AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Lining up the sword to hit that second rock Armstrong throws at you is probably the hardest part of the fight so far and that's stupid. You never really master correcting your position and making slices at that angle during normal gameplay.

Yeah, they really could have done a lot more to prepare you for that. You can, by the way, dodge that attack by running to the side.

Cutting the left hands and Sundowner are your preparations for precision cutting but sometime swinging randomly gets you the arm just fine and Sundowner's a pushover, shielded or not.

You're not on a 3-second timer during Sundowner though, and it's not an instakill if you miss.

The death rock isn't an instant kill, it just happens to do 100% damage, so you can tank through it provided that you didn't get hit earlier and aren't doing a Naked and Unloved run.

Actually, it does a full health bar's worth of damage, I know because I could reach that part with 140% hp and it would still kill me because I had no nanopaste. Might be different on lower difficulties. The rest of the fight was pretty easy, I got very familiar with his patterns because I did the first part so many times.

Anyway, I'm doing the DLC now. Blade Wolf's got a lot easier once I realized that the best way was to backstab everything. Sam vs Blade Wolf is pretty daisies hard, I need to figure out the trick to the fight.

After that, I'll probably start my Very Hard run.

Edit: then I proceeded to beat Blade Wolf on the next try. I just had to parry his air charge, deal some damage so that he would retreat and then I had a window to do an assault rush which dealt a lot of damage. Repeat a few times.

Just got Metal Gear Rising from Kmart, gonna start playing when I get home. My body is ready.

I think the Armstrong perfect-cutting-death-throw actually does like 150% no Hard because I know I've just outright survived it before without using a nanopaste. Also I forgot to mention but you only need to line up 2 or 3 boxes (I forget which), not actually perfect.

You haven't played any of the MGS games, right? The story might confuse you just a tiny bit. By which I mean you won't know who any of the recurring characters are or what the hell is going on. 2 and 4 would set most of the backstory, since those feature Raiden and explain the Patriots, war economy and so on.

Ok, heres my synopsis

-So far I reached the first "stealth" session with the box, my main complaint is...why? Why do we need a bloody box to break up the pacing of the game? I get there's tradition but seriously? This is a god daisies fighter akin to Devil May Cry, why do people still try to muck these two genres up when they just don't work together?

-The controls are clunky as hell, Raiden does run rather fast which is nice, but the control here is just atrocious, there are multiple times when I'm trying precise platforming.

At this point, I started to take a few mental notes, this was when I noticed this game had uncanny similarities to Batman:Arkham City, hands down my favorite 3D beat-em up.

In Batman Arkham City, Batman controlled beautifully, and his speed was just perfect for clean, smooth control, unlike Raiden who just jitters all over the place with his Ninja Run, and I could easily counter most of the mooks in that game, it's litterally the only bloody 3D beat-em up where I don't button mash.(Yes, I'm a dreadful button masher.)

-Why is blocking such a god daisies chore, you bodaciously have to press X which you ALSO ATTACK WITH at the right time, and like I said, button mashing in my case doesn't help, why didn't they just have left trigger do it instead of the absolutely useless sub-weapons, why would I use an RPG while my sword just gets the job done way faster? Subweapons are just pointless to me in this game, and it wastes a space that I truly think that the block could have placed. Arkham City had you counter with Y which was miles easier to understand and master.

-Like I've seen with the series, the game has memorable antagonists and memorable boss fights, not to mention the music is just fucking gorgeous.

I'll get deeper as I go along, but if this doesn't get any better, I might consider returning it.

You can parry bodaciously everything but yellow attacks and fire and, no, parrying works fine. You just move the stick toward the attack while pressing Light Attack and you need to time it correctly. You say button-mashing is an issue and that's probably what's tripping you up really badly because if you set up the parry way too early, Raiden will end up eating the attack. You can also parry while you're getting hit, provided that you're not getting launched horizontally (don't know why and I'm probably wrong with this).

Also, stop holding Ninja Run during combat because you'll never get anything done in a reasonable timeframe and just hit Light Attack toward your target because Raiden will move in on that guy.

Also also, stealth isn't mandatory and some ranked fights will even get skipped if you sneak it out. Outside of potential convenience, titles (that do nothing), maybe bonus BP, and an achievement/trophy, stealth doesn't matter at all.

I'm surprised you haven't mentioned the camera because that has more of a tendency to fuck up everything more than any lapse of focus.

Protip of the day: don't buttonmash.

I'll never not love the laugh Sam does after a successful Zandatsu. It's simply perfect.