Rise & Shine is pretty grim, apart from when it isn’t, which is more or less all the time. It’s set on Gamearth, a world populated by video game tropes which riffs on everything from Gears of War to Duck Hunt. Remember that bloody dog that popped up in that latter game to giggle at your awful efforts to blast digital poultry? He shows up again halfway through this game. He’s still laughing at you, only this time he has a detonator. And you’re standing on a bridge. With its underside packed with explosives.
It’s all a bit cute and self-referential. Like how a palace is decorated with adorable little lights shaped like the power-up mushrooms from Mario Bros. It’s just that, hanging from the same roof, are the corpses of slaughtered citizens. This is because while the game’s world is cartoony and light-hearted, the invasion of it is not. It’s brutal. So you might have some initial misgivings about how the fight-back is being waged by a small boy named Rise armed with a sentient gun. It’s a weapon he obtains from the dying Legendary Hero -- who looks a lot like a fan-art recolouring of Link – which instantly grants him video game powers, such as double jumping and respawns. Most of the time, this gives Rise an indifferent attitude as he knowingly marches into certain death confident he’ll just respawn again a few steps previous when he falls. And then, sometimes, he’s forced to fight a giant robot through the wreckage of what used to be his hometown with silent tears streaming from his eyes.
Credit: Super Mega Team/Adult SwimIt’s a weird combination that sometimes works very well, but often feels like the two halves are at odds with each other. And therein lies a decent description of Rise & Shine; it’s a game that wants to do a little of everything and, as such, never settles on doing anything brilliantly. It wants to be a run-and-gunner, but to have cover-based firefights and also puzzles strewn between and even during battles. Battling is clunky, but satisfying, and it takes an almost cerebral approach to how you tackle the enemy patterns and placements. While Rise & Shine isn’t afraid to shelter you behind a slab of rock and have you try and gun down a screen of plasma-blasting robots and over-muscled thugs before they destroy your cover and grant you one of seven million deaths, it also uses your rapid-fire retries to make you plan out your assaults. As the game progresses, Rise can find upgrades for his gun, Shine (see what they did, there?) that can be used to your advantage. He can scroll through regular or electrified ammo, employ a grenade launcher, or even gain complete remote control over his bullets in special areas.
It gives a lot of battles a slower edge that is almost puzzle-like. Then it puts you in a pocket of danger where you don’t have time to ponder a solution and forces you to try and figure it out on the fly. The best and most successful use of this tactic is during the numerous boss fights which are often unashamed puzzle situations that are trying to kill you. When you die - and die you shall - you often do so with a slightly larger part of the bigger plan in how to succeed. You need to guide that one bullet there, or time a grenade lob so it explode somewhere else, or belt a weak point with electric ammo until it powers down enough to destroy it with regular slugs.
Credit: Super Mega Team/Adult SwimThere’s even a brilliant boss battle early on that is won using so simple a solution that you’ll initially overlook it while you try and figure out a more complex way to take it down. Moments both like this as well as the feeling of satisfaction that comes from destroying a tricky boss are the moments where Rise & Shine really starts to earn a sense of swagger. Dodging zombified Goomba’s while trying to trick orbital death rays into destroying their own electronic grid, or trying to jumpstart the heart of a broken machine with the explosions of smaller foes. Certainly in the early going of the game, you’re met with so many new ideas and fair-handed obstacles that the numerous deaths won’t bother you. It’s rarely the game being cheap - it’s your worthless fleshy hands not being quick enough, or the solution to the situation not being sleuthed out in time. Death only means scrolling back a small distance, thanks to some lenient and brilliantly-paced checkpoints being employed, and, anyway, it might let you see something new in the hand-drawn background, like how that corpse looks a bit like Mega Man or how flappy bird seems to be flying in that flock of fleeing doves.
So it’s a shame that, even considering the game’s short runtime of around three hours, Super Mega Team are unable to keep the momentum going. The end stretch contains the game’s worst moments, foregoing the wild creativity of the initial stages and floundering in artificial difficulty and bad ideas. Suddenly, out of nowhere, one entire stage is a scrolling shooter where you control a barge far too large to dodge projectiles. The cannon you control has the power to shoot down projectiles, but the screen is busy enough with enemies that you’ll more often do this by complete accident. It’s a chore to complete, and not even the somewhat clever trip to NPC island that mocks cut-away mini-games and then straight after employs them can take the taste away. The last stage is a real slog.
Credit: Super Mega Team/Adult SwimThe try-die-retry chain that felt so uncumbersome in the beginning of Rise & Shine unravels. Deaths feels cheap and unavoidable and therefore, it’s harder to blame yourself and easier to blame the game. It’s frustrating, and seeing the game through to completion becomes a grind. Unlike the rest of the game. you need to trudge on through to the underwhelming ending powered by the grinding of teeth.
