Rime Review - A Gorgeous Indie Platformer, Many Years Too Late

Four years in development, for better and worse.

May 22, 2017 May 22nd, 2017

Rating - ★★☆☆☆

There's a real heart, a real passion to Rime that comes across the more you spend time with it. The only problem is, spending time with it isn't all that fun. Not for a puzzle platformer in 2017, anyway.

This is a genre that's had everything from The Last Guardian to Inside, and when it comes to ambiguous narratives and "You emerge in X environment, go figure it out!"-type games, titles like The Witness suddenly come into view, dwarfing the scope of what Tequila Works have assembled here. Especially as both feature quasi-amnesiac protagonists exploring islands filled with puzzles to solve and crumbling ruins to get lost in.

And that's a shame, because I have to hope there's an audience for Rime.

For me, someone who remembers the breathtaking feeling of surfing sand dunes in Journey, the slow-drip narrative of The Unfinished Swan, the puzzling delights of The Witness and the unique animal bond forged in The Last Guardian, returning to a game that falls back on the most basic of elements with nothing more than a cool art style, just doesn't cut it.

We're talking grab n' drag box puzzles and contextual ledges you can climb to, only if they're marked with white chalk. We're talking creature and enemy encounters that are memorable because there are hardly any of them, sporadically hyper-detailed environments and a 'gameplay loop' that consists of "Run, climb, solve simple puzzle, activate ancient monolith, repeat".

There IS a beauty that occasionally shines through as Rime's overarching narrative does want to take you on a ride and get you thinking (its achievement/trophy descriptions do more storytelling than the game itself at times), though at almost every turn - if you've dabbled in any third-person platformer or exploration-heavy indie game of the last half-decade - that ride is one we've been on so, so many times before.

Now, it's worth pointing out that Rime was initially debuted back in 2013 as a PS4 exclusive, meaning the developers started hashing out ideas months, if not years prior. Taken with that retrospective context - a gaming landscape where Journey was on everybody's lips - Rime would fit right in. But as we can glean from the fact the game then went multiplatform three years later (the sign a game needs to recoup sales after a lengthy dev cycle), it's clear production was not smooth sailing.

Technically speaking, I was on Xbox One, and sadly the entire experience ran very poorly. I imagine there'll be a string of patches to touch everything up in time, and as the other footage available online shows a far smoother game, I can only imagine this is a pre-release issue. Still, once you get past the cel-shaded, occasionally Katsushika Hokusai-connoting art direction, Rime doesn't necessarily wow through its architecture, character models, animation, texture work or variety of environments.

All the elements are there, but whether it's the antiquated feel that comes from climbing linear pathways like the most trite parts of Uncharted or the way the boy fails to grab many outcrops in a way that reminds us why Breath of the Wild was such a monumental step forward, the reality of how little there is to sink your teeth into does demonstrably hurt the experience.

Speaking of the latest Zelda, those earlier trailers that showcased a beautiful game of cannonball-diving into luscious blue pools, teasing wild hogs and climbing tall mountains as the sun baked the surrounding rock? That... is only the first 20 minutes. You're of course free to wander and explore, but those initial exploratory hooks that - especially in light of Nintendo's masterpiece - should now been major selling points, actually do far more harm than good, as Rime in its entirety plays like a supremely basic, PS1 Tomb Raider-esque puzzler.

From beginning to end your control scheme is limited to a shout, ICO-style, which you'll use to activate parts of the landscape (you literally turn on shrines and ignite flames by shouting at them, which is neat/humorous), a roll and a jump, pick up/throw items and basic movement, on and off land.

To that end, Rime is somewhat aiming to be one of those "Just drink it in" games - the luxurious score rises majestically whenever you do pretty much anything, as though plucking a stone from a crevice can unearth the hidden beauty of the world itself - but unlike the aforementioned Unfinished Swan, I didn't feel the connection between the developers' ambition and the technical execution.

There's a disconnect, a missing link between the mystery they're trying to convey (Who are you? Why are you on this island? Who's that figure in the distance watching you?) and how fun or exciting controlling your mysterious young boy feels.

In time, the technical aspects of Rime will no doubt be smoothed over - I'd hazard a guess that by the time you read this, Tequila Works will already have sorted a patch or two - yet the version I was supplied with, mixed with my own experience of the genre and the lack of any meaningful recommendable facet of gameplay put Rime squarely in the two star bracket.

If performance gets optimised and this becomes your first foray into open-ended indie games though, add another star to my opening rating.