Why Does Metal Gear Rising Keep Getting More Popular?

Most often, a video game enjoys a  fairly limited cultural lifespan.   It comes out, is hopefully enjoyed by a handful of  people, maybe talked about at the end of the year,   and then slides back into the limited  access part of our brains along with   all the other media we’ve  enjoyed, then forgotten.   Far less often, a game hits like a meteor, lands  so forcefully that it clouds the sky for months,   affects the ecosystem of game players and  developers for years, leaves a permanent   mark from which influences obviously flow. But most rarely of all, a game’s initial, fleeting   impression hides its true cultural impact. Instead  of a meteor, this type of game lands like a seed,   biding its time, soaking up sun and spreading its  roots, until one day, years later, you look out   the window and think GOOD GOD THE FINAL BOSS OF  THAT GAME REALLY IS A UNITED STATES SENATOR.   Could I be overstating the importance  of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance?   Of course. But with this game, it’s  almost impossible to avoid hyperbole.   In the near-decade since Revengeance’s release,  few games have even approached its sheer   bugnuts energy. It’s a game with a five hour  campaign that I’ve played for well over 100 hours.   And, to my absolute delight, in the past few years  I’ve only seen Metal Gear Rising’s influence grow,   spawning new memes and references long after  most games would have faded into obscurity.   After all, as the game informs us,  memes are The DNA of The Soul.   What does Revengeance mean to us now? Well,  obviously, it means “revenge with a vengeance,”   anyone could tell you that. But how does it exist,  as a game, as a meme, as a political object?   What’s it like as an experience in the 2020s?  Does anyone care about this game as much as   me or am I just like, totally off-base he- PART 1- A PERFECT GAME WITH MASSIVE FLAWS   Some of the highest praise I can give a game  is “all killer no filler.” In other words,   it has only good parts- there are no dragging  sections, no chapters that I dread playing.   Few games earn this title- Resident Evil 4,  maybe INSIDE…it’s a hard accolade to achieve.   And the thing about Metal Gear Rising is  that there’s actually a ton of filler,   long conversations of little value,  borderline-miserable VR missions.   I would never argue that all of the content in  this game maintains the highest level of quality.   But, when ripping through this thing at a million  miles an hour, skipping every cutscene, fast   forwarding through every codec call, I’d argue  that Revengeance offers one of the best killer   to filler ratios out there. Because the mechanics  of the game itself, the core systems on which it’s   built, seem to have been designed with the express  purpose of never moving less than a hundred miles   an hour. Let’s do something I very rarely do,  and actually talk about how this game plays.   Revengeance could broadly be described as  a “spectacle fighter,” a game focused on   the style and acrobatic-ness of  combat as much as raw survival.   Probably the most important series in this genre  is Devil May Cry, which consists of fighting   through enemy encounters with a series of absurd  weapons while attempting to raise an on-screen   “style meter” as high as possible. I adore Devil  May Cry and remain in awe of its combat systems,   immensely technical piles of mechanics, delays  and cancels and air hikes. It is a surprisingly   thoughtful combat system- though the  actions may be happening with a speed   that implies button-mashing, there’s no  way to achieve this kind of thing without   a surprising amount of patience. It’s the  reason why, although I deeply respect them,   I’ve never really felt mind-melded with the DMCs.  They just take too much conscious thought.   But Metal Gear Rising, although made of the same  slashes, launches, and kicks as Devil May Cry,   has a significantly different feel to its  combat rhythms. Despite a long list of combos,   Revengeance doesn’t feel like it’s built  around specific sequences of buttons to hit.   Instead, virtually every attack flows into every  other, accommodating a more button-mashy style   but also making Raiden feel like his attacks are  almost liquid, delivering an unbroken string of   impossibly elegant maneuvers. Unlike Devil May  Cry, I almost never feel like I’ve “dropped a   combo” in Metal Gear Rising. Instead, its  controls encourage you to never ease up,   never stop attacking. Because the challenge of   the game’s combat system isn’t executing  difficult combinations of button presses-   it’s holding onto that flow while simultaneously  dealing with the punctuation of enemy’s attacks.   And once again, Revengeance takes  the concept of avoiding damage,   looks at it, and asks “how can we design this so  the player never slows down for even a second.”   Avoiding incoming damage is a surprisingly big  hurdle in your early time with Revengeance.   Dodging is an optional skill that has to be  unlocked, and there’s no discrete block button.   Instead the game tells you that the only  consistent defense is relentless offense. The way   to avoid an enemy’s attack is to push towards them  and throw out a well-timed attack of your own.   I’m not embellishing this, the block button is  truly the same as the attack button. And this   is easier than it sounds, the timing is pretty  generous. But the end result, doing away with all   blocking and shielding and the like, is that the  combat system is almost unbelievably aggressive.   Not only do you never stop attacking, your light  and heavy attacks melding into one unbroken flow,   but your primary defense is offense, never  even taking your fingers off the throttle.   And since parrying an enemy requires moving  towards them, retreat is made near-impossible.   If you want to defend yourself, you have  to be right up in an enemy’s face.   This parry can come out at virtually any time,  interrupting any other attack, meaning that   there’s no reason to ever take a breath, no  commitment to swings like in a weightier game.   There’s even an ultra-powerful counter  hit that only triggers if you parry   within a couple frames of an attack, further  incentivizing playing on a razor’s edge.   