Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Part 5: Hostile Takeover

Time for Jack to let her rip!

Hey All! Welcome back to Metal Gear Rising! Last time we made it to World Marshal HQ and embraced our inner demons, this time we’ll climb the tower and try face the top brass head-on.

Unlike every level up to this point, there is no cutscene at the start of the level. Instead, we waltz right in and start climbing/fighting our way through the building. Along the way, we pull off various escapades including but not limited to: Running up the side of the building, sneaking through an indoor Japanese garden compound, and fighting replicas of some of the previous bosses. We also have a couple of character moments where we criticize Doktor for enabling cyborg soldiering and ask Blade Wolf if he still wants to work with us knowing our true nature.

We reach the top chamber of the building, a “server room” that houses the brains of all the kidnapped children. Sundowner greets us and gloats about how he’s not really brainwashing the children because they’re naturally cruel and how in a matter of hours his boss’s plans will succeed. He leaves the room but beckons us to follow him. We then confront him on the helipad at the top of the tower, and he yells a lot about how invincible he is before we immediately proceed to vince him. He feigns death by falling off the building, then comes back holding onto a helicopter and shoots us off. Luckily, we manage to land on a flying robot, which we hijack to fly up the building and literally through the life, before finishing Sundowner off with a missile. Sundowner calls Sam and tells him to prepare himself, but dies before telling us what exactly is going to happen in 3 hours.

From the information he gave us in taunts as well as what we know about the current political situation, our support team helps us deduce that we need to get all the way from Colorado to Pakistan in 3 hours in order to stop the US president from being assassinated. Unfortunately, not even a supersonic jet can make that journey, but one of our staff members informs us of a nearby experimental vehicle that could take us there in 30 minutes. All we have to do now is get there soon.

The things I noticed most while playing this level were the mechanics of Ripper Mode. It says something that only it only takes one level to realize how well it’s designed. So, I’m going to break it down to show why it works so well, as well as how similar design can be used for other games, even ones that are non-violent.

Ripper mode is a special state that amps up your attack and makes it easier to slice through foes. It can only be activated when your stamina gauge is at maximum, and it slowly drains the gauge while you use it. The things that make it work so well are its balance and how it interacts with the game’s main mechanics.

Firstly, its balance. Ripper mode powers the player up immensely, so it needs to have some sort of drawback, or else it becomes brainless and uninteresting. There are two costs to ripper mode, its stamina cost, and its vulnerability.

Stamina cost is more obvious. Ripper mode requires maximum stamina to activate and burns stamina as its used. The cost for activation means that the player has to earn their power up. They have to either budget how they use blade mode or pull off a Zandatsu in order to have the privilege of Ripper. The cost for use means that the player can’t stay in Ripper Mode forever. It also prevents immediate reuse, which encourages the player to commit to using at least a good portion of the buff and think strategically about when to activate it.

These mechanics compound with the other stamina mechanics, Zandatsu and stamina buffs, in a ways that are more than the some of their parts. Firstly stamina buffs. Having a higher total stamina means that the player can stay longer in Ripper Mode, but it also means they have to work harder to be able to activate. Thins get even more interesting with Zandatsu. Since it can fully restore stamina, it can give players early access to ripper mode, so players are encouraged to go for it rather than ordinary kills. Second, since it restores just as much stamina when used during Ripper Mode, it lets skillful players prolong their powerup by timing their Zandatsus so as to maximize stamina gain. Thirdly, since outside Ripper mode Zandatsu also requires the player to be above a certain stamina threshold, it encourages players to budget their time using it to ensure that they can still perform a Zandatsu once they’ve exited, or else have to grind it out the hard way.

Stamina costs make Ripper Mode fun because they both reward skillful play and make the player think carefully about when and how to use the move.

Vulnerability is a less obvious balancing decision, as at first glance, using it does not make Raiden any more vulnerable. However, it also doesn’t make him any less either. This means that the player can still be stunned or knocked back. When this happens, their first reaction is usually to recover, not to cancel Ripper Mode, which means that they end up wasting it instead. This mens that the player still has to pay attention to enemies while in Ripper mode, as if they don’t, they could end up wasting it.

Now, a powerup would be no good if it erased the core fun of the game. Ripper mode does just the opposite, it makes the core loop even more fun. The core of Metal Gear Rising’s gameplay is using blade mode and Zandatsu to cut clean through any foe. It’s relatively easy to do, but there’s enough resistance that it feels viscerally satisfying to do well. While Ripper mode reduces that resistance, it does so in a way that maintains that satisfaction.

Firstly, the difference against the weakest enemies is only cosmetic. The player can use blade mode on them at any time so long as they have the stamina. All Ripper Mode does is make the cutting automatic. It’s only on tough enemies that it has a significant difference, and it’s because of that that it can still be satisfying. While it reduces the resistance to the player that makes skillful play satisfying, it replaces that lost satisfaction with a different kind. In Ripper Mode, enemies that used to be struggles to fight become almost pushovers. This creates the satisfaction of dominating that which used to be difficult, making up for the lost satisfaction of overcoming resistance. Finally, the stakes are raised by Ripper Mode’s stamina costs and the risk of wasting it by getting hit, which elevates the player’s tension and excitement. Overall, there it creates more fun than it detracts.

The neat thing about the things that make Ripper Mode tick are that they can be applied to pretty much any mechanic. At it’s core, it is just a resource that, while relatively abundant, is scarce enough that it requires thought in regards to how and when it is used. Its benefits aren’t made too overpowered because sloppy play ends up wasting it. And finally, it interacts with the game’s core systems in a way that enhances those systems. None of these traits require a specific aesthetic context to work, only a core mechanic to build off of, so that core mechanic could be anything imaginable, from swordplay to athletics to fishing. Even if Ripper Mode specifically is a violent mechanic, the things that make it work do not require violence to work.

With this, I want to end stressing the importance that when analyzing a mechanic, don’t just look at the context it appears in, but try to figure out the mechanics in a way that lets you see how they can be applied universally.

Video of the Week: A gift from Jack the High-Quality Ripper: