The past two weeks have been a blur of sword fighting and explosions in Metal Gear Rising. It's an obscenely difficult game at first; in fact I was seeing red throughout the majority of my first playthrough. Near the end of the game I finally started to "get it" and that's when the magic started. Once you really know how to play, this is an excellent title.
Unfortunately the learning curve, while not EVE-steep, is probably out of reach for casual players. The sparse tutorial VR missions do little to assist new players. The instruction manual may as well not have been printed. This, like Dark Souls, is a game best learned through experience. That said, it's one of my favorite points about this title. The difference between a new player and an accomplished player is dramatic; sure Raiden becomes more powerful via in-game upgrades but the most impactful change you can make is to yourself as the gamer. Watching your abilities grow as you learn and become more capable is really breathtaking.
After finishing Normal difficulty in nine hours (including time spent listening to all codec conversations), I fired up Hard and blasted through the game in three hours. It wasn't any more difficult than Normal. So I skipped ahead to Revengeance mode. On this difficulty, most enemies can kill Raiden in one or two hits. It's not that bad, though, because you want to restart a fight if you get hit anyway. See, there's an achievement for getting S ranks on each fight. The best way (and often the only way) to get an S rank is to acquire the No Damage bonus on each fight by taking no damage from your enemies. This is often cheap and frustrating, but it's a gripping challenge nonetheless.
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