Sony's following one of the most successful naming conventions with its latest action game. You know what I'm talking about -- the "of the" gimmick. You can't argue with the success of Return of the Jedi, Revenge of the Nerds, Lord of the Rings, Silence of the Lambs, Legends of the Fall, Son of the Mask, etc. I'm guessing the developers were banking on the magic of those two magical words when it came up with the title Rise of the Kasai, the follow up to 2002's The Mark of Kri (which may have lost sales because it lacked the "of the" magic).

The Mark of Kri was one of the most beautiful and unconventional action games for the PlayStation 2. There's no denying the game's beauty -- the art direction, character design, and cutscenes were some of the most stylish ever seen on the system. As for the gameplay, I chose the descriptive unconventional rather than innovative. While The Mark of Kri had some interesting concepts, they weren't fully developed into great gameplay. Rise of the Kasai, addresses some of the shortcomings of its predecessor and attempts to add some new and exciting elements. Unfortunately, it suffers from the same overlying issue of the original -- cool concepts that aren't fully realized. The end result is a gorgeous game that's good, but could have been better with additional development time.

Rau wonders about his sister's new behavior.

Rise of the Kasai's narrative is both a prequel and a sequel to the story in The Mark of Kri. The game hops back and forth between a plotline that takes place ten years before the original and one that takes place ten years after. The past storyline lets you play as Griz and Baumusu, while the future plot lets you play as Rau (the original protagonist) and his little sister Tati. The story revolves around the battles between the noble Rakus and the dreaded Kasai, a cult that's determined to gather evil spells for the sole purpose of destruction. In the original game, Rau was able to keep the world safe for a little while longer. Ten years later, he's dead. The gods send back his spirit guide (and your narrator) Kuzo to relive key moments to figure out what went wrong.

Overall, I found the story pretty fascinating. It was cool seeing Rau's mentor, Baumusu, kick some ass and be a hero in his own right. Learning what happened to Tati over the course of ten years was nifty too. Seeing how the stories tie together was great for me, but I could see how a lot of people wouldn't dig it. The two timelines aren't tied together very well and you really need to see a good chunk of both stories through before it makes sense as a whole. I could definitely see people with short attention spans (i.e. those of you that refuse to click on page two of this review) losing patience with the time-hopping story.