Rise to Honour

Brad high-kicks his way onto the front page with this review...

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Hoorah. More licensed gaming arrives in the form of Team Triads 'Rise to Honour' starring Kung Fu legend Jet Li. But this is no tawdry movie license, this is bespoke console entertainment featuring one of Hong Kong's greatest action heroes. So, will playing this game let you know whether Jet Li can kick Jackie Chan's arse? Probably not, but by reading it hopefully it will give you insight as to whether it's your bag of kung fu action videogame starring a real life martial arts legend.

It has been a very long time since a decent one player side(ish) scrolling beat-em-up has graced a computer screen anywhere outside of an arcade. But we all know that those places are wretched hives of scum and villainy. Well at least that's what I was told by a somewhat sage looking man loitering outside. Actually sage isn't right, more like deranged. But I digress, Rise to Honour sees you take control of Jet Li as Kit Yun, a bodyguard for a somewhat corrupt Hong Kong businessman. In true Hong Kong movie style your boss is soon murdered and you must fulfil his dying wish by travelling to San Francisco all the while battling hordes of criminals intent on stopping you. Why they are trying to stop you I will leave for you to discover as the story is pretty good; no major spoilers here kids.

The game uses both sticks to control our hero. The left stick moves Kit, and quite nifty he is too, the right stick, when pressed in a direction, causes Kit to lash out with legs and arms in a kung-fu fashion. Multiple presses of the right stick results in combos being performed. Using combinations of the shoulder buttons causes Kit to block, throw and counter enemy's moves. It's not the easiest control system to grasp, but once you do it opens up a whole world of kung-fu related 'ass whupping', and jolly good fun it can be too. But it is not all kung-fu you know, along the way Kit gets his hands on guns and is even asked to stealth his way through sections and even team up with other characters for twin-person-kung-foolery. Kung-Foolery. Brilliant.

Basically, Rise to Honour is a Hong Kong action movie as a videogame, and as such it works very well. Innumerable hordes of bad guys attack from seemingly out of nowhere, once despatched, yet more arrive to lay waste to our hero. The action is broken up with short linking cut scenes, and after completing a level, a slightly longer one. These range from pretty good to down right great. Interestingly, the characters converse in a mixture of Cantonese and English for added authenticity. Nothing amazing, but a nice touch none the less and you can change it so it's all in Cantonese or English, Dub or Sub. A nice touch indeed. The most unfortunate thing about the cut-scenes is that they are mostly unskippable, which can be quite tedious for reasons explained later.

Graphically Rise to Honour is way up there. The environments are all pleasing to the eye and highly interactive. Almost everything contained therein is smashable or otherwise usable in combat. The screen is literally over-run with enemies, up to ten appearing onscreen at any one time. Ten may not sound that many, but when they crowd round to kick your sorry butt, believe me, ten will seem plenty. They are also very detailed, especially on the numerous slow motion cut aways of particularly brutal punches their bewildered faces contort in pain.

As well as half a loaf of Kung Fu being available to the player, gunplay also plays a part. At various points throughout the game Kit finds himself in possession of twin pistols and must take down bad guys using bullets. Controls remain similar to the chop socky sections but an additional shoulder button is used to fire the pistols. Things start getting sloppy here as the controls cease to be intuitive as multiple shoulder buttons are employed, in fact all of them are. Now as dexterous as one becomes playing videogames for twenty years, suddenly throwing all the shoulder buttons into the mix is a little tricky and certainly more than a little clumsy, becoming counter intuitive. It's almost forgivable, however, when you hurtle down a hospital corridor on a bed firing twin pistols as you go.

There are some other problems present too, in particular there are certain enemy types that have moves that can't be blocked or reversed and take off far too much damage. A little silly considering how well balanced the rest of the game is. Also the stealth sections are just plain annoying, why doesn't he just kick their stupid asses? I don't know. The Crash Bandicoot 'chase' sections also feel a little out of place, while I can see why they're present, personally I could have lived without them. A two player mode would have been nice as well, they have an AI companion on some levels, so why it wasn't included as part of the main game is anyone's guess.

Overall Rise to Honour is a good use of a license and a fine game to boot. While it probably won't last you long it has plenty of action and thrills contained therein to satisfy and its generous saving regime means you can pick up and play for short periods of time and still make progress. Like any game it has its faults, but they are quite easily overlooked when you are clutching two huge Monkey Wrenches and slapping the bejeezus out of half a dozen bad guys. Whether you like Jet Li or not, there's probably no real reason you shouldn't take a look at Rise to Honour, for once it is a license that's more than the sum of its parts and a fun game too.

80%

By Brad Davey