Borderlands 2 Review

Teamwork is what makes the blood flow freely.

Get your Claptrap units in gear, lock and load your crazy looking guns and strap in. Pandora is even harsher than it's every been, and it's gotten worse now that Handsome Jack is traipsing about the world with Hyperion. That's right folks, it's the "Borderlands 2" review.

With a new set of Vault Hunters, the game picks up some time after the end of "Borderlands." Hyperion, your friendly weapons manufacturer and militant fighting force, has descended upon Pandora for the valuable naturally-occurring element Eridium. Leading the corporation is the sassy, yet delightfully crass, Handsome Jack. An all-around tyrant and nasty man.

Jack plans on taking the power of another Vault that is hidden on Pandora, and it's up to Axton, Zero, Maya and Salvador to stop him. The four are basically the same classes that were in the last game with slight modifications to their builds, so if you played "Borderlands," you're as good as gold for this game.

I won't speak more on the story for fear of spoilers because not everyone can beat the game in a week, especially if you take your time and enjoy the innumerable side quests that are offered to you. Seriously, there is a lot of content in this game, and more on the way as the upcoming number of downloadable-content packs have already been announced.

"Borderlands 2" is a great game. Honestly. There isn't much wrong with the game that you don't find in any other game when it launches, and the problems with it are typical of the franchise that are present in the previous game. But, they're not so much problems as they are events that occur because of design choices.

A nice, modest, golden statue of Handsome Jack.

For example: "Borderlands 2" is an open-world game where you can drive all over the world of Pandora, but it isn't built like "Skyrim" or "Grand Theft Auto." There are zones in "Borderlands" and "Borderlands 2" that you can explore and the maps are fully sculpted and formed, but empty and spacious. However, you can't climb every rock and every mountain, or go as far as your eye can see. Since they work in large, fenced-in areas, the landscapes are tiered, wind in and out of each other and have multiple levels to them.

Often times, if you don't know the area well or don't really look hard at the map, you will get lost and frustrated as you drive about trying to find the right zone you're supposed to get to. All the while you're being attacked on all sides by enemies on the ground and in the sky. It can get on your nerves a little. Do you have to drive? Not at all. But, walking would take forever.

Having mentioned the enemies, there are a lot of baddies. I mean, a huge number. The game is designed to give you awesome weapons that deal damage like no other so you alone can stand against the tide of villains and monsters that try to combat you.

Now, if you don't have the right gun, aren't the proper level or are new to the franchise, then you will get bum rushed and die. It can be so overwhelming that you'll end up trying to kill one enemy at a time before you get killed just to whittle them down.

In all honesty, those were the two biggest problems in the game. The maps can get a little confusing and the amount of enemies can sometimes overwhelm you into frustration and you might even wander into an area you are woefully ill prepared for. I found maybe one bug while I was playing the game, but other than that, it's pretty solid and well put together for everything that's in there.

Now, the praises. Holy crap is this game fun if you play it right. Taking your time to do the side quests, level up accordingly and explore all the little nuances that are offered will give you an enjoyable experience that is filled with depth and hilarity.

The voice acting, set pieces, enemy types and people you encounter really make Pandora feel more populated and full than the previous game just from the sheer volume of stuff jam packed in there. It's wonderful.

Players are encouraged to do the side missions because simply playing through story missions will not result in adequate experience to level up enough, and you'll find yourself a little out matched in the latter parts of the game. However, taking on side missions is really not a problem because they flesh the world out even more and are simple enough in their own right.

Leveling has had some changes. There are, of course, the skill trees from the last game with some new improvements and tweaks to fit the new characters. Jesus talked about them in his article from E3.

What I found entertaining and useful were the Badass Points. These replace the standard experience-point rewards that you would normally receive for killing 50 skags or 100 or 1,000. They're mini achievements in the game that you can then apply to things like reload speed, melee damage, weapon damage and even shield recharge time. You can really customize your character's attributes to fit the way you play in that regard, along with the skill tree.

"Borderlands 2" is pretty awesome. I highly suggest picking it up for the humor, familiar faces, new faces and boxes of bullets that you'll be pouring into your hapless foes.

