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Jet Li, well known martial arts
movie star in Asia and more recently in the US (Lethal Weapon
4, Kiss of the Dragon, The One, Cradle 2 The Grave) has now
entered the virtual world of a PlayStation 2 video game. Rise
To Honor is a fast paced action game that places you in
control of Jet Li (Kit Yun) as he fights, shoots and sneaks
his way through Hong Kong, San Francisco and back to Hong
Kong. Kit is the body guard for Boss Chiang, leader of a Hong
Kong crime family. Kit has two long-time friends in the game
as well, Michelle Chiang and Chi, who he needs to rescue
throughout the game.
The game was developed, choreographed, presented and packaged
exactly like a movie. The fight choreography was actually done
by Chinese Action Director and Fight Choreographer Cory Yuen.
In the beginning of the game you can Load a Game, Save a Game,
Select Chapters, Modify Options or check out some Special
Features. The chapters mimic a DVD and allow you to navigate
to any of the 63 chapters once they are unlocked by completing
that chapter. The Special Features are also very DVD-like with
a “Making of…” video clip, some high-end animated sequences of
Kit and Michelle training and an Artwork and Soundtrack
section. The “making of” feature includes real motion capture
of all of Jet Li’s signature moves for inclusion in the game.
The game play and control is pretty revolutionary, too bad it
takes a little away from the game. The left analog stick
controls moving Kit around the screen while the right analog
stick controls Kit’s attacks – allowing Kit to attack in any
direction with a flip of the stick. This makes for some very
cool 15 against one scenarios with Kit cleaning up in multiple
directions one after the other. By timing the flicks of the
stick, combo attacks are played out with amazing clarity. The
down side is you have no control over what moves are done –
you pick the direction but not whether to kick, punch, leg
sweep or head butt. There is no control in that regard and it
limits the games ability to hold your attention. There are
some other features to the game play though; you can block
(R1) an attack but it is much wiser to counter the attack
(R1+L1) to cause a little damage to your opponent. Exciting
counters include flipping off of walls or counter tops to kick
you opponent as they head in for the attack. There are also
some grab moves as well to mix up the action. One cool grab
lets you snag an opponent and slide them down a bar, old-west
style. However, my favorite feature is the ability to pick up
different objects to smash your opponents with. Items like
chairs, trash cans, flower pots – Kit spins them around so
elegantly and sends them flying towards your closest enemy
where they disintegrate into dust with an amazing splintering
sound. Occasionally, afterwards you can also pick up a broken
chair leg or two to use as a weapon – a nice little feature.
I mentioned earlier that besides deadly hands and feet, Kit
also wields a couple of pistols in this game. You don’t decide
when you use you muscles and when you use guns it is all
pre-determined in the script. However, playing with the guns
is fun, especially with automatic targeting by flicking the
right stick. On top of the basic health meter and block meter
there is also an adrenaline meter. When the adrenaline meter
is full Kit can activate it. Using guns adrenaline makes Kit
dive and bullet-time to begin a la Max Payne. In hand to hand
combat the adrenaline surge gives better and fancier combo
hits against your opponents. After particularly nice combos a
cut-scene cinematic slo-mo of the action occurs for your
review, however when you are fighting 15 guys at the same time
you really don’t have time to interrupt the action to admire
you moves. These cut scenes are a little to prevalent and come
at the wrong time, an option to disable them would be wise.
Other features of the game include jumping over obstacles and
hiding around corners or in the shadows. Too bad a pop-up
appears to tell you exactly when and where to jump or hide.
You can’t jump before the pop-up tells you and you know
exactly where to hide every time because of the pop-up. This
takes a little fun out of the game.
Visually I liked the environments and was very drawn in to the
different scenes. One chapter in particular stands out. For
most of the game the camera is hovering over Kit’s shoulder as
he goes about his business, but in one dock scene the
perspective is through a rifle scope and the scope is aimed at
Kit. You have to play as Kit, looking at Kit, trying to avoid
being sniped, pretty cool.
Another nice detail in this game is zero load time. The game
moves from chapter to chapter seamlessly like a movie and
there is even automatic saving occurring at the same time.
Another key feature is the ability to continue from any
chapter an unlimited number of times. No restating from the
last time you saved or from someplace you finished 30 minutes
ago, this is very convenient. Another movie like feature is
subtitles. The dialog in Hong Kong is in Cantonese with
English sub-titles and English dialog in San Francisco with
English sub-titles but the sub-titles are fully configurable
in the options menu. Jet Li actually did the voice over for
the game as well.
The sound affects in the game are accurate and crisp but the
enemy voices get a little repetitive but they sound good too.
The sound track is mostly instrumental with a little bit of an
edge, like the Jaws anthem – the longer it plays the more
intense it gets. Therefore by the end of the chapter the
action is at full tilt and the music is right along with it.
Finally, the game introduces a lot of new features and is very
well put together by people who are movie veterans, and it
shows. However the “plot” is a little thin. There are only so
many people you can shoot, smack and bash without much
control, just a bunch of button mashing. Once you beat the
game you can increase the difficulty level and play Kit with a
couple of new outfits which really doesn’t help the replay
level of this game. For action game fans and Jet Li fans this
is a nice game to rent, finish and return. The rest of you
should probably wait to see what this team can do in their
sophomore effort – I expect some pretty revolutionary things
hopefully in a more complete package.
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