EG Expo staff's Game of the Show: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

How's your Expo been so far? Three days in and there's a certain happy fatigue setting in, with a fistful of highlights already and the sense that there's still plenty left to see.

Frank O'Connor laid out 343's take on Microsoft's killer first person franchise, while everyone's been able to sample some of Halo 4's multiplayer themselves - as well as some branded Mountain Dew that's got a worrying green glow.

Treyarch's David Vonderhaar - an intense man whose intensity's perhaps been bolstered by the fact that his game's garnering the longest queues at the show - gave some insight on what it's like working on one of entertainment's biggest properties, while the lovely Chet Faliszek was kind enough to offer advice on how to get a job in the industry. It's surprisingly easy, apparently.

And then there are the games. It's a wonderfully diverse medium, and five minutes on the show floor suggests as much - daring souls take to the Just Dance 4 bus, while even braver ones take to the delightfully hardcore BaraBariball.

There's pretty much everything in between as well, whether that's the achingly pretty Grid 2, the devilish Hitman: Absolution or the hard-edged challenge of Hotline Miami, which brings to the Expo a playable recreation of the show floor for players to wreak havoc on (please, please don't tell the Daily Mail).

This year the Expo's also been lucky to have a special guest celebrating a special anniversary. Hideo Kojima's arguably one of the few auteurs making big budget games, and this year sees Metal Gear reach its 25th year.

The cinematic, eccentric and increasingly self-conscious series has become entwined with Kojima himself, a fact he acknowledged to a rapt developer session audience as he explains how Snake has aged with him, the older, wiser lead of the forthcoming Ground Zeroes reflecting an older, wiser creator.

Funnily enough, though, it's a Metal Gear game that's been created outside the nest of Kojima Productions that's our game of the show.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Metal Gear Rising was always a bit of an odd one, taking one of the series' least popular characters and giving him a game of his own. Following a period of silence and a change of developer, it re-emerged stranger still, sporting a brilliantly twisted new title and an added emphasis on over-the-top action.

Now that Revengeance has properly broken cover, it's emerged that there's a brilliant logic to the partnership of Platinum and the Metal Gear series - this is an overblown, eccentric action game, and it's delivered with a punchiness that Kojima's game have perhaps lacked.

It's also rock solid. The show-floor demo's been spewing people out - a sentient, chainsaw wielding robo-dog was the death of me - but beyond the challenge there's tight, balletic combat delivered with a twist of extremely satisfying violence. Revengeance is a f**k-'em-up of the most stylish order.