10 for 10. Well done, Gearbox and 2K.

Don't mess with this guy. He means business.

Bennett Bellot, Academic Director at AI

Our first industry interview and lesson video! We're starting the new section off strong with this video! Take a look at how to pick the right school for you, what to think about when going for your education and other important facts from the Academic Director at the Art Institute of Orange County, Bennett Bellot!

Call of Duty Black Ops 2: Send in the zombies

Kill it! Kill it with fire!

Zombies.

Next to Nazis, Russians, demons and orcs, zombies are some of the few enemies that the gaming industry never seems to tire of.

Oddly enough, Nazi zombies appear to be an unholy fusion that gamers await with baited breath for at the announcement of a "Call of Duty" title. It's strange that a game mode that really has nothing to do with the story or the multiplayer style has sold millions of copies for the franchise.

Obviously, the appeal is more than just shooting hordes of the undead. The survival mode that it offers is challenging in itself - repairing your barricades between waves and purchasing better weapons with the money you've earned from successful kills.

Perhaps it is the risk/reward ratio that really has people flocking to this particular mode of play.

 It's not often that gamers get to directly see results from their hard work so soon after an enemy attack unless there is a leveling system. It also shows a player's skill in direct correlation with their performance because of the rewards that they can spend on protecting their team and arming themselves.

Most multiplayer modes reward a fighter or team after the end of a match. The gradual skill growth is then displayed through items and perks. Player skill is measured in the fighting ability.

In a survival mode, it is measured in progress and effectiveness of weapons and defenses. It is almost unnecessary to show the player's skill when the rewards right there prove that they're excellent. Of course, as time gets shorter between the rounds, the skill of a player is much more important and the effectiveness of their defenses and weapons really come into play.

There aren't many defense-survival games out there. Games where you actually have to build up barriers from the enemy to stem the tide. Most zombie shooters have you traveling from one place to another. There are so few that have you staying in one place and fighting to the last man (or woman) and bullet.

Smile, handsome!

"Dead Island" came close to this, but you never really had a reason to stick around the survivor zones other than restocking and resupplying. There was more movement in there than anything. If "Dead Island" incorporated a game mode like the one in "Call of Duty" against zombies, it might actually add a level of survival to it, so much that you would actually dread the night and value your companions, NPCs or not.

Of course, "CoD: Black Ops 2" is close on the horizon and players are chomping at the bit to kill some more of the undead. Perhaps if we were to see more games employ this mode of gameplay when dealing with  the walking deceased, we'd see a lot more variety and success in fields other than "Resident Evil" or "Left 4 Dead." It's not that those games aren't phenomenal in their own right, but variety is the spice of life.

Valve uses Steam to show players Big Picture

Valve, the creators of the "Half-Life" and "Portal" series, recently released a new view mode for their digital distribution application, Steam, called Big Picture which allows the interface to be displayed on larger screens like those normally found in living rooms.

It wasn't impossible to hook up a PC or Mac to your big-screen TV before Big Picture was introduced, but the layout of an application made for small computer screens didn't translate well to a display that was between five and ten feet away from players.

Big Picture mode changes the entire Steam interface, and does away with all the tiny details normally displayed to users in favor of highly-simplified, large buttons and a virtual keyboard.

All of these new features make gaming through Steam with a gamepad much more accessible than ever before.

Big Picture's virtual keyboard is mapped to gamepads for simple text input

Using a gamepad to play video games on a large TV in the living room. That sounds a lot like console gaming. 

Steam's Big Picture mode is a major step into the home gaming console market, and it only requires players to connect their PC to their TV with and HDMI cable. All of these things are most likely already owned by most gamers, so the initial investment for this pseudo-console is arguably $0.

Not all of the people who play games have a computer capable of running "Skyrim" or "Crysis 2" on even medium settings, but, in the long run, investing a little bit more money into a new computer than a new gaming console is a better investment because computers can be used for more than consoles.

We may be entering an era where Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have to take on Valve in the console wars, but the features of the Playstation 3 and the next Xbox have yet to be seen.

Big Picture mode also includes a web browser that is also navigable by gamepad.

