Commentary: It’s Official, Metal Gear Rising Is Not A Metal Gear Game

War has changed.

And apparently so do video games when they disappear for a year.  As I came home after a hard day’s work to check our site for the new VGA game trailers (That can been seen here BTW) I was excited to see that there was finally some news about Metal Gear Solid Rising.  After watching it, I just couldn’t help but think, “That isn’t Metal Gear”.

That isn’t all I thought, through my head went, “This looks just like an every day generic-third-person-action-game.”  See, when the game premiered at E3 last year, I remember seeing an amazing slice mechanic and a game that was shaping up to have some amazing gameplay.   As a Metal Gear Fan, it looked to be the perfect blend of classic Metal Gear look and feel but with a new game mechanic would make it stand out as it’s own game.  Here is the first trailer of Metal Gear Solid Rising presented by Microsoft and Kojima at E3, 2010.

What was shown today, on the other hand, was a game I’ve seen before.  It was called “generic action game” with Quick-Timed events.  It comes full of “Slice a person with a sword as a regular attack 50 times and they stay in one piece.  That didn’t happen in the original Rising trailer.  The section at the end of the trailer with the battle with Metal Gear Ray was just begging for a “Press X rapidly” icon to be flashing on the screen.

Those are just two completely different games.  The first look like an evolution of MGS4, the second looks like something different and unoriginal.  Maybe Kojima wanted to focus on another project like Metal Gear Solid Collection and couldn’t give this game the attention it’s needs so it was farmed out to development house Platinum Games.

As Rad pointed out in the VGA article, Platinum games developed two action hits that he loves, Bayonetta and Vanquish.   I may be the minority voice, but I played both of those games and didn’t like either.  What I didn’t like about Bayonetta was the fighting and gameplay.  The cutscenes were entertaining but after a while, I just wanted to finish it and be done with it.  I still have yet to put Vanquish back into my game console.  Though the action was tight and loud, characters were dull and stereotypical.  The game has so much non-stop action, yelling and all craziness that it all very quickly becomes a bore.  But I’m the minority voice here, that I understand.

I hope the game is released, Platinum and Konami make their investment worth while and the game is enjoyable to consumers.

But….

It’s not Metal Gear Solid.

Matter a fact, the Solid was dropped from the game entirely.  The original title of the game as you noticed in the trailer was”Metal Gear Solid Rising: Lighting Bolt Action”.  The name of the new game is “Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance”.  Revengeance? Really?

If anyone who is reading this thinking I was going to bring up other elements like the voices acting, the change from taking place between MGS 2 – MGS 4 to “years after the events of MGS4″ or any other element, I will not for I haven’t played the game.   I just won’t go into this game with any expectation to get a real “Metal Gear” experience.  I’ll have to go in with the mindset that this is just a generic third person action game, with swords, nothing more.