Along comes another game that looks to recreate the feel of a blockbuster movie. This game, like plenty of others in the past few years makes an admirable effort to emulate the high octane action scenes of a motion picture. When it all comes down to it, games made to play like movies, aren’t all that great. They often end up feeling washed out, too easy and sometimes even too hard for their own good. The days of pure gaming seem to be slipping away, being replaced by products that try too hard to be something they are not. Rise to Honor falls squarely in the middle of the crossfire. There is no doubt that Rise to Honor is an excellent brawler, but the other elements don’t gel with the rest of the game. Jet Li is obviously the focus of the game, and every single element feels tailored to play out like one of his movies. Now depending on if you like his movies, this may change your view of it. The story isn’t terribly deep, but it does have a dramatic effect that will compel you to keep playing. If you are looking to buy Rise to Honor, then reading this review should help you make your decision, as it all comes down to a matter of what appeals to you.  

The story is fairly simple, but nonetheless interesting. You play as Kit Yun, a private bodyguard for a man named Chiang, who doesn’t necessarily play it safe or keep his hands clean. One night, a group of thugs employed by a man named Billy Soon begin to hunt Kit and Chiang’s daughter Michelle down. The whole game surrounds Kit protecting not only himself, but others in an effort to hunt down the person who has not only killed his father, but is intent on pursuing every single person he cares for. The plot will quickly develop (as all action film plots do) and bring you through numerous locales as you hunt down Soon.  

Rise to Honor is a brawler at heart that brings back fond memories of games like Golden Axe and Streets of Rage. The game takes full advantage of the much neglected right analog stick in an attempt to move the emphasis away from the main pad buttons. You will also be using your shoulder buttons for adrenaline attacks and to pick up items. All of the typical action game commands have been simplified to make things as fluid as possible. To pick up a barrel or to equip an item from your surroundings, all you have to do is press the R1 button. While this is a great feature, it does dilute the feeling of freedom. Combat is the most entertaining aspect of the game. You move around with the left stick and attack by pushing your right stick in the direction of an enemy. This means you can attack in any direction and at any time. You can pull off endless combos this way, which will allow you to dispatch enemies faster than you would if you had been forced to take them on one by one. The next ability at your disposal is the grab command. Once you grab an enemy, you are able to either perform a move on them, or throw them against a nearby wall or enviroment. This can help when you are surrounded by numerous enemies at once, since you are able to throw one single thug into the middle of a crowd, and knock all of them over. The counter system is vital for boss battles and for large crowds of enemies. Holding down both R1 and L1 puts you into a blocking stance, so whenever and enemy tries to hit you, simply press the stick in its direction and you will counter the attack. Lastly, is the ability to use adrenaline moves. When your adrenaline meter is at full, simply activate it and you will go into a slow motion overdrive that will allow you to take down a room full of enemies in seconds, and it’s quite a sight. Most of the levels in the game are based around this fighting engine. If you have the option to, there are numerous things you can pick up and throw, or use as melee weapons. Some of the pick ups can be quite powerful, while others are useless. There will usually be a few waves of enemies to fight before the next story sequence so it is a good idea to manage your health. The game is very forgiving in the fact that your progress is saved after each battle, but there are some where you must go through a few packs of them before you can breathe in the fresh air. While all of this seems generally seems fun, it can quickly turn monotonous as the enemies the game throws at you can be very unbalanced. You will go from simple thugs to break dancing ninjas (no joke) in a matter of minutes and Kit Yun doesn’t have a very sustaining life bar. You will find yourself dying over and over until you find the right balance of health preservation and tactics on whom to take down first. It doesn’t help that that when the enemies all huddle up on you, all you can usually do, is sit and die. If you forget to block, then that’s the last and only chance you had. Unfortunately most of the bosses are too difficult for their own good. Mixing numerous fighting styles together, these bosses are very appealing to fight against, that is, when you actually have a chance to fight. A lot of the bosses are defend happy and whenever you try to block, they somehow manage to break you out of it and smash your face into the ground. I love it how Kit and the bosses have nearly the same length health bars and that while you can hit a boss with a 9 move combo and take only a chip off of their bar, they can put your face in a pool and drown you in less than two hits. The bosses are where you will be probably be stuck the most, in the game, unless that is, you aren’t happy with the shooting scenes either.  