It could turn out that PCs will remain the go-to devices for more dedicated players and home consoles make the transition to all-in-one entertainment boxes geared toward families and casual players. The technical specs of the next generation of video game consoles has yet to be seen, though, so it's anybody's guess what the next few years will bring for the industry.

Fighting Games - Open For Discussion

John and Jesus talk fighting game mechanics and what works! Take a look at the video and think about what they said. "Don't reinvent the wheel, put rubber on it." What games inspire you? What fighting games do you like? Talk about them below!

Oculus Rift: Open for Discussion

If you haven't seen the Oculus Rift or our article on it, then you're missing out. The project is now fully funded and the boys at the Vault shot a discussion video talking about the possibilities that the Rift offers and what we want to see done with this new and exciting tech!

Comment below with your opinions, thoughts, and personal goals with the Oculus Rift! What do you want to see? What do you want to do with it?

Eyes on DigiPen student-made game Perspective

Neon colors, soothing music, a cute little 8-bit character and platforming. There's not much more needed to draw you to "Perspective," this surprisingly fresh and exciting project coming out of DigiPen. Well, except for the ridiculously mind-bending method of gameplay that has people touting it as the next "Portal."

I'm not sure where to begin. I can't stop watching the trailer because the entire idea behind the game is so cool and interesting to me that I don't know what to talk about first.

Games that sacrifice graphics are often looked at much more harshly in the era of high definition because if the game isn't realistic or pretty to mainstream audiences it damn well better be fun or original. There are few games that have succeeded in this, but I truly think that "Perspective" might be one of those few.

He looks like a tiny little neon astronaut!

Obviously we don't know much about the game right now other than what's on the site at DigiPen for the game.

Puzzle platformers are a dying breed, but it's wonderful to see that there are some developers who can still do them well and with skill enough to excite the masses. At least on Tumblr.

Aside from having to really deliver a good product to gamers, the other uphill battle against platformers is whether or not they're long enough to satisfy someone with a playthrough. "Portal" somewhat suffers from this shortness of gameplay, and those of you who say otherwise are kidding yourselves. The game is a decent length, no doubt about it, but when you find yourself doing the game over and over again and not really interested in the time trials or special condition maps, you know the game has lost its touch.

"Perspective" may or may not be complete. If it is, then we'll really want to see if the game is long enough to be something fulfilling, or fun enough for us not to care. If it isn't complete, then there's still some time before we can pass judgement. Either way, the team has really caught the eye of a lot of people and even if it is short, they still might have something here.

It's projects like this that really emphasize one of the mottoes we have here at the Vault: Don't reinvent the wheel, put rubber on it.

"Perspective" is not trying to find a different definition of platforming. If you look at the trailer, all the basic elements are there.

What they did, their rubber on the wheel, was the addition of perspective to actually shift the platforming map for the player. This adds an entirely new level of depth to the map as the player must be aware of their three-dimensional surroundings and how those will affect that of their two-dimensional counterpart.

Games like this can actually benefit a lot from community involvement. If the game was too short, giving the code and some of the development software to the fans could lead to multiple levels and mods made by other gamers. The replayability would dramatically increase if there were new maps released all of the time.

Cerebral games that don't focus on a heavy story thrive off of creativity and the sharing of ideas.

While it's a longshot, I would definitely suggest to the developers to release a development kit for this game.

"Perspective" is slated for release sometime this Fall.

The color around the screen indicates a switch between 3D platforming and 2D.

Hands on Injustice: Gods Among Us

Soloman Grundy was born on a Monday, smashed Flash on a Tuesday...

After playing more than seven rounds of "Injustice: Gods Among Us" at this year's Penny Arcade Expo, and sneaking in a few more after that (much to the booth staff's displeasure), I am actually impressed and excited for this game.

I was skeptical at first when seeing "Injustice: Gods Among Us" at E3 this year. There wasn't enough information present there for me, and I might have missed the hands-on demo on the E3 show floor, so there's also that.

