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Rise To Honor is all about high-flying, highly choreographed action. The whole game makes you feel like you?re in the latest Hong Kong action flick with one small exception: much more action! Sony had big hopes that Rise To Honor would completely revolutionize its genre. What we got instead is a martial arts-brawler with great presentation, decent gameplay, and a few major flaws.

Jet Li played a huge part in making Rise To Honor what it is today. As well as starring in the title, he also spent hour apon hour working with the development team, motion-capturing just about every animation in the game. And boy does it show! It?s simply amazing to watch as move after move seamlessly flows out of Jet?s digital likeness, each one into the next. Every action is extremely smooth, lifelike, over the top, and varied. And I mean every action. From jumping back up onto your feet to kicking off a wall, it all looks cool. Even The Matrix would be jealous. Also, all of your foes seem to take their hits with kung fu elegance as well; spinning and tumbling through the air with dramatic effect.

That said, it's no wonder that Rise To Honor feels so much like one of Jet Li's films. The story and cut-scenes also do a wonderful job of adding to that feeling, which is one of the game?s strongest points. Like I said, the game is presented just like a Hong Kong action movie, and on this level it definitely succeeds. No game does it better.

To add a unique sense to the game?s combat, Foster City Studio came up with a fairly inventive way of controlling it. All attacks are executed by 'slapping' the right stick in the direction you want them to go. Their idea works well in some ways and not so well in others. Here's the good side of things. Being able to independently control the direction of your offense means that it really doesn?t matter which way your facing. So now you can finally take out a whole group of guys coming from all directions with ease. Combos flow from thug to thug, and feel great to pull off.

Here's what's bad about it. It all boils down to just hitting the stick and watching Kit (Jet's character) bust his moves. Players have almost no control over what type of attacks they're doing. It's almost as if there's only one attack button, and the game decides what each attack will be. Also, combat like this tends to get very repetitive, even for a brawler. Additions like blocking, counters, and object interaction do their best to prevent this, but it's not always enough.

Visually, Rise To Honor is obviously high budget. High-res textures complement a very detailed game world. The environments are also extremely varied in their appearances. Character models look great as well, and Kit looks exactly like his real life counterpart. And as I stated above, every animation is topnotch. I did, however, detect a very small amount of slowdown, but it was never in the heat of battle.

Rise To Honor ends up being an enjoyable game overall. It has some gameplay issues, but everything else is extremely solid (presentation, graphics, storytelling). But in the end, its short length (only 5 to 8 hours) and its repetitive and sometimes lacking gamplay really hurt it. There's definitely some good fun to have, but it would be better done through a rental. It's a great experience that's worth five bucks - just not fifty.