If there’s one thing that people can expect with near-perfect consistency from Platinum Games, it’s visually-stunning, over-the-top, balls-to-the-wall ridiculous action that runs on the rule of “if it’s cool, do it”. This stretches all the way back to their beginnings as Clover Studios with the Viewtiful Joe series and God Hand, and they’ve made some of the most unique games of the past few years as Platinum with Bayonetta, Vanquish, MadWorld and The Wonderful 101. So when this studio was chosen to continue the Metal Gear series, reactions were…mixed. Metal Gear Solid is about stealth, after all, why choose the least subtle developer in the world to make it? Because Platinum weren’t making a Metal Gear Solid game, they were making a Platinum game, and by god did they pull it off. Every single boss fight in this game is gold, so I’m going to run you through the best ones now, and hopefully encourage you to get the game if you haven’t experienced this crazy-awesome cyborg blade-fest yet.
Metal Gear RAY
This is the first boss fight in the game, usually the best place to set the tone of the piece as a whole, and once you’ve fought this monstrosity you know exactly what you’re in for.
T
he fight involves Raiden blocking the huge mecha’s comically-oversized sword arm, then grabbing onto said arm and using it to hurl the entire mech into the sky, running up the length of it while slashing at the arm the whole time and shattering it to pieces.
The second phase of the fight involves the RAY launching a missile salvo at Raiden, which of course he uses as stepping stones to launch himself at the bosses’ other arm and slice it off too.
You’re then hurled against a clock tower and have to run down the length of the collapsing building before launching yourself at the ground like a bullet, slicing the RAY clean in two on your way down. And this whole time the epic track “Rules of Nature” is playing, and before Raiden gets his body upgraded to a state-of-the-art cyborg chassis. This is within the first ten minutes of the game and if it doesn’t sell you on it then I honestly have no idea what to tell you.
Monsoon
Fuckin’ Monsoon, man. Ask anyone who’s played Rising what their favorite boss fight was, and I guarantee most of them will namedrop this guy.
He’s an insane, nihilistic badass who openly goads Raiden into succumbing to his violent, bloodlusting “Jack the Ripper” persona, and that’s just the start. During the fight he uses his control over magnetism to hurl the tanks of an entired armoured military division at you, then their helicopters, then the debris of those formed into two giant spinning wheels of death, and finally a massive monument that Raiden simply uses as a platform to launch himself at the floating Monsoon.
His magnetic powers also extend to his own body, being a complete cyborg, he’s able to dodge your swings by separating his limbs into segments to make your blade pass clean through.
His song, “The Stains of Time”, is the most over-the-top in the whole game, with an opening riff that sounds like one of Dragonforce‘s warmup exercises, heavy use of double bass drum blast beats and lyrics about a storm coming to transform the world and destroy hope for a peaceful life, with only hatred remaining in its place.
Jetstream Sam
While the previous bosses were either against massive mechs or duels against antagonists with powers far beyond your own and lots of assistance, Jetstream Sam’s fight takes a different tack, asking you to test exactly how good you’ve become by putting you in a mano-a-mano duel against an opponent with the exact same abilities as you.
It’s a nice opportunity for revenge against the man who easily crippled Raiden so badly at the game’s opening he had to be upgraded to a high-tech machine, and you truly feel like you’ve come so far as you hold your own against it. And for extra awesome points, you find out halfway through the fight that Sam has no cyborg augmentations like you or the other Winds of Destruction besides one sole robot arm – meaning he’s this strong purely on his own.
His song, “The Only Thing I Know For Real”, describes how he’s been fighting for so long that he’s forgotten his reasons for doing so and that fighting for the sake of fighting has become its own reason, and later in the game we find out that finding a worthy opponent in Raiden was what Sam needed to be able to pass from the world peacefully.
Metal Gear EXCELCUS
Far bigger than any of the Metal Gears seen in the series up to this point, EXCELCUS is some unholy fusion of a kaiju-sized spider, a mecha and about seventy blades. The fight is preceded with a long cut-scene in which one of the game’s most memorable (and downright hilarious) characters kicks Raiden’s ass in person before hopping in this beast of destruction.
Beating it involves tearing its massive blade-arm off and slicing it up with its own detatched limb, while the totalitarian “Collective Consciousness” plays in the background.
Senator Steven Armstrong
After you trash his ride, Senator Armstrong jumps out of the cockpit to go head-to-head with Raiden, soundly beating you in a straight-up fight.
Blade Wolf bestows Sam’s blade to Raiden, giving Raiden the edge needed to take the Senator down in an excellent finishing move: punching right through Armstrong’s metal-coated torsos, tearing out his nanite-laced heart and crushing it in his hand.
It’s an epic end to a game filled with boss fights that are never anything less than amazing (I never even got to mention Blade Wolf, Mistral or Sundowner, either) and boss fight themes whose lyrics do a lot to get across each character’s personality and reasons for fighting. You should absolutely check out Revengeance if you haven’t already, and remember: it’s not a Metal Gear Solid game, it’s a Platinum game. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