For those of you who are fans of  "Dead or Alive," you're going to love the environmental attacks and stage shifts that are at your disposal in "Injustice." We watched as Flash and Cyborg, recently announced as a playable character by the way, battled it out in the Batcave

Now, Bruce Wayne has a lot of toys, one of them being the Batmobile. Thank goodness he puts a giant red button on one of his computers that fires missiles out of it, which really helped Flash get out of the stage's corner after Cyborg boxed him in.

That's right, you can use the Batmobile in your fights.

Cyborg wasn't having any of that, though, and punched the Flash so hard he fell all the way down to where the Batboat docks in the underwater portion of the cave. On his way down he hit pipes, rocks and all manner of obstacles that really took a chunk away from his health. The fight raged on and hanging electrical wires proved fatal for Flash as he was knocked into them frequently by Cyborg's uppercuts.

We were shown demos like this at least every hour, and I personally liked the one they did with Superman and Nightwing, who also a newly-announced character. Catwoman has also joined the roster recently, so there's at least three girls for you to kick  superbutt with.

When I actually got to play the game though, I had to try out Superman and just see how powerful he was.

Now, the controls are extremely similar to that of "Mortal Kombat," so if you're a fan of that franchise or familiar at all with their combos, then you're in like Flynn with this game.

I got to fight a few battles against Wonder Woman, and it was pretty intense to say the least. My opponent and I duked it out in the Fortress of Solitude and I got beat pretty soundly in the first round by Wonder Woman's lasso and sword. Once I figured out how to use Superman's heat vision, I kept the other player at a distance, then rushed them.

Gut shot!

The Fortress has its own quirks and interactive items to fight with, like Superman's Kryptonian spaceship. And when I say interact with, I mean that Superman picked it up and smacked Wonder Woman across the face with it. It was kind of brutal.

Combat is different for each character.

Superman and Wonder Woman are slow and plodding tanks, but they're able to rush effectively since both of them are actually floating above the ground rather than running.

Batman and Nightwing are ranged attackers that can mix it up at close range.

Flash can actually speed up and slow down the entire game so that he can work in some fast combo attacks.

People seemed to be having trouble playing with Harley Quinn as she was slow but powerful. Solomon Grundy was also kind of the same and people tended to stick with the powered folks more.

Cyborg was the one that I really didn't see people play with all that much.

Of course, there has to be finishing movies right? No killing moves, but damn there are some painful looking things there. Each character has a small meter at their side of the screen, like in the newest "Mortal Kombat" where you power up their common attacks, or charge it to do a super attack.

Flash's finishing move involves him runnning around the world to charge up a punch that knocks his opponent into the air. He then speeds behind them and promptly knocks them back to Earth hard.

Superman knocks his foe into space, then smacks them back to the ground like a meteor.

Wonder Woman calls in some Amazons that trap the enemy so she can wail on him mercilessly. So on and so forth.

Something I found rather cool (a stylistic and mechanical choice on the part of the developers) was that there is no round announcer and no stoppage in the fight. Each fighter has two health bars, and when one is reduced to their last health bar, there is a sound or a hit that signifies that the fight has moved to the second half.

Now, the other fighter could still have both of their health bars, but it just shows that the wounded one is on their last legs. Also, there's custom dialogue for each combatant and their specific opponent.

The representatives from Warner Bros. said they wanted the fights to feel like blockbuster movie battles, without the feel of a fighting game. I think they did a pretty good job, actually.

The game is fun. Real fun. Will it capture your attention for hours at a time? Maybe. There's apparently a story to the game, too, so we'll see what that's all about when more details come out.

As for more characters, there were a lot of empty spots left in the character selection screen when we played. Someone in the crowd asked about Aquaman, and the company rep said, "We cannot comment on whether or not Aquaman will be in the game."

That means yes, in my opinion. I just want to stab someone with his trident.

The closest thing to a trident so far is Nightwing's electric staff.

Hands on Dishonored

Bang bang slice!

After one and a half hours in line, I finally got to play it. Worth it? Yes. Was it everything I hoped? Probably not.

Bethesda's "Dishonored" is a fascinating game with beautiful set pieces, stunning graphics and interesting game mechanics that will have you wanting more and more. Unfortunately, it is a little frustrating to play if you're just shoved into the game with so many abilities and skills you have no idea where to begin.


