Rise to Honor

"Jet powered to almost perfection"

If you are one of those gamers in the past who likes to spend all their quarters on beat them up games like double dragon. two mean dudes etcetera, then you are going to like this game for sure.

The only difference is that you are not going to have your money changed into quarters or tokens when you go to the arcade, since this game is ported in play station 2.
Despite it's flashy production, this game is just basically a slick (and I mean really slick) three dimensional descendant of the classic beat them up games upon which we honed our adolescent(or childhood) aggression.
Oh well time for our review breakdown.

GRAPHICS
The graphics is amazing. It is well detailed and just looks awesome. One of the reason why this game is enjoyable.

STORY
The story is basically the video game version of a Hong Kong action movie with the same title. this game cast you as a renegade ex cop Kit Yun, played by Jet Li. So you are basically controlling a digital Jet Li who is playing a character that does not really exist except as bytes and pixels in your plays station 2.

The story also involves a quest for revenge, redemption and you guessed it, honor (hence the game title rise to honor. Duh! ha ha)

GAME PLAY
The story comes second priority to this game.The first one being action, which consists of four things:
1. beating up the bad guys
2. shooting the bad guys
3. chasing and/or running from the bad guys
4. sneaking past from the bad guys

These four elements are entirely separate from each other, example is you cannot sneak past the guards and blaze away at a triad boss and then run up and kick his henchmen in the head.

Besides, being sneaky and shooting up bad guys isn't fun anyway. Kicking, punching and scrapping it all out is the best part, bar none.

And did I mention that you can pick up baseball bats, chairs etcetera so you can knock the crap out of your opponents? Yay for unconsciousness!

CONTROLS
Jet Li's alter ego has many of the real deal's trademark moves, but it's all thanks to the motion capture sessions with the martial artist. The controls can take up some time to get used to, but it works pretty good nonetheless.
example of this is, you can move jet Li with the left analog stick and then use the right analog stick to attack in any direction. So even if you are surrounded by six thugs you can still kick their asses in quick succession.

Blocking and dodging, and even counter attacking can be done with the use of the shoulder buttons, and these are necessary if you want to make Kit effective when it comes to fisticuffs.

SOUNDS
I'm going to tell, sound is not important, fights are. Seriously, I hardly even paid attention to the games sound because I was so engrossed to this game's game play and fighting.

REPLAY VALUE
The game has a very good replay value because of two things:
1. You can unlock a bunch of stuff, which I'm not going to tell. Find about it yourself.
2. Smashing, gunning, and kicking etcetera doesn't really gets old right away.

GOOD POINTS
1. Extremely addicting.
2. Good story.
3. Amazing game play.
4. Challenging.

BAD POINTS
1. Repetitiveness.
2. Controls could be hard for some people to get used to.

OVER ALL
All in all, this game is one of the good titles for the play station 2. And I do recommend that you give this game a shot, either by renting it, or buying it.
The only downfall for this game is, the repetitiveness, because you really are going to do the same thing over and over again among the various levels in the game.
Also, sometimes, bosses can be hard and annoying, but hey, that's the challenge that everyone must go through to fully enjoy the game.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/01/04