Rise is a boy with an arduous task: to supplant the legendary warrior and to avoid the invasion of the space soldiers of World Game. For this he has Shine, a pistol with bad fleas that gives him the ability to have endless lives. A lot of arcade action mixed with platforms and puzzles in a title that clearly honors the medium. Rise & Shine Analysis.
In the late 80’s appeared a game called Rick Dangerous created by Core Design, which would later create the classic Tomb Raider . In Rick Dangerous we incarnated a hero that the Indiana Jones entered temples full of traps that made us to succumb again and again. On many occasions there was no way to avoid them. You could not escape the surprise factor until you did not know it after having died in the attempt. It was invented trial and error : learn from a scenario script to then be able to overcome the trap.
Rise & Shine pretty much uses this concept in many of their traps. In the title of Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team of action and puzzles , dying it is just part of the process of advancement. Sometimes literally. The problem of trial and error mechanics (and one that was blamed on Rick Dangerous at the time) is that it is, by definition, cheating. You can not avoid death until you know the threat. In games like the Souls saga, something similar happens, but they always keep that the player who goes with a thousand eyes and absolute precaution can detect all the traps that hide their levels.
The good thing about Rise & Shine is that their mix of genres and subgenres creates a dynamism that we have rarely seen so much in the present as in past times. Note that the studio is very fond of classic 2D in its variant platform, action, Run & Gun, shoot’em up and puzzle. And all this you will find here, together with a deep homage to the world of video games in clear direct or indirect tributes that the player has the pleasure and minigame to discover through all their references.
Action, puzzles and endless lives
So many references that it is impossible to mention them all, but they shine more strongly when not only homage to Super Mario Bros., for example, but also tribute to their mechanics, such as jumping monstrous goombas, for example. It is fun to find a train full of classic heroes of the fallen video game, but it is even more fun to collect for a boss the mechanics of blue and red shots of an Ikaruga and use it only for that particular moment, and that’s it.
The bosses and deputy bosses , in fact, are some of the best moments we’ve enjoyed at Rise & Shine. They are imaginative and mix that taste of a classic enemy wisely using the mechanics you have learned along the last level, where you have to make them effective for the best performance. They are many, varied and arrive when they have to arrive.
Perhaps the key of Rise & Shine that makes this title stand out above its equals is the imagination of the designers. This is also demonstrated by the puzzles whose solutions are becoming more intricate and begin by adding a system to manually handle the bullet on the stage to destroy something or press a button that allows us to continue. You can do something repetitive, but later the game is managed to create new puzzles. They work best when mixed with the action itself, where dodging bombs and shots while trying to think how to get out of the situation creates a magnificent tension.
Something worse we have seen the system of covers , that can get to cut something the action and that sometimes does not work as well as the full freedom of movement and dodge by itself the shots that are directed to your position. On many occasions we have had difficulty advancing through the mechanics of coverage, when it has been much simpler to dodge attacks by ourselves.
The references to the world of video game are constant and brilliant
This, together with that mechanic that sometimes does not finish being so satisfactory of the “trial and error” are the greater buts that we have found in Rise & Shine, united perhaps to that sensation of repetition that is accumulating the more you are advancing in the game. It is probably due to the alteration of the rhythm caused by his subgenus change. While in a Run and Gun the frenetism is pure and constant, Rise & Shine you get used to change from this tempo to a more leisurely to solve a puzzle, to another something faster and so on without getting to opt for one in particular, Which can make you feel uncomfortable when all you want is an easy trigger experience, for example. The developers themselves call it “Think and Gun”
The design is very colorful with fluid animations (although it lacks some depth and detail, especially in the vignettes that tell the story) that marry well with the tone of the game. We are even more grateful for the mime and care that have been put on the stage, where at no time are repeated the layers that make up the level, so that every time we move forward we will always be seeing something new in this curious universe. One that places us in MundoJuego, a planet full of allusions to our electronic leisure that is being invaded by space soldiers. References to the world of video games are everywhere, but even within them as our own gun (Shine) speaks to us and has its own personality,
Rise & Shine surprises . Its hybridization of subgenres of action and two dimensions makes it impossible not to remember other times and that is probably what Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team wanted to evoke in the player and in themselves as a form of gratitude towards all those games they remember With nostalgia and that led them to create video games. No doubt, they have achieved their purpose.
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