Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is scheduled for a release on Xbox 360 and PS3 systems in the middle of February and has now become one of the most anticipated games of Q1 2013. After initial criticism, it looks like fans are well and truly behind Raiden’s new hack and slash adventure, but if Hideo Kojima had his way with the game, we could have seen a Metal Gear Rising title which featured Gray Fox instead.

For those of you who don’t remember, Gray Fox was the ninja from the Metal Gear Solid series and one of the defining characters of Metal Gear Solid on the PS1. Metal Gear Rising has now been developed by Platinum Games of course, who were in charge of the likes of Bayonetta, with Hideo Kojima only serving as the game’s executive producer.

However, in a recent interview with IGN, he has revealed that if the project went ahead under his full guidance, it would feature the legendary Gray Fox instead – a move which fans may have actually preferred given the cyborg ninja’s popularity from the original MGS games. That would have taken a lot more personal time to write a script Kojima said though, and added that passing the torch to the younger generation of developers was a lot more important than personal preference over the main character.

Raiden is the hero that you’ll play with though and early impressions of the new look game seem very positive indeed. Don’t forget that a demo is releasing on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Store this week, so you’ll be able to try the game and decide for yourself whether this spin-off Metal Gear title is worth your cash or not.

What are your thoughts on Kojima’s idea to have Gray Fox as a main character instead of Raiden? Would you like to see this explored further in the future?

We have some good news for those of you who are patiently awaiting the arrival of Konami’s MGS spinoff, which will hit retailers and online stores next year as Metal Gear Solid: Rising Revengeance. There has been plenty of criticism over the game due to the hack and slash nature that Metal Gear fans are not used to be seeing, but the good thing to note is that Konami is giving everyone a chance to try before purchasing with the release of a demo early next year on the Xbox 360 and PS3 online marketplaces.

We actually think Metal Gear Rising looks rather good. Truth be told it isn’t the stealth affair that we’ve all come to love thanks to Snake and his adventures, but it is a nice break from the norm and don’t forget we’ll soon be getting our stealthy Metal Gear Solid fix back with Ground Zeroes and possibly even Phantom Pain too if that turns out to be a secret Metal Gear game, which looks very likely at this point.

As announced on Twitter, we can tell you that the Metal Gear Rising demo will be available for download sometime in January. Konami hasn’t set a solid release date yet, but the demo will be available in all regions, so there will be no waiting an extra few weeks for UK consumers compared to everywhere else, as we usually see happen with other games.

As a further bit of good news, we can already show you exactly what you’ll be getting as well. Die hard fans who have bought the Zone of the Enders HD Collection already have access to the demo as a little bonus. Inevitably, the gameplay has already found its way onto YouTube and you’ll find the entire Rising demo gameplay below – offering more than 20 minutes of gameplay.

The demo will give you a nice tutorial on how to get to grips with some of Raiden’s basic combos with his blade and following that you’ll then be able to play through an entire mission from the campaign mode. It’s also worth pointing out that the visuals look a lot better than what we saw in early builds and what a lot of gamers were initially complaining about.

Have you changed your mind about Metal Gear Rising? With Snake returning in Ground Zeroes and then possibly again in Phantom Pain, will you now be picking up Rising as a nice appetizer? Check out the footage below and see how nice the game looks now. We’ll let you know when a solid release date for the demo has been finalized.

If you head to Konami’s E3 website now, you’ll see that there’s some bizarre battle going right now on a PES football pitch between various Konami characters. However, on June 1st at 12am Pacific Time, the website will be providing a stream of what is in store to come during the company’s actual E3 keynote.

We fully expect to see the likes of Metal Gear Solid: Rising and PES 2013 at the event, while speculation appears to have confirmed that Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 will be one of the main announcements as well. The Metal Gear Solid HD Collection is due to be released on Vita next month as well, so we’re guessing that Konami will be showing off some final gameplay of that to advertise the game a little bit before release.

What about the Zone of the Enders HD Collection as well? This has gone under the radar a bit while Konami focused on the Metal Gear Collection, so hopefully we’ll see some solid footage from this game as well. Other than that – Konami has the rest of the event to wow attendees and viewers with some brand new announcements.

Is it far too early to be thinking of Metal Gear Solid 5? A new Silent Hill game would be great to see as well. Konami seems to think that having a pre-E3 show will draw in a higher audience, so we just hope that they have some bombs to drop aside from the content that everyone is already expecting to see.

From our point of view, there’s probably a bit of added pressure since they now have the opportunity to drop the first massive announcements at E3 before Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo take to the stage. What are you expecting from Konami at E3?

In recent months though, anticipation has been building for the game’s next global showing at E3 2012, and this week Konami has sent excitement levels through the roof by confirming that the game will be playable at the event in Los Angeles next month.

To build up the next appearance of Metal Gear Rising, Konami has released a very short teaser clip, showing the introduction to the playable demo that will be available to play for lucky attendees of the event. As you can imagine, not a lot is shown in the clip but we do get to see Raiden on the title screen, which is fairly exciting in itself.

At the moment there is no set release date for the game, but we fully expect Konami to announce some kind of Fall 2012 release for the game during their pre-E3 conference. Will it end up being a live event though, or a pre-recorded one like last year? One game that will definitely be making an appearance is Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 which was leaked for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PS Vita earlier this week.

What are your thoughts on Metal Gear Rising at the moment? Is it still a game that you are very interested in buying, or are you waiting until the series returns to its stealth roots?

Platinum Games are now developing the game alongside Kojima Productions and Hideo Kojima’s watchful eye, but new footage of the game which aired at the awards is now the subject of big debate, with many gamers feeling that this new Metal Gear game isn’t heading in the direction that fans of the legendary franchise had hoped.

To give you an idea of the changes, we’ve picked out a great video which you probably haven’t seen yet, which compares the old and initial Metal Gear Rising gameplay, with new Rising gameplay which is taken from Platinum Games’ new build of the game. There are significant changes from the two versions as you’ll see below, the most obvious of which is the fact that the new re-imagining of the game now takes fundamental elements from the ‘hack and slash’ genre, as opposed to the original footage which fans believed would still maintain that core ‘stealth’ element which has become a key feature of the franchise.

Platinum Games are a team which have also developed titles such as Bayonetta and Vanquish, which gives a clear explanation to the frantic Ninja Gaiden style gameplay that now features prominently in the game. Fans are obviously divided on their opinions on the game at the moment, but with Kojima Productions still collaborating with Platinum Games for the 2012 game, Mr Kojima obviously feels that fans are still in good hands by passing the majority of tasks over to Platinum Games.

On a side note, we’ve also got a fascinating interview from Konami to show you, which gives you an exact idea into the thought process behind the decision to switch to Platinum Games as an added development team. There’s also some new gameplay footage from Metal Gear Rising to check out towards the end, so make sure you watch that as well.

After seeing the old and new builds of the game, what is your overall feeling towards Metal Gear Rising? Are you slightly more optimistic about the project now after watching the interview video, or do you believe that the old version should have been finished solely by Kojima Productions and left untouched?