With the unexpected online popularity of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, players may be tempted to experience the fast-paced gameplay and crazy storyline for themselves. However, the tutorials provided in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance are not always clear, resulting in crucial moments being interrupted by a player's inability to heal midway through an intense battle.
Despite Rising's debatable canon status in the Metal Gear universe, a recent spike in popularity arisen from memes being shared has led to renewed interest in the game. Therefore, it is important for newer gamers to know precisely how to use their health pickups on demand in order to make good progress when tackling the eponymous mecha.
Newcomers to the Metal Gear series' oft-disturbing moments may be unaware of how the franchise deals with specific context-sensitive moments like automatic healing.
How to Heal in Metal Gear Rising
Unlike regenerative health, the player can choose two ways to heal depending on their play style: opening the weapons/equip menu and manually selecting any health item that increases Raiden's HP level.
The second way is to equip a health item in the active window, which will automatically be used up whenever Raiden's health hits zero. However, it is wise for players to frequently check the number of finite health pickups they have, so they don't get a nasty surprise when trying to replenish health with no pickups in the inventory.
Health items come in different varieties across the game, either as standard pickups or obtained from successfully dispatching enemies.
These items include Repair Nanopaste, which ties into some particularly infamous Metal Gear Solid themes, and the Electrolyte Pack. When activated, EPs allow Raiden to enter Blade Mode and take on any number of enemies, so players should be sure to learn this technique early on for critical phases of battle later on in-game.
A game like Rising depends on the player's ability to quickly learn the frantic game layout designed by PlatinumGames. Some abilities are not mentioned anywhere in the game, such as lag-canceling long attacks by tapping the Blade Mode button.
While some could argue it feels more rewarding to gamers who discover these useful tricks for themselves, it can also leave some people locked out of the best techniques for tackling tougher enemies.
Following Raiden's cyborg journey from Metal Gear lore, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance deals with a series of action-based mech battles and blade fighting as a unique entry in the wacky storyline created by Hideo Kojima. The surge in attention and memes it has received only adds to its surprisingly long-lasting legacy.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is out now on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.