Really the only action that doesn’t involve  actively attacking is moving from one enemy   to the other, and even this has been tweaked for  maximum kinetic energy. Raiden’s “ninja run” is a   sprint that moves at freeway speeds, deflects  bullets, and automatically vaults obstacles.   There is virtually no reason to move in any other  way- in fact, sprinting full-tilt towards an enemy   is typically the best way to avoid damage. It makes the tempo of combat absolutely frenetic,   and I would say breathless, but in fact it  accounts for that- because Revengeance also   introduced the world to ZANDATSU, and we’re  all better for it. The real hook of the combat,   as promised in the game’s first reveal trailer,  is that any enemy, sufficiently weakened,   can be sliced and diced in any direction, and  when you hit the proper spot you can reach out,   pull out the enemy’s spine, crush it in your  hands, and regain ALL your health and energy.   This is Doom’s glory kills amped up to 11,  the utmost aggression rewarded with complete   power, zero incentive to ever retreat. It means  that the enemy's aggression can also be scaled up   because each opponent is an opportunity to bring  yourself back to 100%. Tough fights with multiple   enemies have you constantly rocketing between  almost dead and fully empowered.There’s rarely   a situation that feels unsalvageable. And the zandatsu itself, I must say,   is one of the all time great pieces of video game  animation and sound design. The immediacy that you   can interrupt your slicing to start the animation,  the directness of Raiden’s outstretched arm or the   spiraling of his jump, the punch in of the camera  as you crush the spine and shower yourself with,   I dunno, powerade? It is long enough to take  exactly one breath in the middle of fighting. I   have likely seen this animation over ten thousand  times and I never get tired of it. The cherry on   top is if you manage to slice multiple enemies  in exactly the right spot in a single motion, you   will reach out and grab each spine individually  before crushing the entire fistful at once.   An aside: Metal Gear Rising, along with most other  Platinum games, have the absolute best approach   to difficulty settings and I need to just talk  about it for a second. There are no fewer than   five difficulty modes in this game, easy, normal,  hard, very hard, and “revengeance.” Not only   do these make the game accessible for folks of  all skill levels, but they also serve as a sort   of meta-guide for your progression. Very hard is  only unlocked by beating hard, Revengeance is only   unlocked by beating very hard. So that’s at least  three clears of the game to unlock everything,   probably more. But, repeated clears never feel  like work because you keep all your gear and   moveset between difficulties, meaning that Very  Hard can build its challenge around the idea that   you’ve already beat everything and gained all  possible advantages. It even swaps around enemy   arrangements, which improves high difficulty  levels in virtually every game. Finally,   the two highest difficulty levels aren’t a simple  escalation but offer substantially different takes   on difficulty. “Very Hard” is a more traditional  highest difficulty, with tricky arrangements   of enemies and boosted health pools. It’s the  option I play on when I just want to have a fun,   challenging time with the game. “Revengeance”  difficulty instead cranks up the deadliness of   everything to the breaking point. In this  mode, most enemies will KO you in a single hit,   but your perfect parry is just as powerful,  capable of shattering bosses in seconds. It’s   a mode that takes absolute concentration,  but man does it feel good to win.   Also, I just thought of this but is it  weird that I’m similarly obsessed with   two games from the same generation that both  have “strategic dismemberment” as a feature?   …Don’t answer that, we’re  going back to the essay.   It’s a credit to the sublime flow of battle, the  incredible inertia built around the combat system,   that the massive mechanical holes in the game  can’t do much to bring it down. Most obvious are   the subweapons, additions to your katana that  you pick up throughout the game. The movesets   of these things are beautiful, the potential  of their versatility is near-limitless…but   to switch to them, you have to fully stop moving,  slowly pause the game, move through a menu,   and equip one, an action that both kills the  flow and removes your standard heavy attacks.   It’s a baffling decision for a game that barely  uses the D-Pad otherwise, and it means I use these   subweapons far less often than I should. The same goes for the game’s wide array of   near-meaningless gadgets, handfuls of grenades  and rocket launchers and sneaking tools, all of   which are so unwieldy and limited in their purpose  that my inventory remains largely unused through   entire playthroughs. There’s also a halfhearted  suggestion at “stealth” in several scenarios.   Not only are you incredibly limited in your  sneaking ability, but the idea of “stealth” in   this game goes against virtually every principle  of the combat. Although it is admittedly hilarious   to sprint up behind someone and slice them  in half as a “quiet” way of taking them out.   There are a number of systems, even more  evident in the game’s frustrating VR missions,   that feel like vestigial holdovers from  a different version of Revengeance.   And this makes sense, because there absolutely  was a different version of Revengeance.   Platinum, the developer of this game, are also  responsible for Bayonetta and Wonderful 101 and   many other of the best parts of this world.  However, the original idea of this game didn’t   involve Platinum- it was an in-house project by  Kojima Productions, the same folks that made,   ya know, Metal Gear Solid. It  was, according to Kojima himself,   a game for folks at the studio to practice  on before jumping into Metal Gear Solid 5.   But after years of stalled progress, they just  couldn’t crack it- and so they handed it off   to Platinum, who produced the divine  object we’ve been talking about.   