Metal Gear Solid Rising Preview

Hideo Kojima is passing on the torch for head honcho of the latest Metal Gear Solid title in the series. Mineshi Kimura is up for directing Metal Gear Sold: Rising, while Shigenobu Matsuyama is producing, leaving legendary designer Kojima as the Executive Producer. For hardcore fans of Hideo Kojima himself, he has recently stated that he will be working on more Metal Gear games in the future; whether he’ll act as producer, writer or director is still up in the air though. But if you fear that MGS isn’t quite what it is without Kojima in the director’s seat, fear not. Rising is not just another MGS; this one puts more emphasis on sword battles and action than it does on stealth, like the traditional Metal Gear titles.

Rising takes place between the events of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.  This is good news for all the fans who are just eager to find out what exactly happened to Raiden and why he is the way he is in MGS4. MGS2 suffered a lot of backlash after players realized that they will be playing most of their game as a character they have never heard of before and know absolutely nothing about.

Years after the release of MGS2 Kojima took note of the hate towards Raiden and vowed to make the fans eat their words, showing them Raiden in his ninja glory in MGS4. While many never minded the old Raiden, a majority of fans loved the changed made to his character, and wanted more.  You can call it fan service, because that’s basically what it is, but Rising has you playing a totally new Metal Gear that has you playing as Raiden in his ninja suit chopping to his heart’s content. Kimura hasn’t said too much about the story of the game, but the trailer did tell us a lot.

The opening of the trailer has a humanoid android with a cybernetic exoskeleton, similar to what the Beauty and the Beast Unit wore in MGS4. The machine looms inside what seems to be a dilapidated and dark factory, patrolling the area with a weapon ready in case any cyborg ninjas come sprawling by. The drone catches a glimpse of something above it and acts accordingly, unloading its weapon to no avail. Raiden then drops from the shadows and slices the foe in two, retrieving a glowing power cord from inside of it; he then absorbs the energy from the cord.  This is the primary example of one of the key elements of this game: “zan-datzu.” Which literally means “to cut” and “to take” in Japanese. This would heavily imply that strategic slicing on enemies will reward you with power-ups, key items or simply story progression.

Cutting this time around isn’t like any other hack and slash third person title, in fact it’s way more sophisticated than we had previously anticipated. Rising gives you the chance to pick and choose where you want to slice your enemy, and with the high probability of being compatible with Kinect, this will probably be way more fun then it should be. The gameplay trailer went on to show Raiden using his environment as a weapon when he slices away at the pillars of a building and watches debris crash down on the helpless PMC soldiers that stood below.

Although, your slashing of the environment is actually limited to pillars and walls, to better facilitate the gameplay and result in less complications. Raiden even sliced a van in three pieces in “free slicing” mode, and the trailer went on to show an awesome feature that demonstrated how precise your cutting can be. With a strategic twist added into the mix, it was nice to see Raiden throw a solider up in the air resulting in a bullet-time effect giving you time to outline where on the enemies body you want to slice. Raiden then went on ahead to cut the poor guy up in several pieces; this will prove useful for those items that you will need to retrieve from your robotic foes. Director Mineshi Kimura revealed that there will be an assortment of weapons and sub-weapons the player can choose from, and you are not just limited to your sword or other blade focused weaponry like knives and daggers, guns have been confirmed to be playable in Rising.

While creative producer Shigenobu Matsuyama has stated that this game is still a stealth game, it will in fact be more focused on sword-fighting action. Kimura has also said that despite the graphic nature of the trailer, this game will still encourage players to progress through the story without killing enemies, like all of the past Metal Gear Solid games have. As a huge MGS fan, I can truly say that even though the game is straying away from many of the traditional aspects of the past games, it seems to be in the right hands, and it’s still under the watchful eye of Metal Gear guru Hideo Kojima.