Rising Sun, like most other MoH games, is a heroic portrayal of the finest soldiers the WW2-era Allies has to offer. It kicks off with a bombastic but respectful set piece recreation of the Pearl Harbor incident, letting you experience the frantic chaos that occured, while giving you just a tiny sample of the horror and trauma. From there on, it slowly sets up a tale of a skilled soldier selected to thwart a Japanese secret plan, but not before showing you what its like to fight in some of the most pivotal battles of the eastern theatre as a regular joe.

There's a good balance between well known epic battles and the more fantastical infiltration missions, and there's a lot of cool settings to shoot your way through, like the night time Singapore harbor-city (my personal highlight, I can't stress how cool it is to see this era of urban Asia being realized). But I have to admit that there seems to be a slight lack of polish or some sort of lackluster design. There's a handful times where I was confused about what to do or where to go, particularly in the jungle themed levels. There are also some visually ugly sections, where it seems like the models or textures are a bit distracting in their relative downgrade. It's not dangerously frequent, but it happens enough times to worth talking about.

Gunplay-wise it's pretty decent. Usually the game won't just throw a ton of enemies at you at once (except in the last level, which is my least favorite level gameplay-wise), and the restrain is appreciated, especially since there's a good amount of enemies hiding in the trees or in some hidden pothole. The selection of weapons feel somewhat limiting, there's a lot of weapons that are only available in some levels, which adds a bit to the repetitiveness. But I always liked how exaggerated the enemy animations are when you shoot or kill them. It's a part of older MoH games that I'm most fond of, not only because they're fun to watch but also because it supports the "epic but cheesy war film" vibe of the game.

Another part of the presentation that supports the vibe is the orchestral soundtrack. It's a classic war film orchestra through and through, it never fails to support whatever scenario you're in. It's at least enough to balance out the awkwardly timed and animated set pieces, or the previously mentioned flaws in the level design.

Rising Sun can be uneven and rough at times, but there's still a lot to enjoy in its dramatic war tale, especially if you're fond of the exoticness of 1940s Asia.

Stubbs the Zombie (the game, not the guy) drops you a swastika in the first five minutes of the game, during the initial cutscene. That alone should tell you what kind of game this is. In the city of Punchbowl, a stereotypical 50s retro-futuristic American city, Stubbs (the guy) emerges from the ground with no mission other than to eat and kill everything on his way. That’s the premise and that’s what happens in the gameplay part of the game, you go around eating and killing people. The arsenal which Stubbs makes use of is rather limited. He can punch enemies to weaken and eat them afterwards, but he can also fart so hard that everyone near gets instantly debilitated. There’s also the hand, which can be used to take control of literally any enemy, which means that you can turn the game into a third person shooter when enemies with guns start showing up. You can also use your organs as remotely-detonated grenades and throw your head like an also remotely-detonated bowling ball to kill anyone affected by the explosion and turn them into zombies. Aaaaand… That’s it. I know this is a five hour game about eating brains, but the mechanics don’t seem to evolve at all during the whole game. Apart from being introduced to each one of them individually at the start of the game. You can also drive jeeps and tanks (they control exactly like the jeeps and tanks from Halo: Combat Evolved because it and Stubbs run on the same engine btw), but they appear just a few times and in the last levels, so it’s not like there’s much room for experimentation.

If all you want is being a zombie, this game delivers just that, but don’t expect much else from it. Thankfully it has a lot of charisma and personality which is what actually makes it stand out. Stubbs is, simply put, the coolest mf alive. I don’t care that all he says is just “nggggguuuuuuhhhhh” and “braaaaaaainzz”, listen to his motivational speech and tell me you don’t get pumped up. Every cutscene oozes charisma and this game is, thematically, very interesting to say the least. But the problem here is that the cool parts take place only on the cutscenes. If you don’t care about this, you might have fun, but for a game that is so wacky, being stuck with a tedious gameplay loop that sooner than later turns this wild premise into an uninteresting chore shows some serious untapped potential which would have made this an incredible time. In fact, the best part of the game is the first half, because it inserts new mechanics in interesting ways (it gives you a dedicated button to pee in one level) at a slow pace and you go after various unique characters with their dedicated boss fights and after that half ends, it doesn’t seem to know what to do and ends up feeling unnecessarily stretched. One of the first boss battles in the game is a lengthy Simon Says dance battle (you SHALL listen to this unexpected banger) and the last boss battle is damaging shields until they break and a cutscene plays. Some of the boss battles from the second half are badly designed and it’s never clear what you exactly have to do, but turns out it’s just damaging enemies. Stubbs the Zombie is a game that has charisma and made me laugh, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t bore the fuck out of me most of the time.

