Jet Li, kicks ass, but does this game?
Visually you’re not going to find yourself wowed by Rise to Honor. There really isn’t a negative aspect to the games looks, the textures are clean the models are nice and backgrounds are semi-interactive and destructible, but all together it comes out to a pretty average looking next generation game. One of the more impressive visual feats comes in the form of Jet Li’s model itself. The face alone is clearly mapped down to the finest detail, and his movements look and feel just like they would in one of his real life movies. Also one of the game’s nicer looking areas come from the real-time cut scenes (both during gameplay and in it’s own separate scene), which feature everything from Jet Li running from a helicopter and dodging bullets to drop kicking a coming baddie right off his sport bike. The presentation of the game is highly improved by these sequences and really helps set the mood of being right in the middle of a high-caliber martial arts flick.
While most people look at games that revolve around punching and kicking and dub them shallow without any depth, and in some cases these people are right. Sony seemed to recognize this and added one of the more enjoyable and intuitive control schemes you’ll find in the beat ‘em up genre. The fighting system revolves around using the right control stick on your Dualshock in the direction of the enemy, the way that you tap the stick will be the direction which you attack, and by pushing the stick several times in succession you will perform a combo of maneuvers that are seemingly random. Now what is the difference between using the stick and using a button you ask? Well nothing…if you’re only fighting one enemy, something that virtually never happens in R2H. While facing multiple enemies you can push the stick in one direction to punch one target, then in the opposite or to the side to attack others in the appropriate direction. At first it comes off as frustrating, since it’s essentially an entirely new way of fighting enemies, but once you get the hang of it sometimes it feels like you’re watching a movie. Another of the important gameplay elements is the adrenaline, which is in the form of a meter that is filled more and more as you battle and complete consecutive attacks. Once your adrenaline is full, you can use it to slow down time so that your character moves twice as fast as your enemies, making for a very nice (and fierce!) way to clear a room full of enemies.
The games control stick fighting system also applies for when you’re using guns. To lock onto an enemy merely point your stick in the direction of the enemy and push R2 to fire your guns. Using the left stick to run around you can do a lot of killing on the run will little difficulty once you master the controls of it, and you can also perform a bullet-time sort of move where you can dive in the air in slow motion and shoot many enemies in a short period of time…very effective and very bad ass.
When it comes to things like sound and voice acting you cant expect much from a game based on a martial-arts movie, but Rise to Honor does a good enough job of presenting a good aural experience. Voice acting is for the most part in Japanese in the beginning, but it slowly gets more into English as the game goes on, and it really isn’t all that bad (well no worse than Jet Li’s films anyways). The game soundtrack is appropriate to the mood, playing high energy music during fight scenes and moody music during story development, and while not an all around stellar audio game it, as I said, does it’s job.
The overall control scheme of the game really does blend well with the overall style that was meant to be presented, and despite some critics comments this writer has nothing but good things to say about this game’s ability to produce one hell of a good time. If you’re not into the beat ‘em up genre then I’d suggest a rental first, but if you’re a fan of games like Double Dragon, Battle Toads and Streets of Rage you owe it to yourself to pick up the first truly innovative brawler on the next generation consoles. Now available at game retailers everywhere.