opportunity to collaborate and create side by side. The Metal Gear creator admires this older approach to game development, and is once again stepping away from the work to leave those in charge to make it happen. He's involved in Rising, but, as before, is letting the designers work without him getting in the way. He trusts Platinum to meet his expectations.

For Inaba, meeting expectations isn't enough. To accomplish the original goals of Metal Gear Rising -- fast action, a cool hero cutting stuff, and no stealth (something the KojiPro team couldn't seem to let go of; "ghosts of the past," Kojima suspects) -- Platinum wants to challenge Kojima. Inaba says Platinum aims to make "something completely different from what Mr. Kojima wants to do."

The new team doesn't have much flexibility because it's on a tight schedule -- "high-speed development" as they're calling it -- so Rising has a more unified creative focus than before. Platinum realized the original Fox Engine was too strict and it couldn't use it. Chucking the original game's guts out the window is a bold step, but it shows the developer's commitment to making the best version of a game Kojima Productions couldn't complete.

Platinum is making Rising using its own engine, which already works well for this genre. Inaba and Kojima share a mutual confidence in the newly dubbed Metal Gear Rising: Revengenace. For Kojima, Revengeance represents a form of revenge, getting back at himself to prove the game can be done. Good thing, too. He doesn't see himself working on a traditional Metal Gear game again -- something he's said before, certainly, but he sees Rising as the future. Inaba sees Rising as something different from the norm. It's a rare chance for us to experience a beloved universe from an entirely new perspective.

At least there's some conviction this time around. Revengeance already has the upper hand over its progenitor in that regard. Here's hoping the rest comes together.

[Helder]

Looks like a fun game, hopefully its multi platform.

[dlevere]

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Possibly Headed to Vita

Written by Alex Osborn
4/27/2012

Reception to Platinum Games' upcoming spinoff on the Metal Gear franchise Revengeance might have been lukewarm so far, but that doesn't mean that PS Vita owners wouldn't love to be able to play the game on their handheld. If a slide taken from a Sony presentation earlier in this year is to be believed, that may become a reality.

At the AT&T Developer Summit, Sony shared a presentation containing a slide that featured a list of 3rd party titles coming to the Vita, and believe it or not, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was among the group. Check out the slide for yourself below:



While this would undoubtedly be a pleasant surprise, it’s not that implausible, especially when you consider how hard Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima has been pushing the transferring capabilities of the PS3 and PS Vita.

We still don’t know whether or not this is in fact what Konami will be revealing and the game’s inclusion could be an error. Konami has, of course, declined to comment on rumors and speculation. Just yesterday, Konami released a disturbingly confusing video teasing an impending announcement so that could be the reveal (although that seems more plot focused).

Via

[dlevere]

Metal Gear Rising's Precise Swordplay Might Be Its Achilles Heel

By Daniel Feit

CHIBA, Japan — I took my first cuts at Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, the latest in Konami’s highly cinematic action-adventure series of videogames, on the Tokyo Game Show floor last weekend.

Is it possible for a videogame to have too much precision?

The gameplay hook in Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, scheduled for worldwide release in February on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, is the ability to carefully direct protagonist Raiden’s sword for pixel-precise strikes. It was one of the earliest features shown to the public back in 2010.

As original as the free-slicing mechanic is, I couldn’t help but feel like it was getting in the way of me enjoying what was otherwise a riveting action game.

Metal Gear Rising Revengeance is being developed by Osaka-based Platinum Games, known for fast-paced action games like Bayonetta and MadWorld. There were moments in the demo that felt very much like those games, when I was dashing from foe to foe and tapping buttons to deliver elaborate strings of attacks.

At one point, I’m positive Raiden used his leg to brandish his sword. That’s exactly the kind of unexpected twist I would expect from Platinum.

However, when it comes time to carefully slice an object or enemy, Raiden screeches to a halt so the player can use the left and right joysticks to position his sword just right. It’s easy to carefully carve into ribbons the buffet of watermelons, automobiles and cardboard enemies that the demo presents to you, but living enemy characters are another story.

They slow down in the bullet-time mode, but they don’t stop, making it a real challenge to adjust your sensitivities and aim the sword strokes in the right place. Odds are you’ll have but a second or two to pull it off before something kicks or shoots you, breaking your concentration and sending Raiden flying across the screen.

There’s also an issue with Raiden’s reach. In slicing mode, the camera zooms in and hovers over Raiden’s shoulder. Even though the visual guide for the sword shows a slashing mark on enemies that extends far from Raiden’s body, when you actually swing the sword the range is quite limited. In the demo, I couldn’t figure out how close I needed to be to something for the hit to register.

It’s possible that with enough practice, this feature could feel as effortless as standard attacks. But in the demo, I found the bullet-time mode killed my sense of momentum. I would much rather hack through four enemies in a madcap melee spree, or carefully stalk and kill one enemy in the demo’s infrequent stealth sequences, than try to teach myself to juggle two analog sticks while under time pressure.

Fingers crossed that the final version of the game gives players enough time and practice to come to grips with precision slicing.

[dlevere]

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Limited Edition Listed At $149.99

By Jason Dunning

The Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Limited Edition was announced by Konami last week, but one thing they forgot to mention was how much it would actually cost. Thanks to a new listing on Amazon, it looks as though it will retail for $149.99.

So just what justifies that extra $90 bump? Well, in addition to the game, you receive the official soundtrack, a Limited Edition 2-sided steelbook, and a high frequency Katana blade plasma lamp.

Check out a picture of the lamp below:



As cool as that lamp looks, hopefully Konami decides to drop the price of the Limited Edition to $99.99 at some point because I don’t think many people would be willing to spend that much money on a lamp.

When Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance launches on February 19th, 2013 will you be picking up the regular or limited edition?

[bungholio]

I've never grabbed a collector or limited edition of any game. I just want the games, not the shirts, books, soundtracks, figurines, or whatever extra pointless overly expensive stuff.