The shooting portions of Rise to Honor are clunky, unresponsive and also unbalanced. The controls seem simple enough, you push your right stick in the direction of your enemy and press R2, but they do not just throw one thug at you, they throw close to ten at a time, so that while you shoot one, you are being butchered by the others. This is of course fair considering that this is a video game, but the targeting system doesn’t always wish to lock on to the right person when you do, thus allowing an enemy to kill you before you can. The shooting stages basically consist of Kit running through streets and other locations while hiding behind the scenery whenever he is being shot at. The hide and shoot technique becomes tiresome after only a few of the stages. Luckily, there are a few good sequences that are more fairly balanced, but these are too few and far between.  

Second to the fighting engine, the stealth bits of Rise to Honor are thoroughly enjoyable, yet come off as being too simple. In some missions you will be required to infiltrate or escape from a location, and you are placed in a stealth stance. You must navigate yourself through numerous guards that carry flashlights, in places that are supposed to be very dark, although for gameplay’s sake, you can see everything that they can’t. There are various ways in which you can get through the guards. You can sneak up from behind and choke them, throw items at them, and even pounce on top of them from above. I had wished there were more of these levels in the game, because I found them to be the most balanced of the game’s numerous play styles. It will never pose much of a challenge because if you are caught, you can always try it again, and memorize the actions of the guards.  

While it seems that Rise to Honor is very difficult, it can be a very enjoyable game if you stick with it and learn the moves in and out. There are many tactics you can use to your advantage that will help you complete the levels. The game won’t take very long for seasoned gamers to complete, and the hours are definitely in the single digits for most. You can unlock numerous things including documentaries featuring the game’s developer and lead star. Rise to Honor’s gameplay is a very nice return to form, for the brawler action genre, but its other components just don’t mix together well. Just like a movie would allow, you are able to replay your favorite scenes from the game over and over again with a special chapter select feature.  

If Rise to Honor excels at anything perfectly, it would be its presentation. The game’s graphics and sound succeed in providing a believable backdrop for an action movie, especially one of Jet Li’s name. The environments are detailed and crisp. They do well in recreating the locales the game takes place in. From glitzy restaurants to broken down back alleys, Rise to Honor makes good use of its production values. In terms of Jet Li himself, the motion capture moves look amazing as well as the lead star in general. The other characters though, sometimes don’t match Jet Li in quality. Most of the thugs can become generic and repetitive and only the bosses seem to provide much of a change when things become too familiar. To keep to the feel of an action movie, the load times are nonexistent and are masked in short, but sweet cut-scenes that set up the next battle. If you enjoy Cantonese, then you’ll love the voice acting, and the English voice overs are good considering that English isn’t Jet Li’s native tongue. The music is vibrant and reflects the mood of each area perfectly, setting the proper tone for the game. Each of the individual aspects of the graphics and sound work together to create an excellent movie feel that helps to heighten the experience of the player.  

Rise to Honor is an excellent brawler, when the difficulty is in the right place. Unfortunately the other aspects such as the shooting and stealth scenes, come off as being too simplified and uninspired. I admire the game for trying many new things with the Dual Shock controller and hopefully many future games will take note of them. As to whether or not Rise to Honor is a worthy purchase, it all depends on how much you like Jet Li and the beat’em up genre in general. The game’s plot isn’t too deep (although compelling) and the game isn’t terribly long, but it does provide an excellent movie experience that can rival a lot of the action movies from recent years. Personally I would recommend a rental first, and then a purchase if it really hooks you, so that you may find out what aspects of the game work for you, and also the ones that don’t.