RiME

If you are looking for an action game or an online experience where you can assert your dominance over others, this isn't the game. If you're looking for something with lots of replay value and potential hours spent, this wouldn't be it. If you're looking for a puzzler with intricate, mind-twistingly difficult puzzles, move on to something else.

If you're looking for a cinematic, guided adventure, that will expand your expectations in terms of what a game is, and how it can be more art than "game", Rime should be at the top of your list. The world created within Rime is very intriguing, artistically breathtaking, and masterfully engineered.

For what this game lacks in terms of what a AAA title often gives you, it brings so many other things to the table. You may only play it once, but you'll feel differently after you did.

In Rime, your character wakes up, washed up on a beach. You then begin to walk around with no explanation. Shortly, you come to an open area with a central statue of a fox, with 4 light pillars in the distance. Once you locate them and activate them, a spirit fox emerges from the statue, who then acts as your guide.

Once the fox first appears, he does run far, making you follow him for some time. I though this was quite misleading about what the island contains because this section and the previous one made you think this island is massive and full of an incredible amount of puzzles. However, after this point, much of the world is quite linear, and even the more open areas are just there to increase the travel time; rather than having puzzles for you to solve.

After the initial sections, you find that the fox will run a direction and then disappear, so he is only vaguely guiding you. You then play for longer periods until you hear/see the fox again for him to lead you in the next direction.

There are some collectables to find when straying off the main path, but I found the movement rather slow and when I did check many areas, I found nothing, discouraging me from exploring further.

I wasn't sure why the developers made the environments so big. Maybe it was just to pad the game's length, or just make the island and its architecture more realistic. It could be that they just want you to marvel at the beauty of the graphics. The cel shaded graphics are really beautiful, but I didn't feel I needed specific sections for me just to admire them. The orchestral score is really beautiful and one song was done by Lindsey Stirling.

The puzzles themselves are fairly varied, but I found most of them were pretty trivial. There were even sections where I wasn't even sure of my objective but I solved them within seconds because it would be as simple as moving a box onto a clearly marked plate. The more difficult ones involved pillars where you can place or take an orb, and the pillars would cause doors/platforms to change state; so you had to work out the correct steps to create a path for you to climb up.

The platforming is the common Prince of Persia style. Edges are clearly marked where you can grab, you can hang from ledges, shimmy along, and leap across to other walls. It's just about observing where you can go, and navigating your way there.

The last part of the game just involves platforming, and it is so tedious and boring; it's like they run out of ideas.

Overall, it's a boring game that's stretched out for longer than necessary. It's beautiful to look at and listen to, so I'd recommend the soundtrack, but not the game.