(3.5 / 4)
Also on: Windows, XBox One, Nintendo Switch
MELANCHOLY REIGNS
These days I tend to split my game time evenly between two or three games at a time, playing a couple of hours of one before taking a break and switching to another. Playing RiME, crafted by the talents over at Tequila Works, I found that approach to not only be disrespectful - RiME was all but impossible to put down.It's one hell of a journey, albeit a short one. Teeming with lush colors and breathtaking vistas, the game propelled me through powerful and delicate tones of amazement, loneliness and melancholy, never allowing me to stray or look back. The five chapters each bring their own distinct sense of place and emotion. Although the experience obviously is strongly directed, the way it unfolds feels very much based on the player's participation through curiosity. Upon at last finishing it I was emotionally drained. I had no energy to spare for another game that day. It played me like a fiddle.
You seize control of a nameless boy as he awakens washed up on an unknown sunny shore. The camera placement incites you to travel toward a nearby tower high upon the seaside cliffs. You are, however, free to go anywhere you please. Doing either will soon reveal that you are stranded on a small island, surrounded not so much by a horizon as an endless blue emptiness. It's as if the sky and ocean are one, and that this island makes up the entire world.
At the centre of the island another, even higher tower points to the heavens, and slightly below its top is the shape of a huge keyhole. That's an apparent end goal, and two mysterious figures - a fox and a shady person in a red cloak - lead you on, and will keep doing so through most of your journey. The rest I'll leave for you to find out.
AN INTROVERT'S GAME
The camera tails the boy at a somewhat distanced view straight from behind, to better allow for you to marvel at the world around him. It will occasionally shift to an overview or first-person perspective of the current location to help you with certain situations. Playing the game consists of exploring, platforming and solving simple but at times inventive puzzles that toy with perspective, sound or light to great effect. No combat exists, but there are enemies to flee and ways to die, though death hardly functions as punishment. You respawn and get to try again right where you left off.From the get-go, there's a lot of apparent symbolism on display. Although deciphering it isn't required to reach the end goal, I'd say the quest for answers is a reward of its own. The world of RiME contains no spoken or written language, encouraging you to instead create such a narrative within your mind. With a bit of exploration you'll find clues. Look for murals and carefully hidden collectibles spread out across the levels, as they mostly shed some light on the backstory. The game's length narrows down to six to eight hours, but I have a feeling I'll spend more time there in my thoughts. Never have I felt more at a loss for missing a few collectibles in the end.
Tequila Works make no effort to hide their influences - and what inspirations they are: Ico first and foremost, but also Journey and, I'd wager, the works of Hayao Miyazaki - although their handling of emotion proves in this case to be more on-the-nose. At every step of the way RiME wrings a certain emotional response out of you, primarily through an unending orchestral or ambient score, whereas Ico rather quietly beckoned you on. In terms of world design and game mechanics, the similarities are so striking that RiME seems to belong to the very same universe as Ico, only viewed through a different, highly saturated lens.
The games also share some underlying themes. I'm not going to make the same mistake a certain reviewer did and mention them. If you're in the process of researching whether RiME is worth your time, stay away from Metacritic, where the blurb from the top scoring review reveals what the game metaphorically represents, spoiling the ending and the entire meaning of the experience. Using that as a quote is an unforgivable oversight from Metacritic, and the reviewer in question made it clear in his text that section was a huge spoiler.
Not that it needed mentioning at all. The message is even there in plain sight, right after the credits. As a reviewer, proving that you "got the meaning" shouldn't take precedence over allowing others to find it for themselves. That sort of analysis belongs to game club discussions, not reviews. And I doubt that anyone who plays RiME to the end will miss or misinterpret the very strong emotions at heart.
It might not be a game for everyone, but if you possess that certain sensibility that made you love Ico, you're the kind that could likely soak up the world of RiME and love it to death.
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