I think Metal Gear Rising : Revengeance is a great game, but I'm tired of it's deficiencies and constant desire to just be unreasonably difficult all the time.
Challenging content is absolutely fine, but when the challenge involves running into the same issues that have always plagued the game and leave you feeling completely at the mercy of luck, then it dampens the experience, and these are the things I'm eventually going to remember this game for, which is a shame.
Sam's Side Story is a brief experience that tells the tale of how Jetstream Sam came to join the Desperado's, and how this ties into his relationship with Senator Armstrong.
It's a cool twist to be able to take control of a different character aside from Raiden, and Jetstream Sam definitely has his own learning curve. He feels a bit clunkier and less mobile than Raiden, and sacrifices the ability to vault over obstacles for a double jump and mid-air dash. The effectiveness of his attacks is also determined on the ability to "taunt" enemies, through pressing up on the D-pad, which makes them susceptible to more damage, but in turn, enhances their attack power too.
Given the fact the side story is roughly 2 hours in length, there are no extensive customisation options for Sam, and he only has access to one weapon - The HF Murasama Blade he wields against Raiden within the main game.
I thought the concept of playing from the perspective of a different character was a neat idea, but there isn't a lot of depth without the same level of customisation options present, and you'll encounter the same enemies - including the 3 boss fights - as you did in the main game, all spread out across the same environments. It's a little bit disappointing, but the fast and frenetic gameplay is still hugely engaging at least.
There are 4 trophies in total, and you'll grab half of them by just completing the episode for the first time and cumulatively killing 100 enemies across multiple playthroughs, but the other half bring the pain in wholesome amounts;
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| Master of the Wind - Complete DL-Story 01: Jetstream on Revengeance difficulty in one hour or less. You're Hired - Defeat Sen. Armstrong without taking any damage on Hard difficulty or above. |
The "Master of the Wind" trophy, awarded for Completing DL-Story 01: Jetstream on Revengeance difficulty in one hour or less, is effectively the warm up for what's to come later, but still felt like it was harder than it should have been.
The aggressive rules of Revengeance difficulty still apply for this DLC package. Enemies are still tougher, dealing blows that can kill you in one hit and fighting against larger groups can really see the odds stacked against you.
I attempted this trophy straight after beating the story once, and quickly came to a couple of realisations;
The first one is the fact that, you have to use the "restart" feature to your advantage. An hour really isn't alot of time in the context of a side story that takes only 2 hours to finish, and every time you die, your previous time is counted towards this total - Unless you pause and restart from checkpoint, which resets the time. This can be tough to negotiate on Revengeance difficultly, where it's so easy to get killed quickly without the chance to hit pause and restart, and I ran into a couple of segments where this was happening too frequently, and gradually accumulating time that I couldn't get back, so I had to re-strategise.
Therefore, this forced me to switch my approach by running through the story on easy difficulty and collecting enough nanopaste to carry forward into a fresh Revengeance run. This would not only provide me some insurance in the event of near death, and therefore, giving me a chance to restart where I needed it, but it also actually allowed me to progress. Another issue I was finding was that I was just getting destroyed during segments with tougher enemies, and needed the nanopaste to just get through the challenge - Another reminder of the unforgiving nature of this game.
Frustrating to have to do it this way, as it added a fair amount of unnecessary rework, but the worst was still to come.
The "You're Hired" trophy, awarded for Defeating Sen. Armstrong without taking any damage on Hard difficulty or above, is where this challenge really lies.
This was a staple trophy within the main list, appearing 5 times for every main boss battle you encounter within the story. The Monsoon and Senator Armstrong fights are notoriously difficult, and it's hard to believe there was any further room to squeeze out a more difficult challenge, but it's no doubt the toughest boss fight to beat without taking damage in the entire game, and many of the reservations I've had about Metal Gear Rising : Revengeance can easily be summarised within this trophy alone.
The biggest issue here is the fact that, simply put, the fight is just broken. This version of Senator Armstrong is slightly different to the version you fight as Raiden within the main story, and whilst you can still expect to see mostly the same attacks, there are a few new ones to account for. However, this isn't the main problem, and the new attacks are easy to understand and develop a combat strategy in order to contain them.
The problem is the fact the attack patterns are wildly unpredictable and glitchy, which does not follow the normal pattern of boss fights within the main game, and when attempting to beat a boss without taking any damage where the margin for error is zero, this becomes hugely troublesome.
The key to success with these boss fights is all about learning the predictable nature of the attack patterns, after which point it just becomes a matter of getting the timing right to parry and counter these attacks, and for whatever reason, this is completely abandoned within this particular battle. Senator Armstrong suddenly has no predictability with the moves he chooses and there is no logic to the fight. A few of the unblockable attacks are also really badly designed - For example, he has a fierce charging attack that can go back and forth anywhere between 3 and 6 times. It's meant to travel in a straight line and pass directly through you, but on the odd occasion it'll whip around in a circle and become impossible to evade. I'm not sure if it's just a glitch or purposeful, but either way, it compounds an already frustrating experience to see these sudden inconsistencies.
It also effectively means that the route to success alters from being about learning and understanding battle patterns, to pure luck. I never felt at any point throughout this fight that I was in control of the outcome, and it ultimately boiled down to relying on seeing a specific move set play out that includes many of his easy attacks to safeguard against.
It's also worth noting that there are 2 phases to this fight, which split at 50% of Senator Armstrong's health. In the second phase, Senator Armstrong's arsenal contains alot of grabbing attacks that cannot be parried and have to be dodged, so the fight suddenly becomes much less combat-centric. I've rarely had to use the dodge mechanics so aggressively prior to this, so to have a sudden learning curve this deep into the experience made this second phase feel like a few extra notches up in difficulty.
It took me 2 sessions to earn this trophy, with around 4 hours dedicated to phase 1 of the fight, and around 7 hours dedicated to phase 2. I genuinely feel like this is a open-ended timescale, based on my firm belief that the biggest factor of success here is luck. There are effective ways to combat individual attacks, but with no obvious attack patterns at play and some cheap, unavoidable range of moves, it's a genuine struggle that many won't persevere with.
And yes, the camera is still absolutely awful in this game when it comes to directional parrying.
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