It comes as no surprise that the success of Mortal Kombat and the relative ease of creating fighting game would lead to a great deal of MK Klones coming out of the woodworks. Well, the Sega Saturn was no different in this regard. Although, it made up for this by porting a good deal of Mortal Kombat games itself. Well, unfortunately, this led a small development company called Mirage Media to create what is known as one of the worst games of the fifth generation. Rise 2: Resurrection was published by Acclaim (it’s no wonder they went belly up after publishing trash like this and The Crow).
This game is just eye gougingly horrid to look at in both its character designs, graphics, backgrounds and movement. Everything they do on the screen looks like it was made by low-grade claymation and their design makes it hard to follow what they’re doing in the first place. Even when they’re a humanoid form, you have to squint to see what is going on with the screen.
Speaking of the characters, how would you like to play as a robot named “Crusher” or “Loader”? There’s even a gorilla like character named “Prime-8”... Get it?! Seriously, whoever thought of these names must have taken the most generic machine-like things they could find and slap a generic label on them in a hurry. The mediocrity doesn’t stop there, it sloshes down into enhanced stupidity very quickly when you learn that the main bad guy’s name is “Supervisor”! I understand that your boss at your work may be kind of an ass, but to name their title as the antagonist of a video game is just not worth it.
What makes this game dip way below average is the fighting mechanics and the A.I. Both of which are criminally underplayed. The opponents you face seem to be button mashing right along with you and for good reason. The only real way to win without going deep into craptastic territory is to spam. Just spam and don’t worry about learning any of the moves, they are not worth the effort. The controls are beyond janky and awkward. You would be hard pressed to find any comfortable way of performing the special moves or combos.
Let’s not forget the “Finish Him” moments as well. It wouldn’t be a proper Mortal Kombat Klone without them. This is a real hoot. They’re called “Executions” and they happen within the span of two frame rates, then they’re done. Every single execution I saw performed were done in a flash, and ended up melting my robot down into a slurry. So, if there’s any execution moves that don’t make your character into a puddle, none were witnessed, and there were around five or six.
This game is an all around abysmal experience. If you really want to play the best version of a robot fighting game, just play as Cyrax, Smoke and Sector in MK and spam the rocket, spear and net attacks. I promise, you will have more fun with that than you will with the “Rise of the Robots 2”. They couldn’t even make the title remotely interesting. They even added the most generic subtitle since Endgame. That’s right, you heard what I said! Fight me… just not in this game.
