Rise & Shine is the most gorgeous looking platformer of the year. Sure, it’s still only January, but Super Mega Team have done a marvelous job capturing an incredible style with their art and animations that are up there with the stuff that Wayforward produces.
The game bills itself as a “think and gun” and while I agree with the latter part, the former might be a little bit of a stretch. You take control of Rise, a ten-year-old boy who is caught in the middle of a war on his planet.
But don’t think this is some Call of Duty or something dark and gritty as Rise & Shine, even at its darkest, is one of the more colorful platformers around. The game takes place on the planet known as Gamearth as it’s being invaded by the people of Planet Nexgen. It’s the sort of thing of thing that retro gamers can relate to and helps give the game a unique look and style.
While the game is a run-and-gun platformer, you won’t be doing both at the same time. You can move and shoot, but when you pull up your gun, that goes by the name of Shine, you slow to a crawl. This isn’t a negative though, as it helps you really line up your shots as things fly at you from all over the place. In fact, I’d probably call Rise & Shine a SHMUP more than anything.
Shine is a sentient gun and will help you out along the way, not only by simply being an awesome weapon and charcater, but by acting as your help when you pick up upgrades for him along the way. There are only two types of ammo in the game (both unlimited), but you can collect a few upgrades that let the ammo work a little differently.
You have a standard shot, a guided missile shot that can only be used in certain locations and an arced bomb shot that can take out groups of enemies, or those behind shields. The main shot is a standard bullet and the other is a sort of electric bolt. They each work the same but using bullets against humans works better than using electric, and electric bullets work better on robots than on humans.
This is a fine mechanic, but you’ll quickly find that after a few levels you’re going to be spending about 80% of your time with the electric shot as there are a ton of robot enemies compared to the one type of human grunt. That said the enemies aren’t all that varied. There are only one type of human to kill (Gears of War dude) with the only other thing that comes close are the zombies in the really, REALLY short underground level. This sucks as that zombie stage was a highlight and managed to make the colorful game quite tense and spooky.
There’s also a segment that sees you flying on a ship with the game actually turning into a SHMUP. It’s all really fun, but again, these sections are used once and never get really developed before you are tossed back into the basic, run of the mill stuff. That said the game isn’t at all afraid to make jokes at it;’s own expense and calling back to retro video game heroes without getting dinged with copyright. But Rise & Shine walks a really fine line. It’s easy to spot Sonic, Mario and so many other mascots, all dead strewn about the levels.
Shine (arguably the star of the game) is more than just a weapon in that he grants the player unlimited respawns, but Rise will let you know that dying still really, REALLY hurts. He can also be used to solve the few puzzles the game throws your way and these really do help to break up the flow of the standard gameplay. But again, they never really fully develop and you just keep wishing there was more.
Rise & Shine is a bloody game that doesn’t hold much back. It’s so intense at times with enemies, and yourself, exploding into tiny gibs that you’ll question the sort of game you’re playing. Luckily all the stages are full of lots of details from across the retro gaming sphere, so it’s a lot of fun to catch all the refrences, even if they are all dead or dying. Animations are also really nice and if you took a screenshot at any time during play, chances are you’d have a hell of a wallpaper for your desktop.
But the game isn’t perfect and falls short of being great. Most pressingly is that the game is really short. Experienced players on the standard difficulty will breeze through the game in around two-hours. When I got to the final boss I kept telling myself that this couldn’t be it and felt a little cheated with the length. I’m okay with short games, but when you know the team could have done so much more, that’s when things get weird.
The hardest of the games few bosses is that last one, but this is also one of the games biggest problems: Rise & Shine is pretty easy; Fun, but easy. The issue is that the difficulty goes from a constant 5 or 6 and then suddenly shoots up to 11 in the last section with the boss taking me ages while everything else was a breeze. It just felt like the game has hard in this segment simply to extend the short length.
The major failings is that because it’s so short you are going to be left wanting more, but not in the “I loved this and want a sequel” and instead “That was it? What bullshit.” I went through the game only racking up a half-dozen deaths, but the final encounter easily took me well over twenty tries. This is simply bad pacing as, yes, the final boss should be hard, but the mechanics you’ll need to have mastered for him aren’t ever really used. Hell, I totally forgot I could dash as it’s never used or needed outside the tutorial.
What I do really like here is the style, art and general story, but things just sort of peter out after about the first hour in the story department. It’s like the developers crammed all theirvideo game references right up front and then sort of backed themselves into a corner with regards to what should happen next. Theres a silly twist that I won’t spoil, but even with the baddies explanation it still makes little sense.
Rise & Shine isn’t a bad game, but it does feel like the developers simply ran out of ideas and steam while trying to build a much bigger game. Instead of developing more stages and playing with the mechanics, they just upped the difficulty to the point where the devs are going to patch one of the tiny drone enemies that shows up at the end game that is almost impossible to hit. The game also retails for $14.99 and that does seem a little high for the length you’ll put in without any sort of real replayability.
Rise & Shine is a fantastic start for the studio, but it just comes up a bit short in a few key areas and never fully develops, or reaches the potential that I saw from it. I still would recommend the game for fans of the genre, but you should probably wait for a sale.
“Rise & Shine is a fun and stylish shooter, but one that never quite lives up to the potential it lays out.”
Final Score:
3/5
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