The incomprehensible cowardice of "Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance"

As I made abundantly clear in the review, "Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance" is a good game. It's got good pacing, good controls, solid action mechanics and delivers where it counts.

Despite all that, the game had to deal with major "inner circle" fan outrage when it was announced; there are many flavours of Metal Gear fans and many of them are insufferable, but the ones that stand out aren't even the hardcore fans; they are those, who no longer stand by the series (or at least claim they don't), but instead swear by the older titles (and especially "Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake"-- enough with the religious obsession over that game).

When the title was announced side-by-side with "Peace Walker", there was legitimate reason to be sceptical. At the time, "Metal Gear Solid: Rising" (as the game was originally titled) was going to be a proper sequel to "Metal Gear Solid 4", not just in terms of storyline, but continue the series in general. Long before Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain, Kojima himself had said that "even though Rising is the official MGS5, Peace Walker is MGS5 in his heart".

Caught that first part of the quote? Sadly, the development team, which was no longer directed by Kojima himself, just had nothing to show outside of a cute "cut-at-will" mechanic that pit Raiden in mortal combat against a watermelon. 

The game was very nearly cancelled and fans had solid reasoning for disliking it. When PlatinumGames approached Kojima and proposed taking over the title's development, we got something more than watermelon-massacre; we got a game.

The fans *loathed* it. They came after it with a snotty viciousness that even the first incarnation of the game hadn't be met with. 

I'm a fan. I'm a hardcore fan. I'm a fan that swears by older titles (though I still enjoy MGS4 despite and at times because of its innumerable flaws). I was right there with everyone else on "MGS: Rising". But "MGR:Revengeance"? Sorry, I just never got the vile attacks.

It's a sad reality in the industry that in its current state, big publishers won't risk new IPs unless they can become franchises (Ubisoft stated they wouldn't have green-lit the much-awaited Watch Dogs, if a Watch Dogs 2 wasn't already in the papers) and big series are being milked for every last penny.

Japanese developers are -surprisingly- worse than western devs when it comes to that; for every new Call of Duty or Battlefield we can cite fifty thousand different versions of Street Fighter (any one of them), constant Resident Evil games (none of which have been good since 2004) and Kojima making MGS5, even though he's been stating he wouldn't do another one since "Sons of Liberty".

Sunny (MGS4) makes an appearance, but doesn't burden the narrative.

It probably didn't help that around the same time, the already suffering Silent Hill series was getting its own spin-off in the form of a dungeon-crawler for the PS Vita.

I agree we need more new IPs. For better or worse, however, these are risks not many are willing to take anymore. Konami has had more than a few duds in recent years and they seem hell-bent on milking their popular series for all they are worth. As such, spin-offs are inevitable and I'm here to argue that they are the better option.

The milking will happen. The once-beloved great series will sell-out. The market requires it, or at least the people creating the demand seem to think it does. Either way, it's happening and it's not stopping anytime soon. 

When fans heard of MGR, they hated it for featuring ninja-Raiden not stealthing the mission, but at the same time they don't treat Ground Zeroes or The Phantom Pain with the same mistrust. Perhaps it's because they'd like a stealth series to remain a stealth series and I concur; which is why I was more than glad to see Revengeance turn out as nothing more than a spin-off, not an actual continuation, not a replacement, but its own thing, existing in parallel to the main series and likely not affecting it at all.

The stealth was fun, but hardly needed.

Companies want spin-offs, because they know they will sell on name recognition. This is a decision that comes from higher up, something that Kojima himself (now vice-president of Konami) can attest to, considering how many projects he had wanted to make all these years and how few he actually got to make.

They are not a creative dead-end, however, but rather a jumping off point that can lead the material to less limitations and a freer canon (a burning desire for all hardcore MGS fans). We've seen it happen before: Ghost Babel (titled simply "Metal Gear Solid" for the Gameboy Color), while still a stealth title with its roots to the original MSX classics, was a spin-off that has received cult-status less for the actual gameplay and more for the level design, the story and the presentation.

Likewise, the two Metal Gear AC!D titles weren't met with much critical acclaim or financial success, but they are loved by the inner fandom. The AC!D titles are stealth titles, in theory, only in essence they are card-playing games that simply bear the name and a passing resemblance to the rest of the franchise.

On the flip-side, prior to MGS4 we got "Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops" (refered to as MPO for short) for the PSP and it was terrible. Many will argue the same for Guns of the Patriots, but they cannot deny its place into the main series (what with it being numbered and its storyline being essential for the overarching saga). MPO doesn't enjoy the same benefits and it's dismissed by many (seemingly even by Kojima himself, who didn't actually work on the game) as a spin-off. 

MGR maintains some of Kojima's "fanservice" humour.

