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04/01 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Normal)
05/01 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - Jetstream Sam DLC (Normal)
06/01 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - Blade Wolf DLC (Normal)
10/01 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Hard)
14/01 - Killer Is Dead (Hard)
Had this one going on in the background for a little while, and just cleaned up the last few levels today. The timing of it has been pretty interesting though, in that it happened to land right next to a bunch of other games that make for some stark comparisons.
Even though I've played through it before a number of times, this playthrough was prompted by Humble giving away free copies a while ago. I owned it already, but that made me feel the urge to go back to it again. This was also shortly after I gave up on my most recent playthrough of No More Heroes 2, and of course very close to playing Metal Gear Rising again as well.
It really is quite surprising how much better it is than NMH2 in a number of ways. I've always put this game on the same kind of level as those games, but after having such a rough time with NMH2 most recently, and seeing how lopsided and poorly designed some aspects of the combat is, it makes this game look so much better in comparison. Everything is so much tighter and more responsive. Combat has a much better flow in general, and the dodge move is a million times more precise and satisfying. I still really like the NMH games, and they definitely have something this game lacks in terms of personality (although more so NMH1 than 2), but this one definitely has them beat on mechanics.
It's the opposite story with Metal Gear Rising however. Everything that KID does better than NMH, MGR does even better, by a wider margin. There are a number of enemies and situations in KID that feel kind of cheap and annoying. Usually most attacks are telegraphed well, but some aren't at all, which can get you stuck in a frustrating stun-lock on occasion. It's rare (and nowhere near as awful as the nightmare of a final boss on NMH2), but enough to damage the experience to be worth mentioning. And while I like all the bosses in general, a couple of them do suffer from having annoying attacks like that. Not so in MGR. In that game you always feel like you have all the information you need to react to something, and the tools to deal with it. It's just up to you to execute it properly.
Overall though, I still like this game quite a bit. Might actually like it a bit more now since comparing it to NMH so closely. I really hope Travis Strikes Again can build on this when it comes to how well it controls.