The most noticeable thing about Rise & Shine during a first play is just how much its creators love gaming.
This is no small claim I’m making here, but one that’s impossible to avoid if this has been your hobby for a while. From the moment the game starts, and you notice that the developer’s name is (deep breath) Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team, you should have a pretty good idea of what you’re about to get yourself into. Their freshman console project, titled Rise & Shine, is a genre-bending platformer with ample challenge to spare. When it isn’t underscoring its colorful, vibrant visuals with some seriously intense, violent combat scenarios, it’s challenging you in other ways with clever puzzles and multi-stage boss fights. It may sound like a ton to handle on paper, but it makes for one of the more unique experiences I’ve had in a while.
Dangerous To Go Alone
The setup is short and sweet, playing to the beats of gaming’s past in a way that’s as much a parody as it is a worthy setup with high stakes. Rise is a young boy living on Gamearth, which is exactly what it sounds like: A world populated with some pretty recognizable takes on classic game characters. After Rise finds himself caught in the middle of a siege by Space Grunts from the planet NexGen, he comes into possession of a wisecracking hand cannon named Shine. Before you even have a chance to wonder just how an unsuspecting kid is going to handle the responsibility of saving the world on his own–oh, infinite respawns. Makes sense.
While the game is certainly a looker, what with its hand drawn, parallax scrolling visuals that somehow never overlap or repeat, the gameplay in Rise & Shine is where the title truly stands out. On the surface, it looks like a 2D side scrolling shooter, but the game is actually a keen hybrid of sorts. While there is a great deal of twin-stick shooting, the game almost immediately destroys the notion of mindless button mashing as you encounter your first enemy–a landmine that feels as if Gamearth (or the developers themselves) are telling you to slow down. Not a bad way to say that before you can appreciate the power fantasy, a more thoughtful approach is needed.
Thoughtful is a good way to describe the game’s design, as the starring characters each have a set of skills that need to be mastered in short order. Rise has a limited double jump, dodge, and can take cover to avoid most kinds of damage. Shine, (when he isn’t preoccupied being gun Deadpool) has different types of ammo and configurations that prove useful in a variety of ways. There are standard bullets that can pop the heads of organic enemies in one shot, electric bullets that can disable (or activate) machinery, and a grenade launcher whose mortars stick to surfaces with a well-timed charge. Should you have a chance to stand still, there’s even a neat remote-controlled bullet that can snake around the screen into hard to reach areas. While it would’ve been the easiest thing in the world to simply make that Rise’s running arsenal of doom, the game isn’t interested in how many people you can murder with it, but rather how you can do so in increasingly tactical and cunning ways.
Levels are set up almost like giant action puzzles, peppered with combat scenarios that force you to use every weapon and trick in your arsenal to overcome them. Sometimes, you’ll be forced to take cover as bullet hell rains down upon you, while solving an environmental puzzle to unlock a door. Another scenario has you trading your sight for offense as you juggle keeping the lights on with avoiding enemies whose only tell are their glowing red eyes. One of my favorites early on involved activating a machine to destroy floor panels with a giant laser, as zombies threatened to take over from both edges of the screen.
Up,Up, Down, Down, Left, Right..
If that sounds overwhelming, make no mistake, it definitely can be at times. The myriad of weapons and abilities you gain early on can be difficult to juggle all at once, and the game wastes no time forcing you to adapt to the harsh reality that yes, you will die frequently and often in pursuit of your goal. The game isn’t interested in frustrating you (they literally wrote infinite respawns INTO THE PLOT), but it does want to challenge your entire roster of skills at every opportunity. There is a small caveat to having such a unique roster of skills, and it lies in the occasional fight against the game’s controls. Many levels have at least one section where the screen gets literally filled with enemies, all sporting their own unique attacks. In these panic-inducing moments, it often leads to a situation where you’re either killed by sheer confusion or an accidental switch to the wrong weapon at the wrong time.
If Rise & Shine wasn’t so mechanically sound in light of this, it would have made for a more rough experience overall. Thankfully, the team was interested in honoring these old-school games beyond the ubiquitous visual puns. The enemies, bosses, and levels are all very well designed, with many of them sporting recognizable visual tells and patterns in a way that invokes the Mega Man playbook. Unlike other “retro” themed titles that equate difficulty with being annoyingly obtuse, I was constantly impressed with the way the game introduced new elements, then built upon them gradually, often in some very creative ways. Though victory can feel just out of reach with each new mind-bender, death rarely feels unfair or cheap–just another challenge to overcome or approach differently.
At about three hours, the game is a bit on the short side, and that’s counting the numerous cutscenes that pad the running time. To Rise & Shine‘s credit, that actually works for this type of game, and for it to go any longer would be stretching its concept very thin. Similar titles like 2016’s INSIDE had the same level of restraint when it came to it’s running time, effortlessly making the player jump hurdles towards a satisfying end that all but makes the journey worth it. There’s something to be said about a game that doesn’t overstay its welcome for the sake of ticking off an arbitrary box, and I’ll always applaud a game that is just as long as it needs to be. Better that they chose to end the game on a high note, than go on for so long that the concept eventually gets diluted and becomes overly repetitive.
Rise & Shine was a great way to remind me why I love gaming as a whole. It isn’t a perfect game, but it is well made, with a level of intuitive design baked in that makes it as fun to learn as it is to master. Its visuals are top notch, blending absolutely beautiful hand drawn animations littered with a variety of game-related easter eggs, and the story pulls no punches in skewering every gaming trope it can think of, while also providing a number of twists and turns to keep you invested. While the controls as mentioned can be a tad overwhelming as the action heats up, the deliberate pace and action-puzzle elements are blended well enough that it stays entertaining from start to finish.
Especially the finish. Seriously. Stay until the end. I’m not kidding, It is glorious.
