Music cross roleplaying doesn’t mix in Rising Star

By Katie . April 5, 2007 . 10:38am

What with the current culture of celebrity seizing our workaday world, who hasn’t dreamed of becoming a musical legend, or, for those with low aspirations, even the loosest approximation of the word ‘artist’? It wouldn’t be the first time some lucky shmuck hit the big time, becoming a talentless celebrity with a wait staff and a schedule apparently free of anything but partying, but sadly, for most of us, our lives won’t be ruled by fame or infamy (except reader #35 – they’re on to you and your ‘Tylenol’).

Don’t fret, though – there’re always simulations to make us feel bigger! You just have to know which ones will give you that sense of satisfaction that only playing dress-up with avatars, flipping through menus, tending digital goldfish and other sundries can provide. Today’s example: late last month, independent developer Gilligames released Rising Star, a PC game that intends to let you live out your rock-, pop-, jazz-, blues-, etc-star fantasy (sadly, emo is not recognized as a genre). Create a character, form a band, write and practice songs, and work odd jobs until you get a gig in a venue anywhere across the United States. Then you’ll be on your way to the big time.

That’s the theory, anyway. What happens in reality combines elements of shopping, matching games, and Grand Theft Auto without the other cars into an ultimately incoherent mini-game conglomerate. The instantaneity with which the game treats everything from calling band practice to going to a show, to repairing worn instruments and recording an album, can only be fulfilling for so long, especially since the songwriting process, played out in a poorly-randomized game of Memory, represents the only, VERY relative break from monotony. The rest of the time, with no separate running clock to pass the hours and encourage advancement, it’s a point-and-click, highly-textual adventure throughout every town’s uniformly parallel streets, which you innovatively navigate with the arrow keys. While it must be acknowledged as one of the rare independent games to go commercial, if only on the back of a CD-R, Rising Star is the barest-boned type of simulation available, and without the inclusion of indie mp3s of debatable value, the game would be a far cry from its 350 meg installation size.

Aside from shopping (and heaven knows there’s just never enough time for that), road-faring to indie music, spending nights at the overabundant clubs, flinging wares around in a motel for happiness, or visiting a cemetery for inspiration, a maximum three outdoor actions consume your waking hours. These actions earn you the cash, and if, like me, you happen to panic during the timed delivery missions, you won’t have enough to repair your van let alone replace your broken strings when you’re done. If you’re not into going 2 miles per hour until you have $4500 to repair the old lemon – ‘cause, sheesh, getting out and walking WOULDN’T be smart at that point – there’re also landscaping jobs in endlessly overgrown parks just a point-and-click away. While some of these ideas could have been interesting, the only free-roaming areas are claustrophobic and fairly pointless, allowing you only such freedoms as getting charged for throwing around expensive paintings that don’t even look affected afterwards. This is the unseen life of a musician – gardener, delivery boy, and perpetrator of petty destruction – and now, for what is probably not the first time, you too can live it.

As for the aesthetic, ‘homebrew’ best describes Rising Star. Game time starts in the year 2000, but Rising Star would have already been sorely dated back then. Graphics aren’t everything, and evident effort went into making the on-screen text highly readable and the two different times of day, uh, different, but come on – some of the shop wallpapers are definitely edited Gif’s from the abandoned Tripod site I made 10 years back. The 2-D segments with pre-rendered elements look rather sharp, with a crisp, well-aliased font, smooth-scrolling national map and meticulously detailed title screen that shows off the creators’ not-at-all-objectifying taste in women, but what Cracker Jack box did the 3-D art director get his diploma from? If the polygons’ edges were destined to be attacked by sandpaper monsters, if the facial features of the characters, their bodies, and most of the apparel were doomed to be a plastic surgery/makeover nightmare, the game could have stood to stay in development for just a weeeeee bit longer, or might better have been kept to a single plane altogether.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I don’t actually delight in criticism. I realize that producing an original creation is much more delightful, but to make a game worth making, especially for today’s little guy in a big racket, it takes a full-fledged effort and the motivation to do it right, lest you live in extremely favorable times or have a LOT of luck. I KNOW how hard people will be on a brave little game like Rising Star, which, while it actually holds fair entertainment value, comes across as unfinished as it is limited. I’m only as hard on it as I would be on myself, and probably not even that, because I don’t let things go until I’m happy with them, and I’m not very happy with Rising Star.

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