Well, this is my 1st user review so what better way to start than with a review of the latest title in the expanding universe that is one of my all time favourite game franchises, Metal Gear!

Silly name aside "Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance" is officially cannon now, I know that's bound to upset some die hard MG fans who may feel the original cannon will suffer for it, but honestly the story in MGR: Revengeance is so far removed from that of the original cannon I honestly don't think it does any disservice to the franchise at all.

I finished the game just a couple of nights ago, the whole play through clocked in at around 6-7 hours but you could probably knock 2 of those hours off since I was faffing about with the VR missions for a good bit, there is a bit of replay value mind but mostly only in regards to the aforementioned VR missions.

Rising does hold it's own pretty well when compared to other games of the hack n' slash genre, although that's not too suspiring considering Platinum games "Hideki Kamiya" is also responsible for the critically acclaimed DMC3 & Beyonetta, Platinum honestly did a good job with the fight mechanics, incorporating the Zandatsu (Cut & take) ability into the game was by no means an easy task (one even Konami themselves struggled with) but I think they managed to pull it off quite well.

There are a few sections where stealth can used to get through areas undetected, but I honestly never even tried not to get noticed and often dove head first into every potential fight, so the option to avoid some enemies is there but I don't think I ever had any reason to, also there are lots of items scattered about almost ever level, ranging from stat upgrades to sub weapons and even hidden VR missions, there are collectibles in the form of "left arms" the idea here is you cut off the left arm of a humanoid type cyborg enemy and that contains all of their personal information, it's not integral to the game at all and is mostly just like collecting dog tags in MGS-2.

The free cutting mechanic as well as being really fun to pull off, is used a lot during boss fights, I won't go into detail but the final boss really does put your skills to the test, so if your like me and you haven't completely mastered the free cutting mechanics before reaching the end boss you will have by the time you actually manage to beat the bloody boss.

All in all I feel MGR: Revengeance is actually a very good game, could it be better? Yeah probably but I feel it brings jut enough new game mechanics to the mix to let some of it's short comings pass. I didn't honestly get to grips with the combat mechanics as quickly as I probably should have, now that may just be my personal skill or lack there off, but Im generally pretty good at action hack n' slash games so I feel inclined to attribute my difficulty in familiarising my self with the fight mechanics to a lack of explanation and in depth tutorial, that being said there really isn't a whole lot of depth to the fight mechanics beyond understanding how to best take down certain opponents, once you have finally gotten to grips with the fight mechanics though a lot more fun can be had, speaking of fun I really enjoyed the cutscenes, some of the voice acting seemed a bit hammy at times (but hey, video games) the music is always going to depend on your personal taste but I enjoyed it and some of the boss themes just added to the overall enjoymemt.

Rising, being a Metal Gear game is also plagued with a lot of cutscenes and dialogue, not as many as previous MG games though but enough to sometimes break the emersion aspect, many times I had a NPC chatting away to me and I could do nothing but walk around with the camera glued to my back much like in Gears of war and RE-6, it's not a huge gripe but I think they could have had the some of the chatter going on in the background while I was busy cutting up cyborg fodder.

Im going to recommend Rising to anyone who is a MetaL Gear fan and/or a fan of hack n' slash games, if you're a Metal Gear purist and already have reservations about rising for being too different to previous metal gear games then it mite be better to give it a pass especially if you don't care for hack n' slash games either.

Thanks for reading my user review and please feel free to post a comment, thanks again.