There are also some QuickTime Event moments, but they're not bad at all. For example, when you damage a Gekko enough it'll stagger for a bit and give you an opening. All you have to do is press a couple of buttons at the same time and Raiden will start jumping on it like a ninja. All you then have to do is wait for the bullet time moment and then use blade mode to finish it off. Marvelous.
There is one largely annoying combat pain, though. every time you get pinned down you have about one second flat to wiggle the left analog stick as much as possible in order to break free. You have to do the same thing when you get stunned with a "BMI error", whatever the hell that is, until you've wiggled the stick enough to break your control pad.
Of course, when you're stunned the next thing to hit Raiden will snap him out if it, but if that next thing is a volley of missiles then the last one usually stuns you all over again! Leaving you in an infinite loop of rage and broken controllers.
After each brawl you get scored and ranked. Big combos and avoiding damage add up to big scores, but for a perfect score you need to Zandatsu just about everything in your path. Since it fills up your health and fuel cells this approach even makes fighting much easier, as long as you're good enough at aiming that blade.
Raiden's backstory as a child soldier is used to define his character even more than before and runs deeply through the story. He was a relentless killer back then and all the others feared him, so since his real name is Jack they used to call him Jack The Ripper.
Eventually you unlock Ripper Mode, which makes each hit inflict much more damage than normal and lets normal attacks slice through anything that could be sliced with blade mode. It's an absolute beast of a mode and with it you can absolutely tear through a complete mob of pretty much any kind. Due to it's ridiculously overpowered nature you can only activate it once your Fuel Cells are full and it only lasts a few seconds while it drains them completely.
The Story isn't too long but it suits Raiden's character perfectly and is ridiculously replayable. After completion of the story you take all unlocks and points with you to the start of the next playthrough, and there's even more stuff to unlock on top of that. The combat mixed with the colourful and electric visuals make the gameplay so much fun. I'm just going to keep playing this until
Ground Zeroes comes out.
Pros
+ Combat is heaps of fun
+ Lots of stuff to unlock
+ Extremely replayable
Cons
- Very short campaign
- Far too much wiggling of the left analog stick
SPOnG Score: 9/10
