Yes, I'm talking about that thing to the left. Let me get this straight: while I wasn't exactly thrilled that you only got to play about 30 minutes as Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, I didn't hate Raiden. He played just like Snake and allowed a different perspective on the Metal Gear universe. Sure his conversations with Rose made me thank the heavens I don't have to live with a woman but I still liked the guy.
This wasn't the opinion of the "Internets" though. They pretty much hated him from being blond, whiney, androgynous looking and most of all for not being Snake.
From this point, I thought, well to each his own Kojima will just drop the character and return to Snake which he did with Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater but then came Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and much to my surprise Raiden was back... well kinda.
He shows up as a modern day Robo-Cop, half-man half machine and proceeds to execute a huge group of Gekkos (who somehow bleed but that's not important right now) in a very over the top manner. While I know the intended reaction was something along the lines of "Wow Raiden is so badass now!" all I could think of was that Kojima was trying too hard. I was completely turned off by it, I could almost hear Kojima screaming in the background "See! I told you Raiden was cool! Look he can bounce around and slice metal like butter, now do you love him? DO YOU?!"
Of course, then you resume playing with your character, Old Snake, but now he suddenly looks like a worthless cripple with a bad mustache compared to Mr. Jawless Ninja. All of it left a bad aftertaste in my mouth.
So there you have it, my dirty little secret: I don't like Mecha-Raiden at all and I think he's a lame attempt at redeeming a character that was not appreciated by the gaming community.
Am I alone?
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