Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

PS3/Xbox 360; €54.99; Konami; 18+

Two hours into Metal Gear Rising everything just clicks. From its opening scene the game refuses to hold players’ hands. But the sensory overload of early combat gives way to fluid, instinctive action. This is a game that demands players stay alert and on the offensive.

Rising is a third-person perspective action game. Raiden, the protagonist, is a sword-wielding, robotically-enhanced soldier who engages armed and armoured opponents in hand-to-hand combat. This ‘cyborg-ninja’ bats away bullets with the blade of his swords, dashes and jumps with ease, and single-handedly takes down ‘Gears,’ the towering armoured enemies that gave the series its name.

It’s an unexpected change of pace for a twenty-six-year-old series with its origins in the last years of the cold war. Metal Gear games have always had a strong anti-war message - albeit one buried under the excesses of Japanese anime. Stories about rogue states and nuclear proliferation complemented gameplay emphasising stealth over combat.

Violence is your only option here. Using two buttons, light and heavy blows are strung together into elaborate attacks. Wear an enemy down and you can trigger ‘blade mode’ with a tap of the L1 button. This slows time to enable precision attacks that cleave off armour, cut the weapons from larger mechanical enemies and even remove limbs.