I consider MPO a spin-off of sorts as well and I do believe it to be the worst title ever to bear the "Metal Gear" name and not be released on a Nintendo console. It was pure Tactical Espionage Action, with a storyline tying directly to the events of Snake Eater.

Revengeance is a spin-off, but it's the good kind of spin-off. I'm not going to say it surpassed my love for Ghost Babel or the AC!D titles, but it used its status as a means to try new directions, without burdening or damaging the main series. There is no reason to reject the game, even if one dislikes it. That's the beauty of a spin-off; it can be entirely ignored. MGR can be ignored; it shouldn't, I'd still recommend the game, but if one can't stomach the idea of a Metal Gear title not being a stealth game about a man code-named Snake, then there is no harm done.

Except on one occasion.

Despite its criminally short length (the direct result of the brief development cycle) and a few minor hiccups in gameplay, MGR's biggest sin lies in its approach in tone and material. The game tries very hard to walk the line between being something entirely separate from the main series and at the same time progress and feel like a Metal Gear title.

The jury is out on how good an idea that was, but the result is dragging down an otherwise solid game that just happens to share similarities with the MGS universe. A title that grants control of a cyborg ninja that can chop everything to bits doesn't need much in terms of character motivation to get its point across and in trying too hard to give Raiden a serious motive, it ends up with schizophrenic tonal shifts.

The bigger problem in that is that the story really lacks the sophistication of Kojima's writing. Kojima is in constant need of editors that could fill up a small country and someone to spank him whenever the word "nanomachines" is uttered anywhere around him, but he doesn't get enough credit for the heart of his work-- its core.

He's been called pretentious and preachy, but while he's certainly self-indulgent, he has never attempted to teach, preach or pretend that he's an intellectual juggernaut or anything of the like. He has valid concerns, sees the world a certain way and he certainly likes to hear himself talk, so he just shares it all with his audience. He doesn't make his games in order to school his audience, he makes his games because he likes communicating his own ideas with it, regardless of the outcome.

As I mentioned in the review, Revengeance doesn't do any of the above; instead it chooses to parrot hardline American Liberal dogma, having the gall to critique the War on Terror as a concept, which by now feels like passing judgement on the Persian invasion of Sparta.

Senator Armstrong, hardline conservative that could use some subtlety.

Mind you, I don't disagree with (most of) what Revengeance preaches; I disagree with the way it chooses to do it. It gives answers and condemns the other side, to the point of making the ultimate contemporary American conservative in the face of Senator Armstrong. The story's big baddy is just one cut-scene away from talking about having a direct call-line to the Christian God and how sometimes rape-babies are OK, because nanomachines will reject the fetus if it's not a "legitimate rape".

Yes, it really *is* that transparent. Going back to Kojima and the other Raiden-centric game that he made, Solidus Snake was also a conservative (closer to a Libertarian, as I understand it, but still). Solidus was a monster and the heroes of that game (namely Raiden and mostly Solid Snake) called him out on it and sought to stop him. But his argument, his support of his plan to drop New York into information darkness and essentially "reboot" it was actually very well put and honestly a little bit tempting, considering what was at stake in that story.

When MGS4 concluded the Saga, what remained as Kojima's big take-away from the whole thing was (the best way to change the world is) "To Let The World Be". These are not the words of someone who has answers, but rather someone more interested in never stop asking.

Revengeance believes it has answers and hammers them on to the audience every chance it gets, without even providing the necessary foundation or support for it. As such not only does it come off as preachy and far too interested in appealing only to one, specific audience (even a leftist such as myself got sick of the game's rhetoric), but it comes off as simply sloppily putting in a lot of effort trying to pass off as a "true Metal Gear title".

Solidus Snake was a murderous psychopath, but his plan to detonate a nuke over New York and fry the information highway that the Patriots used to control the populace was almost noble.

None of the above justifies the outright dismissal of the title by a significant portion of the fandom. In the end of the day it succeeds in the one field that every game ought to deliver: it's vastly entertaining. It still accomplishes its goals and stretches its creative muscles by bending several of the limitations that the rest of the main series unfortunately has. From a gameplay standpoint it tests the water of a completely different style and mechanics, while in the story department its connection to what has come before exists only to provide context for the world and the characters without being burdened of the overlong and heavy narrative that ties the rest of the main series.

As such, it's just a little bit sad (and a tad stupid) that after all it accomplishes, it goes out of its way to validate the concerns of its detractors by putting itself in direct comparison to the other titles and, since it doesn't have the right stuff for it at least in some departments (e.g. story, stealth), completely and utterly fail.

From where I stand, I hope that if another instalment happens, the developers will shy away from voluntarily slaving their work to the MGS style and pacing and opt for something completely separate that can stand on its own two legs.