Recent reviews by Amne the Cleaner

Take everything you know about the MGS series and let this game slice it into a thousand pieces. This is an outstanding action game that any fan of the genre should play.

Set in the post-war economy world after MGS4, Raiden is now a "security officer" protecting peace in the world. The game opens with him getting his ass handed to him by members of one of those pesky PMCs who are still looking to restart the war economy. Newly outfitted with even more advanced cybernetic enhancements, Raiden sets out to stop their nefarious plans, and along the way will dice a million soldiers into a million pieces (each).

This is a standard Platinum third person action game, despite the franchise name on the box. Raiden is armed with his electrified katana, a small assortment of ranged weapons (grenades, RPGs, SAMs), and a couple of side arms, including a sai/grappling hook and a whip/spear formed from linked arms of dwarf gekkos. Seriously. This game is all kinds of nuts, from the action to the dialogue to the cutscenes and characters. Giant robots get sliced anime-style to pieces, Raiden jumps to helicopters by bouncing from missle to missle as they are in midflight, evil Senators explain their superpowers with meta, hand-wavey explanations of "nanomachines, son!" Revengeance (see, even the name!) takes the plentiful anime logic absurdities of the MGS universe and runs away with them, and it's wonderful in that cheesy action movie sort of way.

The combat is fairly standard by Platinum standards, but it does offer a mechanic so satisfying as to tie it all together: Blade Mode and Zandatsu. When Raiden's energy gauge is full, he can enter Blade Mode, slowing time and allowing him to precisely aim his cuts. When enemies are sufficiently weakened, you can Zandatsu them, cutting them to precise pieces along your slices. Properly placed cuts allow you to rip their spine out to refill Raiden's health and energy (don't ask) or cut of their limbs to reduce their moveset or unlock new upgrades (again, don't ask). It's a brilliant, well-executed mechanic that encourages players to improve in their precision and rewards skilled use while feeling incredibly satisfying and expressive even when not used skillfully. It's such a versatile and downright fun mechanic that it really makes the game's combat.

Their are some issues with the game overall, the biggest being its length. I finished the campaign in about 7 hours on the normal difficulty, though New Game+, unlockable VR missions, and the free DLC content adds to the replay value. The camera is also problematic, though I can at least say that it never got me outright killed. Damned with faint praise, indeed. I hope these things don't turn people off rom playing thing game, though. Pund-for-pound, this is one of the most purely entertaining games of its genre that I've played in years.

I'll keep this brief: The game itself is fun. There is a wealth of worthwhile single player and multiplayer content. The mechanical changes such as interactive environments and alternate character variations add plenty to the game. If it gets patched into a more functional state, I'll say go for it. If.

You see, the PC version of MKX is a car wreck. It runs poorly, with frequent frame rate drops. The netcode is gag-inducing, and has all but pushed away much of the community of online players. Glitches abound, including everyone's favorite, the classic save data eraser! Yep, after 15 hours of play, I booted up the game this afternoon to find that all of my data had been wiped for no reason. Similar reports have been popping up for weeks, with some people experiencing this glitch on multiple occasions. Oh well. I'll write this one off as a lesson learned, at least until (IF) High Voltage patches it up. Until such time, don't make the same mistake I did.

5/5 Edit: So I come home from work today, cautiously excited to see if the new patch had improved the game. LOL nope, there was no patch. Why? Because after being rolled out, it was pulled back because it deleted all players' save data. All of it. Everywhere. Permanently, unless you had the foresight to back your stuff up. This is the world we live in, ladies and gentlemen. I weep for our children, and the world they will inherit from us.

So in this game you can play as either a treasure-hunting diver, or a shark. Yep, a shark.

Shark:
-move quickly, silently, completely unseen
-smash through wall kool-aid man style while biting a guy
-shake mouse to thrash around and straight bite person in half
-his whole team was watching and could do nothing
-apex predator

Diver:
-flew around with my underwater scooter and picked up treasure including gold AKs
-shot at megalodon (yes, extinct bus-size shark) with my underwater assault rifle. wound it
-meg bites me
-i stab monster movie shark in the mouth with a knife until it dies
-am now megalodon

This game is rad.

I recommend it for the mods alone. Especially if you gift it to a friend (or friends) and coordinate. It's more polished than Cockatrice and MTGO, and you can have virtually as much content if you are willing to look into easily-installed less-than-official material.