Rime - NS, PC, PS4, XB1 - Out now - EDGE 9 / 10

Cheeky Devlin wrote:But then I can be an emotionless husk sometimes so that might be what it was. :lol:

I see, did the ending (or indeed when you realised what was going on) not have any impact on you?

It was a bit of an "Aaaahhh, that's what it is" moment more than anything. No more of an impact than figuring out the twist in a TV show or movie. For me at least. It's great that you guys got more from it than I did, I'm not trying to take away from that. Just saying that for me it wasn't anything amazingly deep or profound.

You're a strawberry floating monster.

chalkitdown wrote:You're a strawberry floating monster.

Hard to argue that to be fair.

I played this in two sittings over the weekend, I enjoyed it a lot and the game holds its own in the ico-like art game genre. However I don't think it ever hits the same artistic heights as other similar games such as Ico, The Last Guardian or Abzu.

The Last Guardian is a particularly fitting comparison as Rime seems to heavily borrow a lot of its design wholesale from TLG - unfortunately down to and including some janky uncharted-like platforming. My experience suffered a few times as I had to coax the controller into letting me perform what should be an obvious jump, and several times I missed what should have been easy ledge grabs for no real fault of my own.

Other than ledge-navigating platforming, Rime is a puzzle game, and I'm not averse to some block pushing and switch activating as way of gameplay. While mostly serviceable as puzzles go though, they don't really blend into the level design as naturally as in TLG, leading to the levels and their progression often feeling contrived. The obvious puzzle related placement of world elements, such as super convenient walls of brambles preventing progress, often diluted my immersion in what is otherwise a beautifully portrayed environment. The puzzles do their job then as occupying the player in progressing through the game, but they don't fit naturally into the world and leave you wondering why they are even there in the first place. They also don't offer much challenge, and the only time I found myself stuck was when the solution was poorly signposted as opposed to being genuinely puzzling.

The platforming and the puzzles aren't really the focus of the game though, despite their prevalence in the minute-to-minute gameplay. The main experience of the game is as an interactive piece of story telling, left deliberately vague and up for interpretation. Rime achieves this and the central theme of death and acceptance comes across to the player sincerely - an achievement itself because of the complete lack of dialogue or exposition. However I found the game varied in how effective more individual parts were in telling the overall story, and some of the imagery and intended metaphor was too obtuse. I also found the game became more linear as it progressed, so that towards the end it was less interactive storytelling and more just storytelling. The highs make the game worth it though - I particularly enjoyed the boy's collapse into despair with his entire body becoming black, followed by a literal turning point as he reaches acceptance and the entire tower literally turns upside down.

I could go on but it's probably easier just to summarise my thoughts on the game in bullet-point form.

+ Art direction and cel-shaded graphics
+ Well explored central theme
+ Impactful ending
+ Some great imagery...
- ...and some obtuse imagery
- Janky platforming
- Unnatural, immersion-breaking puzzle design
- Finding numerous collectibles at odds with game pacing
- Does nothing new

Interesting, because I thought the animation and platforming in general was really good, describing it in any was as 'Janky' is just misleading. It might not be quite as natural as The Last Guardian, but then its a pretty unfair comparison given the size of the teams and the budgets involved.

I also thought the puzzles were excellent, although they are simple in general, I found that to be a good thing rather than a negative. They are there to give the character an obstacle to overcome without ever making you feel stuck. I hate feeling stuck in puzzle games, solving a puzzle doesn't make up for that.

Although I understand and kind of agreed to begin with about the collectables, what I ended up finding was that they just gave me more reason to explore the beautiful world the game is set in. There is also an intrinsic story element linking at least two of the different types to what's going on. As such finding them only deepens your involvement in the story.

As for 'doing something new', its not like there are a whole lot of games with these gameplay elements, as a genre puzzle platform adventure isn't exactly overflowing with loads of games being released each year. Couple it with this storyline and I think that you can go some way to saying that its actually getting close to being a one off. There really isn't anything quite like this game. Compare it to ICO or Journey or Abzu all you want, as a package this game stands out.

Its definitely a 9/10 for me.

Can't say I had a problem with the platforming at any point.

The platforming in TLG is kind of janky too. They both use the ledge clambering style of platforming popularised by Uncharted, but neither approach the polish that ND achieve. Which might come across as disingenuous considering ND's skill and resources, but they /are/ the benchmark and other games (e.g. Enslaved, Remember Me) do do better. I think in part it's due to the boy in Rime being quite slow to control and the ability to execute jumps being overly context sensitive. There isn't much of a flow to the platforming because everything must be done in discrete stages, like first making sure you shimmy all the way to the end of a platform before the game even lets you attempt to jump backwards. The issues there are exacerbated by difficult direction control, which felt to me at least due to them changing somewhat but not fully with camera direction (so backwards for example is neither completely relative to the boy or completely relative to the camera, but somewhere in between). It was never game breaking and it was serviceable, but as I said there were points where it was mildly frustrating and I felt like I was fighting against the game.

I too don't mind the puzzles being easy enough to get through without getting stuck, but because they often aren't well integrated into the environment I felt they were somewhat arbitrary and it makes me question why they are there.

The collectibles are almost the opposite in being too well hidden. As you say they enhance the story, but as I only found three of the keyholes I more felt like I was missing out on getting the full story which I'd rather the game had made sure I would get (or at least, could get without slowing the game's pacing through exhaustive exploration). I began the game looking everywhere (the only lullaby shell I found was the one right at the beginning) but then I explored a lot less from the second level onward (triggered by not wanting to die exploring from that homing death bird, which wasn't a mechanic I enjoyed).

I did very much like that the toys in the boy's room at the end were dependent on finding them throughout the game. I think I would have been happy enough had they been the only collectibles.

Tore this game to bits trying for trophies, missing one. Any help with the one below please. Just a hint would be fine

Blend in with the surroundings

Rubix wrote:Tore this game to bits trying for trophies, missing one. Any help with the one below please. Just a hint would be fine

Blend in with the surroundings

BOR wrote:

Rubix wrote:Tore this game to bits trying for trophies, missing one. Any help with the one below please. Just a hint would be fine

Blend in with the surroundings

Well done!

Thanks for the hint

Rubix wrote:Tore this game to bits trying for trophies, missing one. Any help with the one below please. Just a hint would be fine

Blend in with the surroundings

More than a hint - https://www.trueachievements.com/a23170 ... chievement

Monkey Man wrote:

Rubix wrote:Tore this game to bits trying for trophies, missing one. Any help with the one below please. Just a hint would be fine

Blend in with the surroundings

More than a hint - https://www.trueachievements.com/a23170 ... chievement

Thanks but already got it thanks to BOR

Just beat this (Nintendo Switch version)

Wow, was not expecting that ending at all, it only twigged on the last parts during the rain level that I thought it was heading towards the way it does. Wonderful game!

As for the Switch version itself, it suffers really bad performance issues, I had so much slowdown, frame drops and graphical glitches all the way through. I recommend playing this game but only get the Switch version as a last resort.