History repeats itself

Ryse: Son of Rome originally released as a launch title for the next gen Xbox One on November 22nd, 2013. The now 7 year old console saw a significant leap in performance and graphics from it’s predeccessor and Ryse was the equivalent of a professional body builder, dripping in oil, gaudily flexing his muscles for the baying crowds. It perfectly demonstrated the new capabilities of Microsoft’s hardware, the game was in short, breath taking and no doubt helped to moved hundreds of thousands of units on Xbox One’s launch day. And if you want to make a pretty game, who better to ask than Crytek, renowned developers of one of, arguably, the most visually excellent game series to date, aptly named Crysis, with their patented in house engine, equally aptly named: CRYENGINE.

Now the problem is, much like anything, or perhaps anyone more accurately, that places it’s entire self value on appearance, they also tend to be rather vaccuous and boring underneath the thin veil of outward beauty. This addage perfectly surmises Ryse and furthermore Crytek’s roster to date, with the exception of the incredible original FarCry (before Ubisoft acquired the rights and butchered it, as Ubisoft is wont to do).

The game was later released (Oct 14’) on PC, in what was an almost direct port from the console version and is now available on Steam for around £10, including all of it’s DLC. Ryse continues to be visually breathtaking, more so even, on this new platform, especially when run on max settings, but seemingly nothing has been done to address the dire gameplay.

Ryse is a classic (and rather plaguerised) story of revenge, loosely set in the golden age of Rome’s warring empire. Rome is locked in potracted and bloody warfare with the British Celtic Tribe, led by King Oswald and his warrior daughter Boudica and our protagonist, Marius, finds himself rapidly ascending the Roman ranks as he hacks and slashes through their hordes, hell bent on bloodshed following the dramatic murder of his family at the hands of the Celts.

The narrative is at times, captivating, laced with moral ambiguity and drama. Several times through the campaign your actions are brought in to question and even your allegiance to the Empire, as an almost comical cowardly Nero and his idiot sons Commodus and Basillius command you to do their bidding, driven purely by ego and their lust for power and wealth.

However, it can be almost schizophrenic at times, which is primarily a side effect of it’s incredibly short span, this is an epic tale of revenge and betrayal, told in less than a 5 hour playthrough. It’s heartbreakingly dissapointing, Ryse employs some really clever and novel story telling techniques, the story is driven forward at times by narration from Marius alongside panning camera shots of scenes carved in to stone, depicting long journeys and epic battles. But the story being depicted should be the story you are playing, at several times during the game you can’t help but feel as though someone pressed fast forward. Everything just feels rushed, one minute you are in Britain, crossing blades with the fiersome Boudica and the next minute you are fighting the Emporers son in the colliseum (Cough* Gladiator Cough*). By the time the credits roll the only question you are left with is… “what?” It almost feels as though Crytek just ran out of time and couldn’t delay release as to coincide with Xbox One’s launch date.

This is a feeling that can be attributed to almost every aspect of Ryse: Son of Rome, it should have been excellent, but instead feels rushed and lacking attention to detail. The gameplay itself is no different and is arguably the worst offender in what is a maximum security prison of a game.

Gameplay, i.e the times when you physically control Marius, is almost exclusively comprised of combat, there is no real exploration, or downtime to soak in environments when at the helm, you are hastily couriered from battle to battle where your objective rarely veers from, kill everyone for the next cut scene. The combat itself is monotonous beyond belief, simply consisting of attack, heavy attack, shield bash, heavy shield bash and block/parry, oh and in a truly novel addition, you can slow down time to get multiple hits in safely (except bosses and mini bosses bizzarely, they are impervious to the tardation of time). But the real Z list star of the show is the execution mechanic, hit any enemy enough times (usually 4) and a little skull will appear above their head, you can then press a button to enter a QTE whereby you are required to press a combination of attack or shield bash (left or right click for the PC), your reward is a gruesome dispatchng of your foe, incredibly cool the first dozen times perhaps, an obligation to get through the game after that. There are several unlockable executions (gained by spending points you earn during combat) but you will rarely see more than 5 or 6. You can perform double executions and environmentally contextual executions, which add a little spice to the otherwise bland affair, but these feel as though they need to be overengineered, rather than happening organically.

Combat is incredibly repetetive and without any variety in the gameplay (the parts of the game you control are entirely combat), there is no escaping the monotony. Again it just feels rushed, nothing seems to have meaning or purpose. There is an incredibly shallow progression system (why have one at all), which as before mentioned allows you to spend points, either on new executions or a series of benign upgrades focused around XP Boost, Health and other generic categories. Adding points to this feels completely arbitrary, not a considered choice, weighing up the pros and cons of boosting one attribute over another, it’s an unneccessary addition entirely.