The game didn’t escape this development hell  unscathed; there are definite negative holdovers,   like the superfluous stealth system and  clunky menus- but I would never say the   unexpected collaboration between the  two studios was a net negative. Because   without it, we likely never would have got- PART 2- AN AESTHETIC TO SURPASS METAL GEAR   If you know one thing about Metal Gear Rising,  it’s probably a moment from the very first   level. Just minutes after first taking control  of Raiden, the game presents you with a boss;   Metal Gear Ray; an enormous mech designed to kill  other enormous mechs, a creation so imposing it’s   one of the series namesakes, a machine that  was arguably the non-human antagonist of an   entire game. And then, in the first level of  Revengeance, you take on the machine with a sword,   counter its office-building sized strike, hurl the  entire thing over your shoulder and then sprint   up its flying chassis, slicing it apart  like a wire through soft cheese.   It is an absurd power escalation, essentially  leveling up Raiden to the single most capable   being in the Metal Gear universe, and yet somehow  I’m still leaving out the most memorable part   of the sequence. Because it’s not just that  Raiden cleaves a series-defining boss in two,   it’s not just that he blocks that sword with this  one, it’s that when he does, the moment the two   connect, the instrumental rock track scoring the  whole thing suddenly gains lyrics and the singer   screams RULES OF NATURE, the moment so goddamn  elevated that mere instruments can’t contain it   anymore. It’s not the only time the game does  this- in fact, every boss has their own song,   with narratively appropriate lyrics- but  the first time is a mission statement,   a declaration of intent. It’s saying that the  previous extremes are the new baseline.   Also, as another important sidenote:  the fact that Metal Gear Rising quite   literally breaks into song whenever emotion  reaches a breaking point means that it is,   by definition, a musical. That’s all. I do want to make clear that it’s not like   previous Metal Gear games were normal or reserved  to any extent. Raiden himself has experienced   a medium-defining existential freakout, he’s  held back a city-sized submarine with one arm,   he’s fought a vampire. The difference between  these moments and the ones in Revengeance   aren’t necessarily their substance, but their  execution. Kojima’s Metal Gear is laden with   so much exposition that it feels grounded by the  sheer weight of its in-universe techno-babble. The   original plan for Metal Gear Rising, when it was  a Kojima Productions game, was to place it in the   time between Metal Gear Solid 2 and 4, limiting  its scope by cementing it in a known timespan.   Platinum’s Metal Gear, although still largely  written by Etsu Tamari of KojiPro, is instead   unburdened by all of this, set chronologically  after the last game in the main franchise. It’s   free to explain as much or little as it wants, to  escalate every conflict to mythic proportions.   It retains the spirit of the franchise, discussing  the issues of war and society with characters who   are metaphors of those very issues, but heightens  those discussions as much as it does the combat.   The results are as silly as they are undeniably  effective; AI wolves with chainsaws for tails   discussing philosophy, magnetic men sliding  apart to avoid your strikes while lecturing   you on memes, a human shield who trafficks  child soldiers yelling “I’m f***ing invicible!”   as you hack him up. The most wonderful point of  dissonance comes at the end of each boss fight,   as you first reduce an enemy to human confetti  and then receive a codec call from them   where they give you some parting words.  It’s funny every single time.   An interesting paradox of Revengeance’s  un-subtleness is its relation to the “real   world,” our world. Though Metal Gear Solid  has always been an overtly political series,   the events of its games often walked a line  between historical and allegorical- the closer the   series got to the modern day, the less real-life  events were acknowledged. Metal Gear Rising,   though more fantastical than any game in the  Solid series, throws all that allegory trash   out the window. Revengeance knows writers who  use subtext and they’re all cowards. A leader of   a private military army gleefully exclaims that  they’re returning to a time like “the good ol’   days after 9/11.” When Raiden discovers he’s been  part of a false flag attack to motivate a new war,   he says that “the media and public won’t be  able to resist. Remember WMDs in Iraq?”   I don’t want to overstate the game’s insight-  there’s little commentary here that hadn’t   already been said elsewhere. But it’s absolutely  fascinating that smashing together Metal Gear   Solid’s themes and Platinum’s radical directness  resulted in one of the most blatantly political   AAA games I can think of, a title absolutely  consumed with the legacy of America’s 21st   century administrations and their never-ending  occupations. And that’s without even mentioning   perhaps the most important part of the game, what  will certainly keep it locked in my brain forever,   the simple fact that- PART 3: THE FINAL BOSS   IS A UNITED STATES SENATOR That’s- I mean, hard to ignore that.   The final boss of Metal Gear Rising:  Revengeance is a United States Senator.   Let’s back up for a second, and talk about  memes. Metal Gear Solid is perhaps one of   the last pieces of mainstream media to use  “meme” with its originally intended usage,   not referencing an internet joke but the actual  anthropological concept, an idea that replicates   and spreads through culture as genes do in  biology. Some of Metal Gear Solid’s most prominent   ideas center around the concept of “memes.”  Kojima even declared it the major theme of MGS2.   The end of that game is shockingly prophetic,  even today; it predicts a future in which   truth will still exist but be drowned in endless  trivial information. Societal behavior will be   sculpted by this uncontrollable flow, and  the flow itself will be directed by AI.   10 years pass between that prediction  and Revengeance’s release.Reality   itself nears the science fiction promised  at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2.   