That might have been Bethesda's greatest fault with all of last week's Penny Arcade Expo. The game looks solid, there's no denying it. However, "Dishonored" is not a game that you can just dive in and play right away.

Think of all of the other games that this company creates.

Would you drop a friend of yours into Whiterun, past all of the tutorials, with full inventory and several dragon shouts and tell them to have at "Skyrim?" No, because the game is too complex. Neither would you shove someone into New Vegas and tell them where Ceaser's Legion was, the NCR, and Mr. House and just say "Good luck!" for "Fallout." That's just not how you  show off a game.

In the demo, I was tasked with kidnapping a doctor in a particularly slummed-out area of town near the water. Guards aplenty, I had to use my wits and insane amount of powers to get to the doctor, incapacitate him and then escape with him over my shoulder.

Seriously, that's what they had us play.

Luckily for Bethesda, the game was pretty fun to play. There is an item and power wheel that you can bring up to make your immediate inventory more personalized or fit the situation at hand. You have a crossbow and a pistol for silent or loud, attention-grabbing attacks. The sword is also useful and you can perform some nifty finishing moves. In your off-hand you have the ranged weapon or some sort of spell. From teleportation to possession to time stopping, there's a lot of variety. Bethesda was even showing a video of men being swarmed by rats who ate them alive. Gruesome, but cool.

She doesn't get paid enough to let stuff like this slide.

People will be alerted to your presence, so you might have to hide bodies instead of just leaving them out in the open. Loud noises attract attention, and even innocent bystanders will give your position away to guards. I had killed several men in a warehouse-type area, and when I moved to some upper rooms, there was a cleaning woman who screamed when she saw me and a guard came running, pistol and sword in hand.

I also had a variety of ways to sneak, climb and fight my way into the target location. It was actually cool to kind of go back and see, "Oh, I can do it that way next time," or "Dude! I didn't even think I could do that!"

Your character is able to jump and double jump to get to those hard-to-reach places, and there is some ability to scale buildings and walls. It kind of reminded me of "Mirror's Edge" without the free running and more Mario jumping. Think of the game as controlling like "Bioshock," combat like "Fallout" or an "Elder Scrolls" title, with the ambiance and stealth of "Assassin's Creed."

The character animations, set pieces and overall world as a whole are mesmerizingly interesting. It has the field of a sort of Elizabethan-steampunk England and is something we've never really seen before. If you have, however, forgive me for not being as thorough a gamer as you. The only thing I can equate it to looking like is "Fable 3."

There's all sorts of interesting folk lounging about in "Dishonored."

My biggest gripe with "Dishonored" was that it was actually pretty hard to control. I have a feeling this would play better on the PC with the smoothness of mouse movement rather than dual-analogue sticks. Bethesda's games always seem to be made more for a PC rather than a console when it comes down to it anyways.

I recommend the game based on my time playing the demo - despite my frustrations. I can't guarantee the rest of the game will be executed well, however. Wait for some reviews to come in and then we'll try and give you the most comprehensive look we can before the game launches Oct. 9.

Hands on Tomb Raider

Lara Croft's got a bow, your argument is invalid.

I was pretty excited that I was actually going to be able to play "Tomb Raider" at the Penny Arcade Expo last week after having seen it at E3 earlier in the summer. Of course, I was also intrigued to see just what part of the demo would be available after the outrage of the near-rape scene that took center stage during E3. For those of you concerned, it was not a part of the demo that I played and therefore it was solely a gameplay experience, so I'll focus on that.

Square Enix allowed us to play as young Lara Croft just after surviving a horrific crash. She's lost, cold, tired, hurt and stranded on an island. I had to traverse the perilous cliffs and find shelter from the tropical rains that were now slowly but surely coming down. Lara had to climb and jump in the new platforming style that has become so prevalent in adventure games like "Uncharted." In fact, it was almost exactly like playing "Uncharted."

After building a fire, Lara went to an uneasy sleep. Waking up to a clear sky, I set out as Lara to get some food. That meant I had to get  a weapon. After exploring the wilderness a bit, I came across a small hut. On the tree, hanging upside down right outside the door, was a rotting corpse with a bow slung around it. That was my ticket to getting an arrow in some of those wild deer I had scared on our way there.

