The best part of Rising is they play the narrative deadly serious until you kill your rival, at which point they kick over the fourth wall and burn it. All of a sudden you've got security guards reading waifu magazines, Raiden getting really pissed off that the dog won't shake hands with him and then a battle against an anarcho-capitalist sociopath on top of a crashed Metal Gear. He emerges from a Peace Walker like pod and then you fight him to a remix of the Peace Walker theme!
While politics have caught up with it somewhat, it was still pretty remarkably relevant at the time. It's one of the few games to have a boss with a coherent political ideology (to the extent a shitshow anarcho-capitalism is coherent, lol) and compared to the kinda wishy-washy post modernism of the core Metal Gear series, it's a really sharp contrast. Armstrong definitely anticipates the vulgarity and strongman elements of Trump's public image as well as being an early marker for anime twitter nazis. As much as it's fashionable for people to shit on DmC I love that two meaty character action games with the guts to approach contemporary political themes emerged in early 2013. I don't think we're going to get something like that again for a long time, especially if the next DMC is a reactionary narrative step away from DmC.
I think this is also important: Metal Gear Rising is no More Heroes 3. Wear your enemy down with a barrage of light and strong attacks until they're stunned then bisect them in slow motion, all the while hacking through a postmodernist/superflat narrative and a bunch of dark player counterparts with their own image themes. Suda should really give Platinum a shot at that series.
While politics have caught up with it somewhat, it was still pretty remarkably relevant at the time. It's one of the few games to have a boss with a coherent political ideology (to the extent a shitshow anarcho-capitalism is coherent, lol) and compared to the kinda wishy-washy post modernism of the core Metal Gear series, it's a really sharp contrast. Armstrong definitely anticipates the vulgarity and strongman elements of Trump's public image as well as being an early marker for anime twitter nazis. As much as it's fashionable for people to shit on DmC I love that two meaty character action games with the guts to approach contemporary political themes emerged in early 2013. I don't think we're going to get something like that again for a long time, especially if the next DMC is a reactionary narrative step away from DmC.
I think this is also important: Metal Gear Rising is no More Heroes 3. Wear your enemy down with a barrage of light and strong attacks until they're stunned then bisect them in slow motion, all the while hacking through a postmodernist/superflat narrative and a bunch of dark player counterparts with their own image themes. Suda should really give Platinum a shot at that series.
