Game Details
- Publisher: Adult Swim Games
- Developer: Super Mega Team
- ESRB Rating: “M” for Mature
- Genre: 2D Action Platformer
- Pros: Great art style; references to other games; solid movement
- Cons: Trial and error difficulty; frustrating; short length
- MSRP: $15
The planet of Gamearth is being invaded by the muscle-y
space marines of Nexgen and it is up to a kid named Rise and a talking gun
named Shine to save the world. Their
objective is to fight through the invading hordes and deliver Shine to the
King, who can then activate a special super weapon to defeat all of the Nexgens
at once. It is a dangerous mission, but
with the help of the God-like “guides” (the human players of the game) Rise and
Shine will succeed.
As I mentioned above, Rise & Shine has been marketed as
a fast paced Contra-style run and gun shooter, but it really isn’t like
that. Running and gunning only leads to
quick and frustrating deaths and instead you have to slowly and carefully avoid
land mimes popping out of the ground and use conveniently placed waist high
cover to slowly plink away at enemies during firefights. More often than not these firefights will
include five or more enemies, all shooting a hail of bullets bullet-hell
shmup-style at you, so all you can do is hide until you have an opening and
then spray and pray and, hopefully, kill them all so you can move onto the next
encounter.
See our review of another Adult Swim Games title, Headlander.
See our review of another Adult Swim Games title, Headlander.
There is a tremendous amount of trial and error in Rise
& Shine because you usually don’t really know what is coming until a bunch
of enemies suddenly pop up and kill you.
This style of learning by death game design certainly isn’t inherently
bad (hello Dark Souls), but the actual shooting gameplay in Rise & Shine
isn’t especially fun. Rise can run and
double jump and also has a dash move you can use to dodge around and avoid
bullets, which all works well and feels pretty good, but shooting with Shine is
a pain. You have to hold the left
trigger and then aim with the right stick and then shoot with the right trigger. Aiming is awkward at best and it can be hard
to tell where you’re really aiming even after you get a laser sight power-up
fairly early on. The game demands a
fair amount of precision, though, as the “right” way to play the game is to
take out specific, more threatening, enemies first before mopping up the
fodder. Because the aiming is only
so-so, however, and the game gives you only split-seconds to actually return
fire, you usually end up just wildly spraying bullets whenever you have an
opening and hoping for the best.
The game does throw a little much-needed variety into the
mix in the form of puzzles here and there, though, which helps ease the
frustration of the combat by introducing a different type of frustration. As you play you pick up new upgrades for
Shine that include electric bullets or remote control bullets you can manually
drive around in any direction you want.
You use these different bullet types to solve puzzles or kill enemies
that have a specific weakness. The
problem, however, is that the game doesn’t really tell you what the heck you’re
supposed to be doing in these puzzle situations so you frantically try to shoot
everything that looks the least bit interactive until something works.
The game does look pretty spectacularly good with a very
nice art style, good animation, and solid special effects, and the soundtrack
is awesome. The cameos of lookalike
characters from other game series are also undeniably cool and are something
that will compel you to keep playing just to see who pops up next.
Ultimately, Rise & Shine is pretty disappointing as it
isn’t really what the trailers and previews promised. It absolutely isn’t a Contra-style run and gun game and, despite
the Adult Swim Games partnership, isn’t nearly as funny as you’d expect. It’s just sort of slow and dry and
bland. It sure looks pretty,
though. More of a problem is that even
with a ton of trying and dying and wasted time on puzzles Rise & Shine is
still less than 3-hours long, which makes it pretty hard to justify the $15
price tag. Skip it.
Disclosure: A review code was provided by the publisher.