Lara climbed, reached out to grasp the branch holding up the bow-slung body and promptly fell to the ground with the corpse. But, I got the bow. It took me a few tries but I finally bagged an animal. Unfortunately, Lara wasn't as comfortable with skinning an animal as much as John Marston from "Red Dead Redemption" and it took her some time to work up the nerve to do it.

Getting back to the campfire, I got to cook the meat and level up. I put some points in Lara's archery skills so that she could retrieve more arrows from her kills. I figured we'd be shooting a lot of those wild animals.

Unfortunately, the demo ended there.

That is some nasty rain.

So really the game is like "Uncharted." Honestly, that's what I took away from it. What I saw in the demo at E3 and from playing it now, I can't lie and say that it isn't eerily similar.

Does this make me sad? Of course it does. Then again, there's not much more you can do with Lara Croft since she was Nathan Drake even before he was. I suppose it's more accurate to say that Lara hasn't changed and never will, but it would still be nice to see something new done.

As for something new, the leveling up seems pretty interesting if a little unnecessary. I'm not sure we'll be roaming the wilds of this island so much that we'll need to have a personalized way of playing with Lara rather than just a gradual shift in her tools and skills that happens in games like "The Legend of Zelda" and "Assassin's Creed."

She looks pretty mad, doesn't she?

Of course, Lara herself has changed a little too. She's younger, more uncertain and she's definitely out of her element. Personally, I think this is really great because I've always wondered what Lara was like before she became the Tomb Raider.

This trial by fire definitely puts some steel in her character and back story. Since the games have previously never really had a linear story, starting from the beginning doesn't seem like a stretch as much as it would with any other franchise.

There's a lot here and a lot of potential in this game, but I'm not certain that a younger Lara with some customization of skills will be enough to reinvigorate a franchise that was never particularly groundbreaking. This isn't to say that Lara isn't a cornerstone of gaming history, more that the "Tomb Raider" franchise is not something that needs to be anything more than it was. Perhaps it would be more suited to an HD re-release than an entire franchise overhaul. Only time can tell, but we're looking forward to the game come out March 5 of next year.

Hands on ZombiU

Aim for the head!

Ubisoft’s Wii U title that has been passed around and casually looked at by press and gamers is something of a mystery. At this year’s E3, I was able to watch some people play a mode of the game where a single player fought hordes of zombies that came in waves as they held a point down. What I got to experience first hand at the Penny Arcade Expo this weekend was an entirely different story.

Jumping into the shoes of a survivor, I had to escape Buckingham Palace and survive the zombie hordes within. Inside, I had to scrounge for ammo to go with my handgun and the Royal Guard carbine that I had looted off the ground. The people at the demo booth told me that the game relies heavily on survival and tactical instincts, making you really conserve your ammo and get down and dirty with the zombies if you have to.

That made sense as I only had eight rounds for my pistol and three rounds for my carbine. But what I did have was an unlimited supply of skull bashings thanks to my handy-dandy cricket bat. Very “Shaun of the Dead” if you ask me. And like Shaun, I aimed for the head and cracked a few zombies in the skull a few times to make sure they were good and double-dead.

That's pretty much how it looks when you play the game.

The game’s menu is on the Wii U gamepad, so instead of having to press pause, you just look down and slide the inventory in to view, and the game on the screen pauses while you rummage through your pack to figure out what you want to use or discard. Now, this is a really interesting use of the gamepad and I actually liked it. What was hard was that the mini-map was down there as well, and having to look at my hands while also running on the screen was a little difficult. Especially when little red blips show up on it to tell you where zombies are and you don’t immediately look at the controller to see if there’s danger. It’s going to take a lot for gamers to get used to that on Nintendo’s new system.

The graphics were good. They were passable for current-gen systems but nothing too impressive for a next-gen machine. I suppose that’s actually a compliment for a Nintendo console as they’ve never been the most graphically-intensive machines on the market. Often times, if you crack a shot off at a zombie’s head, you might actually give them a real close haircut and expose their brain.

Zombie John!

