The world’s saddest beach party
(This
review contains minor spoilers!)
This is an extremely hard game to
write about. RiME is the type of
experience that you’re clearly intended to have on your own, unspoiled by the internet.
This is really the type of game that wants you to sit down and just see it
through, without looking up walkthroughs or watching a Let’s Play first.
So let’s stick to the facts. RiME is an indie game developed by
Tequila Works as sort of an adventure-puzzle game with gorgeous graphics. It
bears some huge similarities to The Last
Guardian, so much so that despite enjoying that game, for the first half of
RiME I couldn’t help but think that
this game was exactly what I wanted Last
Guardian to be. Towards the second half of the game a few problems rear
their ugly head, but we’ll get to that.
You play as a nameless boy who’s washed
up on an island full of puzzles. Early on you meet a cute fox who acts as a
guide of sorts on your adventure as you climb a massive tower in hopes of
uncovering the mystery of what’s going on. The plot is about as thick as it
needs to be, but the way it wraps up is a tad underwhelming. Again, I’ll get to
that.
Easily the show-stealer is the
graphics. This game is drop-dead gorgeous at times, making excellent use of
Unreal Engine 4. The game looks legitimately like you’re playing through a
Disney movie or a 3D rendition of a Miyazaki movie. It’s just plain beautiful
to look at, and some of the environments actually made my jaw drop at times.
The downside to these graphics is a
very unfortunate amount of framerate drops throughout your adventure. The game
chugs with disappointing frequency on PS4, often reaching below 30 frames per
second. It’s not so bad that it makes the game unplayable, but it does become a
bit of a hindrance when you’re trying to enjoy marvelling at these beautiful
landscapes and the game is jumping around.
The atmosphere of the game also
deserves top marks. I can honestly say that the few enemies that are in this
game scared me significantly more than anything Prey threw at me. The developers use your surroundings to their
absolute maximum potential to achieve the mood they want you to feel, and a lot
of later scenes really hit hard thanks to this.
The gameplay consists of mostly very
simple but clever puzzles. Your main line of problem-solving is screaming at
things. No, I’m serious. Well, kind of. The boy can yell at certain glowing
blue objects to activate them and use them to help him solve puzzles. Some act
as switches, others move platforms, and some amplify his voice to activate
multiple at once. They use every trick in the book with this ability, and it’s
always fun to see what puzzle they’re going to throw at you next.
Honestly, the first half of the game
is near masterpiece quality, so it comes as a real disappointment once you
leave the second area and enter the third because the game takes a small but
significant tumble afterwards. While the graphics still marvel all the way to
and through the end credits, the third area of the game is mostly spent in a
frustrating escort quest as you pilot a companion through a ridiculous puzzle
that lasts for nearly the entire stage. And, after an honestly brilliantly
directed climactic segment, you get an ending that, while pretty darn
emotional, comes kind of out of the blue. While it’s not a bad conclusion to
the story by any means, to me it kind of feels like the developers played
something like That Dragon, Cancer while
making this game and shoehorned in this emotional moment towards the end. I don’t
know, maybe it makes more sense if you collected all the knickknacks hidden around,
but to me the ending could’ve used a bit more foreshadowing for it to really have
the emotional impact the devs clearly wanted.
Oh yeah, there are various
collectibles hidden around the world. I only managed to pick up a few of them
since I pretty much stuck to a story (this is a linear experience after all),
but from the looks of things they give you more background on the boy as well
as unlocking additional content to the ending if you got enough of them. The
ending doesn’t change at all, there’s just different items and stuff in the
final room of the game. I really didn’t find it worth my time to deviate from
the path just to find a little seashell, but there’s quite a few hidden goodies
here for completionists to uncover.
RiME
is a great game, but it still feels like something is holding it back. The
first few hours are monumentally done and really get you excited for what the
rest of it has in store, but the second half leaves a lot to be desired.
Despite this, it’s one of the best looking games with stylized graphics on
console right now, the puzzles are all extremely well-thought out and creative,
and the game is pretty darn short. If you really rush through it I can imagine
beating the whole thing in one sitting being actually pretty easy. If you’re
looking for a quiet adventure in similar vein to Journey or Last Guardian,
there’s something really special here waiting to be uncovered.
FINAL SCORE
8/10
Great
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