In the gif, you can also see that Raiden's FC bar is red and flashing with lightning. It looks like it's indicating that he's ready to go into the berserk mode shown in that recent Gamespot trailer and, presumably, the DLC skin one when Gray Fox is ripping through enemies.
I wonder how we activate it. Maybe tapping the blade mode button?
That gif unfortunately also demonstrates the automation that is built into the game(that little hop at the beginning is automatic, along with how it homes into the enemy). What's the deal with that, Platinum.
The automation is weird for the genre, but I think it'll help more than hurt. It's the same deal with the extreme amount of homing the dive kick has (maybe we'll see a lot of air targets?). It's something players will eventually get used to, and it seems like it's meant to keep the action going. In crowds, you will be hopping from one enemy to the other, so streamlining the process of getting to them without being forced to stinger/dive kick/slide your way to each one seems like a reasonable compromise, especially when parries are involved. There's also probably a reason why ninja running over stunned enemies only works right when you begin the run, not when it's sustained. Some things are really hard to extrapolate from the demo, so it's understandable to be confused by developer intent at this point.
Tbh, the camera going crazy with soft/hard lock-on in tiny areas and screwing up your parries is what I'm most worried about.
edit:
L3+R3 would be my guess. It's the rage button du jour.
Meh. I didn't mind that in GoW, but the camera was fixed. R3 is camera reset, so...barf. At least with L3+R3, there's the chance that we will be able to cancel out of it if we need to. I wanted that option for near-death AR mode in Vanquish, but it didn't exist.
I'm guessing it's to compensate for the lack of movement options Raiden seems to have in comparison to games like DMC and Bayo where you got teleports, air dashes, panther mode and whip/devil bringer etc
Yeah, read my mind.