The Post-Game - Ryse: Son of Rome

Hack. Slash. Shield bash. Repeat. That's Ryse: Son of Rome in a nutshell. The more I tried to objectively assemble a list of positives and negatives, the more I realized that Ryse has little unique to offer (those graphics, though!). However, there is real promise in several areas, and I had fun in an arcade-y way. Ryse is worth a purchase at 75% off or more, but certainly not at full price.

You can view the game's opening here.

What's to like:

+ The graphics for sure. If you have a killer rig and want an awesome-looking game to showcase your hardware, this is your game. The developers didn't phone in the backdrops, either: the vistas are huge, the backdrops extensive. The undergrowth in Britain is deep, detailed and lush. The water looks like real water, not shiny, shifting, reflective plastic. Character detail is superb, though facial animations still look just a bit stiff.

+ The voice acting is great, and carries the game at many points. Everyone delivers a superb performance (player-character Marius and npc Vitallion are both stand-outs).

+ The story has emotional impact, though if you're at all a fan of the time-period, the careless mixing of old and new legends will probably annoy instead of satisfy. Still, it's enough to keep you moving forward.

+ The soundtrack is a decent emulation of Zimmer's Gladiator score (not surprising).

+ The combat is slick and swift, and easy for newcomers.

+ A lot of effort clearly went into designing the two-player co-operative multiplayer; there are at least a dozen maps and four game modes. It's a lot of fun to team up with someone and slay enemies in the arena, but matchmaking is not that good at the moment, if a match can be found at all.

+ Well-optimized (for Radeon, anyway). In an era of increasingly shoddy PC ports, Ryse ran great on my moderate hardware (A10 6800k + 2GB R7 260X); I averaged around 50fps @1080p Medium settings.

And now, the not-so-awesome stuff.

-  Linear as hell. Rome may look awesome in the distance, but you can't go there.

-  While the story works, even the slightest bit of historical research will reveal there is nothing even approaching “accuracy”. If you were hoping for a cool Roman-era hack'n slash, you'll get it. Historically accurate? Nope. Just a mix of the cool stuff.

-  No real large-scale payoff to the story. Marius has closure, no question. But the larger implications including that he was somehow an instrument of the gods – are never addressed. We just get these god-figures who appear at the end (and are glimpsed throughout) with some decent speeches about purpose, rules, and Rome, and that's it.

-  Combat is limited and repetitive. Hack, slash, shield-bash, repeat. Maybe dodge here and there. It definitely bored me by the sixth chapter (out of eight). A missed opportunity to maybe dual-wield swords, or have a spear and shield, but nope. A sword and shield the entire game.

-  Staying with combat for a minute, finishing moves are a QTE-fest. I don't mean every few minutes; every other second you're performing some kind of QTE. I suppose this was easier than programming more complicated forms of combat.

-  I loved some of the contextual battle choices – where to deploy your archers, advancing on a line of archers in the testudo formation. But these are under-used, and offer little variation.

-  Upgrade skills are ridiculously cheap. I've played enough of the Batman Arkham games to be able to string together a 35-hit combo without much trouble. A big enough combo and correctly-completed QTEs grants tons of “honor” points that are used to level up. If the game were harder, upgrading would have meant more...

-  ...perhaps. Aside from new execution animations, the upgrades didn't seem to have much effect.

Ryse: Son of Rome is a linear hack'n slash that will satisfy in short bursts, but anyone looking for deep gameplay and customization will be disappointed. The potential is there to be something truly great, but sadly that potential remains unrealized.  

The Post-Game: Red Faction II

Red Faction II is the sequel that fans of the Red Faction franchise would rather forget. Decent graphics for the time, trouble free gameplay (no crashes & full 1080p), multiple environments (some levels are completed on foot, others in planes, others in tanks, others in power armor), and great voice acting (Lance Henriksen and Jason Statham).

So what are the drawbacks?

Red Faction II contains little or nothing that made the first Red Faction game a classic. The game is linear as hell. So was the first game, you might say; but even within the levels, there often were multiple ways to progress. Not so in Red Faction II. What about Geomod and destructible terrain? Well, that's still here, kind of. There's plenty of stuff that is destructible. But instead of unlocking different routes, Geomod's role is reduced to the only path. One level begins with Alias in an alley with both ends blocked off. There's no way to progress forward. Oh, wait, shoot those barrels. Boom! The wall explodes and (realistically) crumbles, opening a hole to walk through. There's your Geomod.

Also missing is the Everyman character. Parker (Red Faction), Alec Mason (Red Faction Guerrilla), and Darius Mason (Red Faction Armageddon) were all ordinary joes called upon to be heroes. In Red Faction II, we play as a Nano-agumented super soldier who is already special. The plot might look fine on paper – super soldiers attempt to overthrow a despot – but the execution isn't even up B-movie standards (maybe C-movie standards). And while the voice acting is good, there's no emotional attachment with Alias (your character), even when he is betrayed and has to fight an entirely new enemy about half-way through the game.

Red Faction II is also short for a fps. A complete run-through clocked in around 5 hours. The enemies are generic and repetitive (even the “zombies” of later levels present little challenge). If you're good at getting head-shots, you'll be able to coast through this one. The boss battles do present a decent challenge; the final boss is insanely hard / old school at first. Then I realized his pattern (from which he never deviates), and beat him in 90 seconds. There was one boss that had a charged electrical field for protection; if he got too close, and you became electrocuted, all of your controls become inverted (left is right, down is up). That was fun and a great challenge.

But one unique and fun boss isn't enough to save a game, and unfortunately Red Faction II has little else of interest. Skip it unless you can get it REALLY cheap.

Of note: If battling bots is something you like, you might be interested in Red Faction II's highly customizeable Bot-Match mode. There are quite a few maps and a great variety of weapons. Though why wouldn't you just play Quake 3 or Classic Nexuiz if that's what you're after?