Rise to Honor

"The evolution of the button masher? not quite"

INTRO
Rise to Honor tries to hard to be a movie and not hard enough to be a game... now on to the review

STORY 4/10
you play as Kit Yun who's father was killed by the underworld... so now you go beat the underworld up 4 badguys at a time...

CONTROLS 6/10
this is probably the best part and the worst part of the game. The control scheme is quite different than anything you've ever played before (except Ape Escape) the left analog stick moves, the right analog stick fights... Sounds cool dosn't it? well because only a control stick fights you have no control whatsoever on what attack Kit uses is picked by him not you. Which means you feel like you have no control at all over Kit. You fling the right analog stick toward the enemy, then watch him beat the crap out of the enemies. There is also a shooting part where you (get this!!) fling the right analog stick toward an enemy and hit r2!

GAMEPLAY 3/10
Gameplay is split into three parts. A Final Fight rip-off, a Max Payne rip-off, and a Metal Gear Solid rip-off. Sadly none of them are anywhere near as good as the originals.

FINAL FIGHT RIP-OFF

The beat em up parts look really cool with slow motion and letterbox scenes when you do something cool. But it boils down to Punch, Block, Punch, Block, Punch, Block. And since you have no control over the attacks you just fling the stick in the direction of the enemy and sit back and watch the show.
If this was the only part of the game, gameplay would be a 6 for a fun but unoriginal game. Sadly it gets worse (much much worse)

MAX PAYNE RIP-OFF

Like Max Payne? Like Max Payne with respawning enemys and infinite ammo with no reloads? If so you'll love this part of the game. But if not (which is the vast majority) then your gonna be bored to tears using the right analog stick to lock on and hitting r2 over and over until the level ends. Don't even bother using cover just walk and shoot.

METAL GEAR SOLID RIP-OFF
While the other two modes where bad, this is BY FAR the worst game mode. Some horrible hit detection, completely idiotic AI, and the ability for them to see you with there backs turned to you does not lead to a fun game people.

GRAPHICS 7-8/10
This is what keeps the game from getting a 3. This game looks very good, with the choregraphed fights, cool cutscenes, and highly detailed characters. Sadly the backgrounds are super bland or this could have been one of the best looking games in a long time. But its still very well done.

Music and SFX 7/10
First lets start off with the music. Its bland generic movie music that you have heard a million times. Now the SFX on the other hand is quite good. The attacks don't sound painful enough but other than that its pretty well made. But do I even need to tell you how bad the voice acting is? I didn't think so...

REPLAY VALUE 3/10

two hidden characters that are exactly the same as the main characters are about all there is. You might go back and play some of the cooler beat-em-up sections again, but you'll probably get bored of this game in less than 2 weeks.

OVERALL 4/10
Think Kill Bill Vol.1, all style and no substance... the difference here is that kill bill was actually good and this isn't. Some fun beat-em-up stages (around 2) and good graphics and sound are not enough to make a bland, generic, boring game seem good. And the other game modes drag it down even further.

Rent or Buy: If you must... rent it
DO NOT, I REPEAT DO NOT, BUY THIS GAME. If you really wanna try it rent it, it seems fun at first but gets old very very quickly. A rental is about all it deserves

PROS
Good Graphics
Good Sound
Some Fun levels

CONS
Horrible voice acting
Repetitive Gameplay
Stealth Levels
Spotty AI
Boring
Nothing that hasn't been done and done better 100 times over

THEREFORE

4 out of 10. and that's being generous

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 04/19/04