The Immortal Ninja Cat and Other Oddities Sure to Get Your Snake Solid in Time for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (VIDEO)

Not that it wasn't already, naturellement. We've been propelling high frequency incontinence-inducing gameplay excitement of this caliber into your faces for some time, after all. (See also: this blade-brandishing lunacy, for instance). As such, it's plain to the more attentive of us -or just those with even one goddamn functioning eyeball- that Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is a remarkable departure for the series.

Balls-out action with its big ol' hairy balls right out is the byword here (indeed, that was the original subtitle for the game before the producers wisely opted for a change. Although, let's be frank, Balls-Out Action With Its Big Ol' Hairy Balls Right Out is only marginally more preposterous than ‘Revengeance' anyway). Brandishing your mighty katana/pole arm/other alarming armaments at the steely gonads of assorted warriors in a theatrical Hollywood-tacular fashion is the new stealth. There's quite an action extravaganza on the way, right here.

Hopefully, this paradigm shift will enable us to forgo those half-hour Codec prattlings from decrepit old army bastards. (To wit: "Snake, help! My hip's effed up again! Snake, I've fallen, and I can't get up!" "Snake, there's a conspiracy, a counter-conspiracy, and a conspiracy to counter the counter-conspiracy going onALL AT THE SAME DAMN TIME.Also, here's a fifteen minute anecdote about a distant relative of mine that nobody gives a shit about.") Having been outsourced to the action genre maestros at Platinum Games, developers of Vanquish and Bayonetta, how much of the franchise's essential essence has been retained?

Metal Gear Solid master ninja, Hideo Kojima, has always had a penchant for demented, convoluted plots. The series' lore is now almost as incomprehensible as that Hungarian soap opera we tried to decipher one drunken night. Regardless, the games' cast always take each ludicrous development with the utmost po-faced solemnity (in a manner akin to Resident Evil). Juxtaposed with this, we also have Kojima's insistence upon adding the humorous, the whimsical and the what in the name of satan's saggy scrote?

The PlayStation's much-vaunted 1998 release had a secret mechanic to prevent the wolf-dogs in the cave from attacking you: piss. By duping a cub into relieving itself onto the cardboard box you were cruising about in like a loon, you would take on the beast's scent. The subsequent games were rife with these quirky touches. Rollerskating cocktail-drinking fatass bosses, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater's array of moronically-jangling hidden Kerotan toys, the rat hunt after the hairy little bastard takes off with the PAL key... animal comedy is a vital component of Metal Gear.

There's a proud legacy of angry wildlife urinating on your stubbly face to live up to, then. Revengeance achieves this in the fledgling stages of the game with its infernal mofo of an invincible ninja cat. Appearing at the conclusion of a training mission, this fiendish feline looks innocuous enough, as it languishes about licking its own bollocks, taking a dump in the neighbor's yard and whatever else cats do all day. Try to smite it with your death-blade of blood-leaking stabby death, though, and its awesome backflippery will blow your mind right out of your skull. Possibly.

We've briefly brought this guy to your attention before, but the above footage demands your eye-tention. Several times over.