Rise to Honor

"The Bastardization of Jet Li.."

In Rise to Honor we have Jet Li in the role of yet another vengeful bodyguard/syndicate member/undercover cop role in which he uses his bastardized skills (Wire Work) that Hollywood seemingly continues to ail him with in this recycled plot.

Graphics-6/10
Run-of-the-mill low budget polygons. The locales aren't too bad, more or less on how it's delivered, which happens to be a really cinematic approach. It's certainly welcomed, the graphics aren't, however. The backgrounds are standard, with minute details. The characters range from the local jail-baits and delinquents to out of placed Mohawk-sporting, dancing-in-unison, Chinese twins. Regardless of how stale or out of place these characters are, they all have low polygon counts and horrid animation to boot without the slightest fluid movements. Jet Li is no exception, and appearance wise, looks as if he had reinforced metal grafted to his cheek bones to soften blows to his face, just for good measure. Everything in this department as far as graphical settings go, are lacking.

Story-5/10
A regurgitated plot. Li either likes these settings or the producers have a perpetual fetish placing him the same goddamned roles. Jet plays Kit Yun, an undercover cop with conviction, to find out the details of his father's passing, as well as his boss's, under the disguise of being apart of the criminal organization's faction.

Sound-7/10
The sound was satisfactorily, incorporating that melodramatic movie-based adrenaline theme with instrumentals. As was stated, it's cinematic and delivers in the sound category as well.

Gameplay-4/10
The gameplay is about as deplorable as Enter the Matrix. They both share the same ridiculous nature in trying to capture the same aesthetics, but butcher them, and the end result is a steaming, festering pile of dung that insults anyone with eyes and adequate enough coordination to pick up a controller and watch what happens on screen.

Gameplay breaks up in two aspects- Fighting and Gunning.

Fighting
It was a noble attempt at trying to integrate something new in regard to attacking, by using the right analog stick to strike your opponents. It comes up short and simply choppy. The manual states that well-timed taps will result in different chains of attacks, but this is surely laughable when seeing Kit attack in the same sequences no matter how you deviate the analog stick. The multi-target combat is and was a good idea, but in the end it still comes back to this unpleasing end result that proclaims a certain wretchedness.

Kit attacks ferociously in his complimentary styled Wushu attacks that look awful and almost painful (to Kit) to watch. No lock-on system is required here, however, your sense of direction is, well really, the depth perception of Kit is what it comes down to, and he tends to lack in that area as most of his attacks will hit air before anything else, let alone any sentient being. The recommended 'well-timed' slaps of the stick that just barely differentiate combos, usually have to be written off by fast slaps because Kit just doesn't have the leisure of taking his sweet ass time in a jump by a group of about a hundred gang members every level. The hit detection here is up to par with the rancid Enter the Matrix game, it really shows in the cutscenes that are triggered sporadically when Kit is about to knock his opponent head over heels. One such example, is when one scene demonstrates Kit trying to back-hand his opponent's chest, but falls short of about three feet and yet the enemy flies into the background as if propelled by the force of nature. The Chi is strong with this Super Cop, but that right alone is designated to Jackie Chan, not Li.

Kit has a high sense of cunning that allows him to predict every move that any enemy is going to try to make contact with by holding down the action button (R1 button). Be warned however, that when the evade/block gauge runs out, so does Kit's health by being pounded on by his opposition. Kit can use this in accordance with the right analog to grapple and throw, which can be abusive at times (98.99%). The adrenaline gauge supplements Kit's combat abilities even more by giving him speed and slowing everyone else's actions down. Cliche', you be the judge. Personally, it's getting gauche in the midst of what already seems to be, thousands of titles that over-use the slow-mo tactic, and refuse to add anything intuitive or refreshing into it. This happens to be yet another one of these titles.

In whatever aspect Kit is undergoing, his animations look awful. They should be fast and very fluid to uphold the nature of the settings, being an HK flick. Every attack is completed with such a lack of coordination, one could possibly ponder Kit and his mugger's are more in danger of hurting themselves before they do anyone or anything else.

Gunning
Even more ludicrous than fighting. The action button renders Kit's defenses by taking cover behind any inanimate object, take for instance, a two foot tall plastic garbage can that can suppress the fire power of a bullet that causes some odd five thousand pounds of pressure when it collides with it's target. It's a game though, we certainly wouldn't want to pick apart the realism and unrealistic concepts contained throughout this slug-fest.

Shooting is done by manipulating the right analog to aim and the and R2 button to fire, whilst taking cover and coming out after the guns blaze to pick off an unwitting moron with a firearm that retreats blindly from their cover. The death animations of your victims are uninspired and all drop like a rock. The adrenaline combo makes use of the same jump and glide through air all the while shooting in a slowly animated sequence. Instead of being able to target just one foe, Kit can target several in the adrenaline slow-mo state dive. If done properly you can have Kit target his enemies in a 360 degree fashion while he contorts his body unimaginably.

It's awkward controls, like that of fighting that promote death quickly, but in all fairness can be learned gradually throughout the game, you do have plenty of time, because the game throws out fighting and firing back to back numerous times, instead of being allocated just to one stage in particular. It's rather entertaining how it's done too. One moment Kit will be fighting an onslaught of twenty individuals, the last one to be floored drops a pair of nine millimeter's which tempts Kit into picking them up for the next ironic engagement of a turf war with guns. After the carnage comes to a halt for a few seconds, Kit then decides to ditch the guns with the unlimited supply of ammunition stored within the six inch clip, to take out more peeps armed with baseball bats, cleavers, and clubs.

It's the nuances of unintentional comedy in this game is what really provides the entertainment.

Replay Value-3/10
In the confines of unlocking things, yes there is little value, such as the production of this game and how it came to be, interviews with the cast, etc. In terms of replaying, the only thing to warrant another play through would be the contortionist methods Kit can accomplish, mainly, targeting in slow-mo is quite hysterical, or beating someone down with Peking Duck.

Over All, disappointing and completely unfounded. Another example of hastily making a game that holds style over substance and quality. Incidentally, they even managed to mess up the 'style' portion, assuming it had any. They simply chose not to include any repertoire of techniques, nor did they implement any modicum of decent animation. To subjective oneself through this impermissible game would be an atrocity. But, if your a Jet Li fan, surely you can justify it.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 02/20/04, Updated 02/21/04