Jet Li: Rise to Honor

 One of the common themes I have found since I started doing reviews is the close link between film and video games. I've covered video games about movies, movies about video games and even video games about movies about video games. But this week's entry is a different animal entirely.

Since the early days of video games, it feels like people from both the gaming and movie industries have been trying make the two mediums work together. As we've seen, it usually doesn't work out. As to why, well, that's its own discussion. I, for one, am not really a movie person, I've always had trouble sitting still and just watching something for two hours. Anyway, one of the ways that game developers blur the lines is by bringing in well known actors (or using their likenesses) as "stars" in their games. And I'm not talking about sponsoring stuff, like you see a lot with sports games, I'm talking about they star as the character in a movie-esque, narrative based game. It's most popular with martial arts flicks, the first game I remember like this was probably Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story for the the 4th gen consoles. I might cover that later, but today, we are going to shift our focus to the 6th generation and a different martial arts film star with Jet Li's Rise to Honor.

Any fan of martial arts movies will need no introduction to Jet Li, star of films with names like "Hero," "One," "Fist of Legend" and (my personal favorite of his films) "Fearless." You know exactly what you are going to get every time you turn one of these on: all out, martial arts action. It may be in ancient China. It might be in modern day New York. But no matter where it is, you know Jet is going to use his martial arts skills to take down hordes of baddies, do crazy stunts and just generally kick ass. If you're looking for a slow burn thriller or deep, complex film about the meaning of life, look elsewhere. That Li is a legit Wushu practitioner helps make his films stand out amongst similar titles that star folks just flipping around doing stunts. He's one of the genre's most recognizable faces, so it wasn't entirely surprising he was tapped to star in a video game as well.

Which leads us to Rise to Honor. Released in 2004, the game stars Li as undercover Hong Kong police officer Kit Yun, who is serving as a bodyguard to Boss Chiang, a local crime lord. When Chiang is shot by a mysterious sniper, he gives Kit one last mission before he dies: deliver a sealed envelope to his daughter Michelle in San Francisco. With little information and nothing but the envelope in his hand, Kit leaves for San Fran, determined to carry out the request. Not to groundbreaking for a plot, but it doesn't have to be. The game is split up more like a film, with each level acting as a "scene." Loading screens are kept to a minimum and it's actually quite technically impressive for a game of its era. The transition from scene to scene is surprisingly smooth for a 6th gen title and it's clear that a lot of thought was put into the timing and pacing of the game. For the most part, it feels like you are playing an actual Jet Li movie, with action split between hand to hand combat beat-em-up style and shooting third person over the shoulder style. You will frequently fight multiple toughs at once and the game uses camera cuts and set pieces to add the same dramatic effect you would see in a movie. It's all very well designed and it works surprisingly well for a video game, at least in theory.

But now, we have to get to the biggest problem which is, unfortunately, completely game breaking. The controls don't really work. You see, the developers decided it wasn't enough to simply have a different structure and pacing than that of a standard video game. They had to go with what was, at the time, a unique control scheme as well. It's weird to look back and think about it now, but in the early aughts many developers and gamers were still unsure just what exactly to do with the right analog stick. For FPS' it was easy enough, but for other genres, the right stick usually sat unused or was only used in obscure circumstances. And a lot of developers in this era were trying to change this. I'm too lazy to look it up, but I'm pretty sure Madden '04 was the first to use the right stick for playmaker controls. Resident Evil titles of the era used it for quick turns. But to me, the game that really lead the charge in making the right stick relevant was EA Sports' then-new boxing franchise, Fight Night. Fight Night made the right stick the star of its control scheme, unlike any game I could think of since the PS1's Ape Escape (which I might also review later). All of your punches were mapped to it and mapped to it intuitively, a quick flick would throw a jab, a quarter circle would result in a hook and a half circle would swing an uppercut, from the left or the right as you could choose. It was responsive, logical and groundbreaking, it's still a blast to go back and play these Fight Night titles to this day.

You have likely deduced by now that a similar control scheme was applied to RTO. It was trendy for the time and it did make some sense, you needed to be able to attack in multiple directions because you were so often surrounded. But whereas this reliance on the right stick defined Fight Night, it wrecked RTO. It may have seemed like a logical next step, but applying it to a 3rd person, 3D beat-em-up/shooter presented huge problems, namely:

1) The inputs are too simple. All you do is push the right stick towards the enemy you want to attack and hope it does the kind of attack you want. The timing on the combo system is so strange that you will often think you are going to hit an enemy with a flying kick only to jab them and get hit with a huge shot in retaliation. Part of what made Fight Night work is that you had complete control over what kind of punches you wanted to throw and how hard. Here its essentially random and you don't have much control at all.

2) It's extremely picky. You need to press the right stick in the exact direction of your enemy, otherwise you will miss. It's harder than it sounds to determine how the enemy orientation on screen corresponds to where you need to press. If you are even a degree off, Kit will hit air and promptly get smacked in the face.

3) The shooting sections are god awful. Aiming with the right analog stick is an absolute chore and it's damn near impossible to hit anyone. And its not like you are shooting it out with one or two enemies at a time, you are constantly getting bombarded by bullets. These sections were straight up unplayable.

4) There is no alternative control scheme. If you don't like it, you are stuck with it. Most of the face buttons don't even do anything but bring up reminders on how to (attempt to) do moves. You couldn't have had punch and kick buttons? Even in Fight Night, where the right stick controls were the game's primary gimmick, you could use the buttons as well. Why couldn't you do that here? Even if it was limited, it would have been nice to have the option.

It really is a shame too. As I mentioned, the game is quite technically impressive and having such little loading time for a 6th gen game was incredibly rare. The pacing and structure of the game and insane action set pieces are ripped straight from a Jet Li movie and it really feels like you are playing an action flick. That was probably the biggest thing that kept me playing despite the confusing and frustrating controls. The graphics are pretty solid for the time period and the soundtrack is very, very fitting. The voice acting is really good and you can tell the actors were really into the project. A lot of times the problem with games like this come from the "star" just phoning it in and doing a second rate job, but that wasn't the case here. Jet Li was very clearly putting his best foot forward when it came to voice acting and his stamp is definitely all over this game. Again, it's a shame the controls are so bad.

And that's to say nothing of the actual gameplay segments that are well done. The ability to interact with the background, destroy objects and throw things at enemies is great and I wish more action games did this so well. There are some quick time events, but there aren't an excessive amount like there were in a lot of games of this era. More importantly, the QTEs that do occur are actually warranted, they are huge setpieces where you are running and jumping through rooftops as a helicopter is shooting at you, stuff like that. I feel like the game would actually be pretty balanced if it weren't for the controls. The damage you take from enemies is fair, they are all relatively weak while you are quite strong, but there are so many of them that it evens out in the end.

But again, its back to those controls. Quite simply, they just don't work and that takes what should be an enjoyable experience and ruins it. The highs were high enough and the story interesting enough that I managed to keep going for a while, but I just couldn't do it. I really wish they took another stab at something like this. If they just ironed out some of the kinks (or I guess really it was just one major, game breaking kink) they might have had something special on their hands. But broken controls just bury it. When I come across a game that's completely terrible across the board, I usually fall somewhere between "angry I wasted my time" and "this sucks so much it's funny." But when what could have been a good game is undone by one single-but-fatal flaw, I can't help but be sad. I can't score RTO too low because there are plenty of redeeming qualities, but I can't reccomend it either.

4/10