Something fun was that when I actually died in the demo, I was put in the place of another survivor and I actually encountered my past-self in game as a zombie. When I killed that version of me, I could loot myself and get all of my previous items back. That kind of reminded me of the old "Diablo II" mechanic where you could loot your corpse. Something fun they were doing at the booth was also allowing you to use the camera on the Wii U to zombify yourself and I was told that you could even put zombie-you in "ZombiU."

All in all I think that “ZombiU” might present an interesting experience for a title on the Wii U. The game isn’t anything new, but it utilizes enough of the technology available in the system for it to be somewhat interesting to people who pick it up for the first time. I’m equating it to “Red Steel.” Hopefully it is much more refined and well executed than the other Ubisoft flop. Keep your eyes out for this game to come out Dec. 31.

Hands on Metal Gear Solid Rising: Revengeance

Here it is - the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Konami’s newest installment in the “Metal Gear Solid” series, “Metal Gear Solid Rising: Revengeance.”

Silly name not withstanding, I went in with an open mind to this demo as I’ve never really played much of the “MGS” series to begin with. I’m sure there are some people who will feel that I’m not really capable of doing a solid report on “Revengeance” because of this, but I’ll be purely reporting from a mechanics and gameplay standpoint.

The demo at the Penny Arcade Expo in Washington this weekend had us tackling the game as Raiden, newly outfitted with cybernetic parts like the Six Million Dollar Man. In the demo, he was equipped with a crazy lazer-sword a la “No More Heroes” that could basically slice through anything. Raiden could pick up weapons as well as sneak, but it just didn’t feel like a “MGS” title. What it did feel like, was “Ninja Gaiden.”


I’m not sure if that is blasphemous or actually really appealing to Kojima fans, but I honestly felt like I was playing that dressed up in “MGS” skins with the occasional exclamation point flashing above an enemy’s head as he became aware of me. How could he not, after all I had practically no stealth capabilities whatsoever.

I actually cut up a Metal Gear monster thingy with that sword of his like it was nothing.

Attacking is your standard button-mashing combo fare that many might equate to “Dynasty Warriors” or “God of War.” I have to give them credit, though, with the game mechanic that let you actually slow down time and pick the direction that your blade would run through your enemy. It made me think of the “Afro Samurai” game where you could slice the tiniest parts off of enemies in slow-motion.
 

The entire scenario was a virtual-reality training session for Raiden to become familiar with his new cybernetic implants. I have no idea how he has become a cyborg and I won’t speculate as to whether or not this is a cheesy or interesting plot twist. Cyber-Raiden kicks a lot of ass, cutting baddies and the occasional watermelon into little slivers of meat. On a fluke, I attacked a random pillar that was just sitting in a courtyard where I had a mini-boss battle, and found that I was actually able to use the sword slashing mechanic to dice up the column into little stone pieces. Of course, the archway it was holding up promptly fell apart, but I was genuinely impressed that there was some environmental destruction evident in the game. Kojima is really known for producing games that have attention to detail.

He just does not look like a happy camper.

I found the game's controls a little difficult to use. Raiden was far too sensitive to commands and I found myself running into objects a lot. Also, the screen is flooded with digital images and information about objectives and directions and attacks and combos that I felt a severe case of sensory overload. I understand that he’s a cyborg now and he’s got all sorts of fancy ocular implants, but I’m not  a cyborg and I don’t need that information shoved into my face.
 

Honestly, the demo was fun, but I wasn’t impressed by “Revengeance.” Maybe it’s because I’m not a “MGS” fan and maybe it could be that I’m just not seeing the full game. Whatever the case may be, I feel as though the game steals a lot of elements from other franchises such as “Ninja Gaiden,” “Dynasty Warriors” and even the quicktime events from “Resident Evil.” Granted, those are all proven mechanics that have sold over the last decade, but from what I know of “MGS’s” history as a stealth franchise I don’t really see this as a new direction that will revitalize the fanbase. Even some of the hardcore fans that were there seemed a little put off by it when I asked them. Then again, there were some people who thought the game was really awesome. It will be interesting to see who shows up to buy the game when it comes out on Feb. 19 of next year.