I've heard someone describe this game as "if Matrix and John Woo films had a baby with The Ring and Ju-on". I personally would describe this as supernatural Die Hard on crack, and I cannot stress enough how true these statements are. This is the most badass action movie made videogame ever, in the best way possible. But I won’t lie, this game isn’t scary. It sometimes feels like a cheap TV movie from the late 90s. The scares (if you can even call them that) are so constant and repetitious that it never scared me, in fact, I missed some of them because I sometimes moved past scripts I didn’t even noticed, so if you’re looking for something scary, there’s nothing to be scared of here, just a few unexpected moments but nothing more. The contrast in lightning is extremely exaggerated to create a more creepy atmosphere but fails due to it being an action game first, a horror game later. And the flashlight doesn’t help either, since it loses power with time (lasting between 10 and 20 seconds) and it needs to be deactivated for it to recharge. Something similar to Half-Life 2 but more annoying, since this game is full of shadows and dark places, you can’t see nothing without the flashlight. Which, may I add, obliterates the spectacle of dynamic lights and cool effects. I would look past this if it was somehow scary, but as I already said, it isn’t.

BUT, in exchange you get one of the most refined action spectacles possible. Every gunfight is spectacular in its own way. The sandbox the combat offers, while not the most profound and elaborate one, has enough stuff to keep the combat engaging: grenades, mines, shotguns, laser weapons, explosive barrels, karate kicks, bullet time, you name it. Even the enemy soldiers apply actual combat tactics and strategize to kill the player, taking covers, flanking the player, suppressive fire and throwing grenades while you're on cover among other tricks, and their radio chatter is the cherry on top to make them feel threatening. Every single element comes together in consonance to turn, what would be a boring shootout in any other game, into a unique moment. The level design adds a lot too. Full of nooks and crannies for the player to navigate, flank the enemies and approach the situation in different ways. BUT the game throws a stupid amount of enemies at you, sometimes you can’t predict the encounters and cross a door to find three or so soldiers behind a cover that spot you on the moment, sometimes you’ll cross a hallway with the flashlight on and the enemies will go “I see a flashlight!” without being able to predict this. some other times the game will put you in very clear combat arenas where the fight cannot be approached from any angle. And the use of the bullet time mode that emphasizes direct action make the enemies less of a threat in the end and more like an obstacle to get through. What I’m getting to is: this game births and dies in its combat system, which is sustained only by its spectacle and player expression. This game is one of those who put player agency over scripts that take the control from the player and cutscenes (which are a just a handful), which is something that unfortunately has been showing up and improved upon less and less in shoothers since then, advocating for a more movie-like approach (you know, mash X to do this, press Y to do that, hold the walking button while a glorified cutscene plays out). It might sound stupid, but I don’t see many shooters released after F.E.A.R. with stuff like meleeing wood planks or running away from an incoming vehicle that aren't scripts with little to no room for the player to fail. But unfortunately, these details don’t save the game and it sadly peaks in the Armacham offices and it’s downhill from there onwards, concluding with a really lame last third. And even if the story was somewhat interesting or anything, but no, it’s a mixture of horror and action movies clichés, with a plot twist at the end (I think it was a plot twist?) so uninspired and unnecessary it could have been cut off the game and it wouldn’t have made much difference. Ending off with a cliffhanger to continue the meh story in the sequels. Maybe I'm being too negative, but I like it a lot when it works, which isn't most of the time.