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“The best defense is a good offense.”

It’s a time-tattered adage, but few have ever actually seen its principles applied successfully, sage advice for sage advice’s sake, for those who take to the combative field of war or sports. It’s also the adage of a videogame developer handed the keys to another developer’s city, entrusted with the future – if even just a spinoff – of their beloved franchise, and all of the outraged fans that creates.

“A good videogame developer defense is a quality videogame offense”

Three years on and a lot has happened since Revengeance’s original unveiling – a game first shown simply as “Rising” – paraded in front of the frothing E3 crowds, before being sent, silently, to the videogame graveyard to rest with its peers. There it lay, snugly, next to the grave of Starcraft: Ghost, amongst the pre-dug yet still empty plot of The Last Guardian, neighbouring Final Fantasy’s hopes of recapturing its past. But like Raiden himself – a man captured from the jaws of near death, infused with cybernetics and rebuilt with ingenious minds, so too is Rising reborn as Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, under the guidance of Platinum Games.

What a difference a new developer makes.

Left behind are the skulking ways of Solid Snake, so too the darkness of the shadows that would hug him close when prying eyes searched him out. Instead, with Platinum at the helm, Raiden’s standalone debut is pure action, in both head and heart, finally putting to good use that old adage: “The best defense is a good offense”. Those seven words are the foundation of Revengeance’s combat – the life or death of any action game – powered by Raiden’s quest for revenge against those who would pull others through the torture that made him what he is, embodied in its active Parry system that rewards those who parry, and parry well. Blocking is too mundane a task for Raiden – action games intoxicate with their speed, and Raiden is, thankfully, time poor. Time your parry right and Raiden will stay the incoming attack, time it perfectly and watch as he counterattacks, breaking free of the shackles of the enemies surrounding him and letting loose.

Revengeance’s combat is a reward loop in microcosm, repeated ad-infinitum in every encounter lining its campaign of some five hours – a refreshingly honest length that closes out only as it begins to outstay its welcome, and its camera’s love of highlighting Raiden’s deft combat movements over the actual enemies he’s fighting begins to grate. Engage, weaken, parry and then slice – it’s Revengeance’s four stages to success, armed with that much talked about blade, and a stable of side-arms that grows over time.

This isn’t Platinum’s most nuanced combat system – lighter on combos and hidden depth – but in its deceptively simple combination of button-mashing accessibility and the fine-tuned hand eye coordination of its Active Parry, it embodies a sense of unabashed power few videogame power-trip fantasies accomplish.

And then pull the left trigger, slow down time, and watch the game change.

Here is where that blade does the talking, once Raiden’s power gauge is filled, completing a reward loop that other games would stretch out over the entirety of an eight hour campaign: weakness, strength, and overpowered destruction. Directed with one stick and enacted with the other, Raiden slices his opponents into pieces, limited only by the number of times you can swipe that stick back and forth as your energy drains. It’s a should-be-gimmick turned pivotal gameplay mechanic: Slice at the right time, and the right place, and rip the very life force out of every Cyborg to the rapturous applause of a deafening thunderclap, turned on its head during any one of Revengeance’s stable of fittingly grand boss battles where nuance and your skill with its parry system are put to a true test.

So it’s a brave new world for Metal Gear Solid/Metal Gear Rising, broaching new territory, but amongst Platinum’s stable – for a studio so in love with the absurd, crafting games around soldiers with rocket-propelled shoes and a witch who fights in high-heels – MGR: Revengeance can, at times, feel decidedly safe – such a foreign theory for a series unafraid of the absurdity of not one, not two, but repeated twenty minute cut scenes and a plot so insane it near threatens to fold in on itself at every turn. It’s not in subject matter – Platinum only knows how far out of MGS’s comfort zone this detour is, the only ones who could throw in wall-running, jumping between missiles mid-air and bringing down constructs ten times your size and still have it be considered pedestrian – but while its presentation may lack the bombastic flare of their previous work, this is Platinum effectively balancing accessibility with nuance.

“War isn’t fun and games”, Raiden later states, somewhere around the halfway point when he finds himself at the height of his internal struggle with the morality of his actions: To save some by killing others. A good thing, then, that Platinum never received that memo: crafters of a game brought back from the dead, infused with nano tech that powers its protagonist and his blade, but unlike dead series past dredged up for money and profit, Raiden has a purpose: to dazzle and empower. What a difference a new developer makes.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was reviewed on the Xbox 360, a copy of the game was provided by Konami/Mindscape Australia.

NeoGAF, home of leaks, game memes and sometimes questionable gifs, today uncovered a post on a different Spanish forum by a Ubisoft developer by the alias of Zeta69. His actual name is Xavier.

In the post (which was translated from Spanish by GAF user 'beje'), Xavier explains that the decision to delay Rayman: Legends to September and port the what once was a Wii U-exclusive title to Xbox 360 and PS3 was not made by the development team and that the decision came from "really high up". Not surprising, given how these sorts of decisions usually are made.

Xavier continues to speak for the development team, saying that they "couldn't believe" the delay, after months of working on demos for various trade shows while also working on the main game itself, finally getting themselves on track for a February launch, to hear that the game would be pushed back by seven months.

He says that most of the team have now "spent 6 months barely seeing our [families] for nothing because, after all, such a haste wasn't needed."

"Believe it," Xavier continues, "it was a hell to swallow these [sic] news."

He concludes his post by stating "Rayman Legends is an excellent game and will still be, and the team that's making it doesn't deserve to have your back turned on them just because some men in ties one day took a wrong choice. This industry is really that shitty."

This post answered what were some general questions regarding how the decision was handed down and whether the development team really needed time to work on the game after the announcement to cancel the Wii U exclusivity plans and bring the game out simultaneously for Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii U was announced less than an hour ago.

The announcement was handed down just hours before Ubisoft held their official conference call for the company's 3rd quarter sales.

The unanswered question remains why did Ubisoft decide to do this? The answer is most probably for marketing and sales reasons, however, it's probably something that may never be formally revealed.

To get the armour, you have to make sure you've got a Mass Effect 3 save on the platform you're picking up Dead Space 3 on.

March 21 is the day you can pick up the memorable Xbox LIVE Arcade game, Trials Evolution on PC. Trials Evolution: Gold Edition will be available for purchase on the PC both digitally and in retail stores. The port is being handled by Ubisoft Shanghai under RedLynx's (Trials original developers') supervision.

The game is currently in a Closed Beta for a select handful of players.

Nintendo just announced that Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate will be hitting the Nintendo Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS on the 23rd of March 2013 for Australia and New Zealand. As expected both copies will also be available digitally through the eShops on their respective platforms.

There's some other good news, too. Demos for both platforms will be available late next month, on the 21st of February.