And in turn, Revengeance takes two’s concept  of memes and strips all that pesky nuance away.   Halfway through the game, a boss made  of magnets victoriously declares   “Free will is a myth. Religion is a joke. We  are all pawns, controlled by something greater:   Memes. The DNA of the Soul.” This monologue, I must remind you,   is supposed to be on the original definition  of memes, not our new definition. And yet,   in a turn both eminently predictable and  absolutely fitting, Metal Gear Rising   is an absolute neo-meme juggernaut. Turn anywhere  on the internet and you’ll find repurposed pieces   of Revengeance. Its monologues have been turned  to copypastas, its music used as a punchline,   its dialogue repeated ad nauseum and slapped in  impact font onto every picture imaginable.   At this point in time, the common internet  definition of “meme” has almost totally   supplanted its anthropological origins, and yet  it also exemplifies them. Our stupid repeated   pieces of content shape the culture, passed  from one person to another like a worldwide   shared genetic lineage. And Revengeance embodies  this irony; the memes of this game are everywhere,   unstoppable. The original, holistic image  of the game only exists for a handful,   and yet Revengeance is immortal, preserved by  these fragments, survived by its memes.   How could it not? This is a game in  which you fight a chainsaw robot wolf,   a lady with a thousand arms, a cyber samurai,   but somehow culminates in an hour-long  battle against a United States Senator.   A white guy in a business suit who smokes a cigar  and boasts that he played football in college.   A politician whose only explanation for his  near-invincibility is the phrase “NANOMACHINES,   SON!,” a fictional US senator who, in  2013, shouts “Make America Great Again.”   The meme-ic density of this fight is  unprecedented, the sheer volume of ideology   and imagery almost impossible to take in. Before you fight the man, you first have to fight   his machine. It’s a metal gear called EXCELSUS.It  is far more massive than any other seen in the   series, built not to pressure countries with  distant nuclear launches but to raze entire   cities to the ground in person, establish absolute  dominance through sheer overwhelming spectacle.   It is, in short, the perfect analogy for  Revengeance as a whole. Every piece of   subtext is cut away. To destroy the mech, you  use one of its own arms to slice it to pieces,   an action that could be the perfect mechanical  conclusion to the game and yet it keeps going.   The Senator pummels you with fists and unhinged  dogma. He claims that war will benefit the   American people, he says, no joke, that “he has  a dream.” It is, for all the absurd spectacle,   grossly familiar. But Metal Gear Rising is not  a game that limits itself to the rules of our   political reality. Because the single most  fantastical, most intoxicating moment of the   fight, the part our reality can only dream  of, is when he finally goes mask off.   Because the Senator admits, actually says  out loud, that his ultimate goal is to burn   every American support system to the ground. That  what he wants to do, above war, above economics,   above party, is simply push the country into a  state of true primal cruelty. That his America   is one without kindness or compassion, where mass,  preventable suffering would indeed serve as proof   of some animalistic definition of freedom. It is the same ideology that seems to lurk behind   countless real politicians’ lips, one implicit  in the new policies we all see every day.   It often seems like the driving force behind  our entire political machine, and yet it’s   something they will never, never admit. But  here, in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance,   a game without subtlety, a game without brakes,  a game that hasn’t stopped accelerating from   the word go, the hulking, nanomachine fueled  United States Senator finally just says it.   And then you rip out his fucking heart.   [RULES OF NATUREEEEE] I have a pretty firm rule that a video shouldn’t  attempt to be about “everything” in a game.   These things are simply too big, there are  too many aspects to attempt any kind of   comprehensive coverage. But, with a game  like Revengeance, it’s a little frustrating   to know that I’ll always be leaving some of my  favorite elements on the cutting room floor.   Fortunately, this video is sponsored  by Nebula and CuriosityStream,   and Nebula gives me the chance to keep  talking about this game I love so much.   One of the resources I used to write  this is a book on Metal Gear Rising (yes,   it actually exists) called Rules of Nature,  a book authored by one of my favorite games   writers named Harper Jay MacIntyre- I’ve already  quoted her in at least one other video. And so I   called up Harper and we talked for almost  an hour about even more Revengeance.   Let's accept two truths about video games: They're beautiful, and they're f**king stupid. What am I missing? What are your critiques? I think you discount the codec conversations. Any game about Raiden is a study in self-delusion and authenticity. Nebula has increasingly become the  home for this sort of thing from me,   videos I love making and want to put somewhere  but wouldn’t really fit on this channel,   content algorithms being what they are. Signing up  for Nebula means you’ll get all these extra vids,   which is hours of content at this point, AND my  videos a little early AND you’ll get access to   CuriosityStream too! All this, for less than $15  a year, at CuriosityStream.com/JacobGeller.   Unfortunately, typing “Revengeance” into the  CuriosityStream search bar doesn’t get many   results, but despite that, this other half  of the bundle has tons of stuff viewers of   this channel will probably be interested in.  Superstructures, space, even…Nanomachines?   It’s kind of an unbeatable deal at this point. If you wanna see Harper and I scrutinize   Revengeance for even longer, you know  what to do. Get a whole year of this   kinda bonus content for less than $15 by  going to CuriosityStream.com/JacobGeller

