I'm glad I didn't shell out ten clams for this. A lot of recycled content played through with a character whose playstyle is pretty boring and linear.
The DLC puts the player in control of Jetstream Sam, before he joined the Desperado mercenary group. The Brasilian Samurai travels to Denver in order to assault the headquarters of Desperado's parent company, World Marshall. Area-wise, he begins in sewers eerily reminiscent of R-02 in the main game (and even lampshades this with a snide comment about how these sewers feel awfully familiar) transitioning to the locales of R-04 (the chapter in which Raiden ran rampant through World Marshall's building) with a few rooms made for the DLC. The encounters within the area, however, are changed up as are item box locations, filled with sub-weapon pickups as well as health/energy upgrades (Sam does not purchase his upgrades as his DLC is only one long mission, slightly larger than any one of Raiden's outings). One can't really fault a dev for being economical and reusing assets that aren't central to the action gaming experience; I don't really care too much about the (uninteractive) scenery in these types of games. Lord knows I've spent dozens of hours in the generic arenas of things like DMC2-4 Bloody Palace, Bayonetta's Lost Chapter, NG2 Survival Mode, or God Hand's arena. It's all about the combat and mechanics, not the feng shui of the place it's set in.
But Sam's design leaves a lot to be desired. While he certainly plays differently from Raiden, it's not a terribly fun playstyle. And that's a typo or misuse of verbiage...Sam can't be played in many ways like Raiden can, being mostly built around a gimmicky Taunt ability.
See, the Cool Wind of Brasil relies upon his sword, lacking any of the secondary options Raiden could bust out (L'Etranger, Tactical Sai, Pincer Blades) to change things up. And like Raiden's sword, the moveset isn't terribly interesting. Sure, there are different strings, but few of them have compelling properties, few of them are really worthwhile in a tactical sense. HF-Blade movesets in MGR lack strings with the distinctive properties that other action games that follow the combo-tree model (e.g. Ninja Gaiden, Lords of Shadow, Bayonetta) have in the movesets of their weaponry.
Unless one is playing Revengeance to look cool, throwing in things like Breakdances or Palm Thrusts because they're awesome to watch, (non-Parry, non-Ripper) offense with the HF-Blade is mostly going to revolve around spamming one move that stuffs the most damage output into the fewest quantity of frames. With Raiden, this was either Sky High (->->Light) or his Stinger-like move (->->Heavy), using Blade Mode to cancel the recovery frames for faster spamming. With Sam, it's a similar story. Either use Quick Draw ([Hold] Heavy) or spam Assault Rush (->-> Heavy) and cancel recovery with Blade Mode. Hell, Assault Rush is really good, being a fast, high-damage, unblockable, launching move. It's like Sky High rolled in with the unblockable aerial heavy of the Polearm.
Platinum clearly tried to give Sam some different basic properties and core moves to set him apart from Raiden, but save the Taunt/Dodge, few of them have any real impact.
Sam is supposed to be more of an aerial character, having a double jump, an air dash, and the ability to charge his Quick Draw while airborne. But MGR doesn't really reward aerial combat. It's not particularly safe, it's not powerful, and it really doesn't *feel* all that good. It's just...there. As such, these additions to Sam's character do little to spice up the core combat gameplay, only making for some mildly entertaining platforming at some points (a lot more fun than Raiden's Insta-Parkour).
Parrying isn't really Sam's forte. His parry has a lot longer recovery and his perfect parry seems a little slower, and more often auto-dodged by enemies. Furthermore, Taunted enemies cannot be perfect parried and they will actually deal chip damage through regular parries.