Executions have some tangible reasoning behind them, a reason to perform them other than the reward of initially gratifying gore. You can cycle between execution “categories” for want of a better word, focus (slow-mo), health regen, bonus damage and XP Boost, successfully performing a QTE will give you an enormous boost of health (close to 50% of your HP), or an entire bar of focus, it’s an overly generous gift for successfully performing 3 buttons presses with incredibly forgiving windows. You would hope a mechanic like this would play out simarly to Doom Eternals constant balancing of ammo, health and armour, keeping yourself from the brink of demise with a well timed Flame Belch or Glory Kill, what you have instead is yet another poorly designed gimmick that you can easily forget about and certainly don’t need to succeed.

It would be fair to assume that when it comes to combat, this is as bad as it gets, however, you have assumed wrong, this is just swordplay.

Someone at Crytek decided that there should be some semblance of ranged combat, presumably to break up the monotony. But in fitting with practically every other aspect of the game, it ultimately feels like an afterthough rather than a well thought out and “executed” (excuse the pun) addition. During the campaign you will be required at times to help your quickly depleting forces by picking off teams of archers, raining death from above. What this boils down to is picking up some spears, conveniently placed next to you just when you need them and one by one, locking on to the archers and clicking the left mouse button. There is no cover mechanic, you are simply locked in an American Civil war style shooting match, taking turns lobbing projectiles at eachother. There is no manual aim, you press ctrl to bring up the reticule which forcefully determines who your target is for you, often the target you least want. Every time you are shot, this animation resets and the whole ordeal feels incredibly clumsy and at the worst of times down right infuriating.

In certain regards, Crytek’s attention to detail is worthy of appluase, Marius’s armor and weapons have clearly received a great deal of love and affection from the developers, everything sounds, looks and feels authentically Roman, your sword hisses as it leaves it’s scabbard and screams when it clatters with enemy steel, your armor gently clinks and clanks as you navigate the Slums of Rome. However yet again, this detail is rivalled by the shocking laziness of enemy design. Your enemy throughout the game are (with the exception of two other factions) exclusivly Celtic tribesman, some weild two axes, others axes and shields, some two curved blades, it would seem that their weaponry determins there aesthetic in Ryse. If you choose to have a shield and Axe then you must by decree have a bit of a paunch, a pony tails and goatee, and steel armoured nipple protectors. This poor soul must have perished at Marius’ blade over a hundred times by the games end.

Boss fights, often the highlight of hack and slash games, offer no reprise from the above flaws. Bosses have an incredibly limited variety of attacks, some are unblockable, some can be parried gifting you a window to land 3 strikes, chipping away at their generic health bar. Essentially what you have is every encounter you have endured previously, but longer as you have to hit them more times. In fact it could be argued that they are worse, as you can’t even perform a generic execution on them, instead the climax of the battles are delivered via the medium of a cut scene!

There is no denying that Ryse is a truly stunning game, you will find yourself battling through Roman market squares, with the colliseum standing proudly in the background, the attention to detail is at times breath taking. Early on in the campaign you find yourself scaling an Aqueduct, set in a lush British Forest, as your forces fight beneath you, it’s hard in these moments not to be impressed by the visual spectacle. But these impressive backdrops deliver yet another gut punch of dissapointment, as you can’t explore them. Ryse’s missions are incredibly linear, at times there might as well be an uninspired, underpaid attended droning at you to keep your hands in the car at all times over the tannoy. In fact, Crytek even manage to make traversing the gorgeous scenery boring. You will come across traps as you sneak through forests, trying to circumnavigate the body of your enemies army, circumnavigating these traps require you to get through yet another QTE, this time requiring only one button press (block), the placement of these traps are almost laughable, one particular section will see you have to block 5 or 6 identical traps in the space of 15 seconds, it’s not challenging, it’s not interesting, why include it?

Ryse feels like a game that deserved a lot more time, it seems clear that the pressure of coinciding with the Xbox One’s launch date has seriously compromised Crytek’s ability to make this a polished, well thought out experience for players. Instead what we have is a fantastic setting, a story that deserved more time and a host of gimmicky mechanics glued together in the hopes of resembling passable gameplay. The real question is, why not use the opportunity of re-releasing Ryse on the PC to even attempt to resolve any of these issues?

3.5/10