Jet Li is cool. So is motion capturing. So are movies. This game incorporates all of the above. And isn't all that cool.
User Rating: 4.4 | Rise to Honour PS2
Admittedly Jet Li has done for Hong Kong Cinema in the new Millennium what Jackie Chan did for it in the 70ies and 80ies.That in itself is a great feat. Sure, there is some fall out in Jet Li's long Filmography as actor, but that's bound to show up when you star in 2 movies or more a year. And that's a modest estimate. Jet Li's appearances in video games on the other hand are not that often. As far as i know, up to the date of this writing there was only one: "Rise To Honor". Call me harsh if you will, but this foray into the realm of interactive digital entertainment is an 80% failure. The premise of the game is as simple as it gets: replay the movie "Rise To Honor" as the main character. And that's really it. No alternative takes on the action, no missions out of what was in the movie. Of course, everything is stretched out and lengthened a little bit, but basically you go along with the movie, scene by scene. The plot in a nutshell: Kit is an undercover cop in a Triad gang, working as body guard of the benevolent clan leader. While the clan leader is trying to move his clan out of the seedy organized crime racket, Kit is trying to uncover the dark underbelly of the organisation. But it all soon turns awry and Kit has to fly from Hong Kong to San Francisco to find somebody. The whole game revolves around 3 various modes of gameplay: melee fight, shoot-outs and sneaking and jump-and-run-ish parts. The lion's share is engulfed by melee fighting, with shoot-outs a close second and the stealth and jump & run parts making up only a small fraction of the entire game. When in a melee fight Kit is very easy to control. The left analogue stick moves the character while the right analogue stick triggers attacks in the direction you slap the stick. Repeated slapping of the stick - no, don't say what you're thinking, that joke is WAY too obvious - in one direction results in a combo. Timed slapping in various directions begets multiple direction combos. Fortunately the enemy AI is dumb enough to run into your attacks slowly and easily anticipated. There's also a Max Payne loan: an adrenaline meter that allows you to put everything into slow-motion (yourself included) by pushing the L1 button and pull off some visually more intriguing combos. Sounds easy enough and that it is, but it is just as boring after a short while as it is simple. You will fight massive amounts of enemies and seeing the same animations over and over again, while only bashing the right analogue stick, can become dull incredibly fast. Sometimes you find various items to use in a melee fight, like sticks or iron bars. The game allows you to duck attacks by holding the R1 button down. When you hold R1 and L1 down at the same time you might be able to counter attack if you can push the right analogue stick in the right direction at the right time. You will need this for the stage bosses. Grabs are also included but are not recommended, since they do little damage and leave you open to enemy attacks... an opportunity which the enemy rarely uses, since you will be defeated most of the time by sheer numbers and not by smart AI. Shooting can yield more satisfaction, but only for the first couple of gun-fights. The mechanic is similar to the melee fights. You aim by pushing the right analogue stick in the direction of the enemy and push R2 to fire away. R1 allows you to go into hiding, but only in designated places. You can move while shooting, but can't shoot when taking cover. If you activate your adrenaline during gun fights you will perform a sideway jump - another loan from Max Payne - in slow-mo and can fire at will. Other things that you will do with Kit includes sneaking up on guards and knock them out, avoid flashlights, run away while jumping over crates, rubble or other way blockers. You will never get the chance to explore much in the game. Just as all hiding and jumping places are designated, so is the path you take through Hong Kong and San Francisco, in Hospitals, Warehouses, Docks and many other unavoidable backgrounds. Fortunately the animation itself look nice enough to not make matters worse. Kit's animations are (for the most part) fluid and nicely executed. This is where the motion capturing really paid off. The character models are kept rough and general, with just enough detail as to not look outdated. Kit's model is a very good likeness of Jet Li though, which makes the whole movie-to-game idea a little bit more interesting. Backgrounds and environments are clean and neat. They don't look particularly bad, but are very minimal. Only very few objects in your environment are actually interactive, which makes the whole game world feel very stiff and unnatural. When you get something that you can play with, your options are very limited - throw, shatter or pick-up or any combination thereof - and are not satisfying at all. All in all the graphics leave as little to say about them as could be fitted in the previous 1 paragraphs. What really stands out are the nice little in game animations you get in between scenes to proceed with the story. Well scripted and timed they lighten up the bland optical impression and are welcome breaks in the gameplay routine of molesting your right analogue stick. Same goes for the sound. Repetitive Hong Kong action music can get on your nerves, but in the case of "Rise To Honor" it doesn't. Not because it is so good, but because you won't notice it most of the time. Music and sound effects keep to themselves and don't ever bother adding anything to the gaming experience at all. Fortunately they don't detract as well. The highlight are definitely the voice overs for the in-game scenes. Jet Li's original voice adds some cinematic flair to the mixture and the other voice actors are also a good job. Great idea: you can choose whether you want to hear the Mandarin dialogues in original Mandarin with English subtitles or dubbed in English. "Rise To Honor" is like chop sticks, the one-way kind: very useful for snacks and when you need them, but that's that. It can grant you a couple of quick, effortless gaming fixes for when you need a break from the more epic and challenging games, but its usefulness ends right there. Definitely another attempt to cash in on a movie franchise. And although it might have also been an attempt at delivering a solid game, it failed there to a great extent as well.