His dodge shares the same input as Raiden's Offensive Defense, but is a somersault/cartwheel instead of a dash plus slash. It's a bit longer of an animation, but is wreathed in invincibility frames. Strangely, Sam can't offset his strings with a dodge like Raiden can, greatly reducing his ability to utilize longer combo strings in pitched combat; Dodge Offset was really the only thing that made a lot of Raiden's longer strings even viable on higher difficulties. And it's also rather odd that Sam wasn't designed to be able to "store" Quick Draw charge status while dodging, a la Bayonetta and Shuraba/Pillow-Talk; this would have made the mechanic much more versatile and interesting to use, allowing good players to build up charge in even the most heated combats, as opposed to only being able to use it in "safe" times.
Finally, there's his Taunt, the gimmick he's pretty much built around. Sam can press Up on the directional pad and he'll ape Giantdad, asking enemies "Well, what is it?" and enraging them. Angered enemies will briefly show a red symbol over their head and carry a reddish glow for as long as the remain in the Taunted state. Enraged enemies attack more often, do more damage, and tend to prioritize different moves, usually making much greater use of dash attacks or grabs. However, enemies take an enormous penalty to their defense when Taunted, with damage amounts and de-limbing chances that make it seem like Sam has engaged Ripper Mode.
The content is mostly built around this mechanic, as without Taunting, Sam's damage output is rather lackluster, but with it he can match the sort of speed with which Raiden dispatches foes. And this isn't really a good thing as Sam's playstyle becomes incredibly linear, forcing the player to follow the line of play that is [Taunt->Attack].
Linear playstyles aren't always bad, though, but it's just not particularly fun in this instance. Take cyborg fights, for example. Taunted cyborgs, even Heavies, are piss easy to dispatch with Quick Draw; they die extremely quickly and don't really have much of a way to interrupt a charge from afar. Fights against (most) UGs are a bit more difficult, but not much more interesting. The player Taunts them, and then dodges around to find opening in which to attack, occasionally refreshing the Taunt status.
Sam's style is just not compelling in the same way as Raiden's gameplay was. With Raiden, the entire game was designed so that the player could always be on the offense. The parry system and Offensive Defense allowed skilled players to deal with enemy attacks while simultaneously meting out damage. That's what set it apart from other action games wherein the defensive techniques force gaps in a player's offensive tempo. But the same can't be said of Sam, as he's pretty much like most other action game characters in that his defensive moves, which he is often forced to utilize, stall his aggression.
The content side of this extra chapter doesn't really make up for the mechanical shortcomings either.
All of the enemies and bosses are recycled from the original game, though some have received significant tuning, especially Blade Wolf, Mastiffs, and Senator Armstrong. Tuned-up enemies are faster, more aggressive, and some even sport improved moves (or even new ones in the case of Mr. Nanomachines). It's good to see some effort put into improving the enemies, but many of the tune-ups make the enemies a lot less fun to fight. For every benign upgrade (like Blade Wolf or Metal Gear RAY), there's something obnoxious (Mastiffs and Armstrong). Speeding up weaker bosses, making them more aggressive and choose better moves is a great way to spice up old content. Making an enemy type that was already bordering on "cheap" even more absurd (enjoy some asinine attack stacks when taunting three Mastiffs; sometimes there is no way to avoid damage) is kinda silly. Taking a challenging (and fun) endboss and morphing him into a grab-spamming, attack-canceling, death-dealing uberboss? Out comes Graham Chapman's Colonel...things have gotten way too silly here.
There aren't any new enemy designs built around Sam's unique abilities, and none of the enemies were significantly altered to be more fun as Sam. A quick example of what they could have done is to make Armstrong's fire wall attack have less height, enough for Sam to leverage his double-jumping abilities to vault over them and reposition, perhaps in a less compact area with more room to move/dodge. The fight becomes different and it makes Sam's unique abilities stand out more. Do this with a few other enemy/boss attacks, or give them specific weaknesses only Sam could exploit, and bam! More interesting content.
All in all, the Jetstream Sam DLC feels like a far inferior version of the base game. It's okay if you want to play something a little different for an hour or three, want some variety, or want content that pushes you out of your playstyle comfort zone...but I'd have been pretty unhappy spending tenbux on this.
