Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance preview - Hands-on with Platinum's Slap Chop

When we first saw Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (back when it was called Metal Gear Solid: Rising) a few years ago we were interested in the premise, but unsure as to how the Metal Gear Solid team's experience with stealth-based titles would translate to an action-packed slasher. The answer, apparently, was very poorly - after a few years of development the game was nearly cancelled, until Vanquish and Bayonetta developer Platinum took over, and quickly turned Revengeance into a game we finally got to play at E3 2012 - and one that we want to play more of. Like, right now. Seriously, we might try and go back to play more before E3 is over.

We only played through the tutorial of the game, which takes the form of a VR mission in which protagonist, Raiden, learns how to use his different ninja abilities, but it gave us some great insight into the actual gameplay. Within a few minutes we had learned how to use Raiden's skills, which include dashing, jumping over objects, and cutting literally everything into tiny, tiny pieces.

Fighting opponents builds up a meter that allowed us to slow down time for incredibly precise slashes of our sword. Like, super, duper precise. Holding the right analog stick to any side will put a line on the screen, and flicking in the opposite direction slices whatever was in-between the line in half. And then we could do it again.

And again.

And again.

And again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. And again.

With a few flicks we turned a watermelon into a few dozen chunks of fruit, and doing the same motions on an enemy will result in the human (or a blood-filled cyborg, or whatever) being broken down into many small, more manageable chunks of person.

We were amazed at how tight the controls were, and how quickly we went from learning the basics to executing incredibly awesome attacks on several opponents at once, doing whatever we wanted to take them down. At one point, when faced with two enemies standing next to each other, we killed them both with a slice right above their eyes - the top half of their head tumbled to the ground as their bodies fell in a bloody heap. It was awesome.

By the end of the tutorial we had chopped apart a few dozen structures, our body count was tremendous, and we had cut a freaking helicopter into 48 different pieces. No, that's not a random exaggeration - the game actually tells you how many pieces something was cut into. And that was just in the first 15 minutes. We'll need to wait until early 2013 to see what the remaining hours are like.