Channel: Jacob Geller

Views: 977,382

Keywords: jacob gellar, revengeance

Id: rVzSHVS-CT0

Length: 28min 1sec (1681 seconds)

Published: Mon May 02 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/ImBuGs]

Over the top action is cool, cheesy anime lines are cool, the combat is awesome, the zandatsu mechanic is so good its insane that it hasnt been used again, the ost is fucking bonkers, and most importantly its just really fun.

And all memes aside, Armstrong is a fantastic character, an amazing boss fight and the introductory cutscene with the "this isn't my sword" line is raw as hell.

[u/teor]

It's because of memes.
This is one of the most meta things to ever exist.
Game is about memes and it lives on through memes.

[u/DarkReaper90]

I found for a Metal Gear spinoff, it had A LOT of memorable characters. I'd love to have a whole game on Jetstream Sam.

It's ironic though at its popularity, as it seems to have nearly nothing to do with its original concept as Metal Gear Solid: Rising

[u/dagreenman18]

It’s unrelenting in it’s insane charm and has killer gameplay. Plain and simple. It’s a good fucking game.

[u/scottishdrunkard]

After watching this I am considering giving the game a second chance.

I know writers who use subtext, and they’re all cowards!

[u/Megaclone18]

More than any other game I would give anything to have a full budget, non development hell sequel. I’m currently replaying it and it still holds up incredibly well almost a decade later.

[u/Finaldragoon]

The Max0r videos probably helped a little.

[u/bnjo_]

I love Jacob and his (rightful) analysis into the gameplay - but I feel the sad truth is that the majority of the recent popularity is from teens who have little interest in the game other than "haha it has funny voicelines and characters"

(Alas I may just be salty that the most attention the metal gear series has gotten in the past couple years has been over a spin-off)

[u/[deleted]]

I got into this game because of memes, and I ended up buying it for full price and finishing it. It got me into action games, I love this game simplicity - after all, combos are easy, and blocking is fine once you get the hang of it.

My favourite boss fight was the one with Sam, I think by now I know the full lyrics by heart.