Let’s Talk About…: Something New

We’re back with our “Let’s Talk About…” series! Check out the previous chats here.

Let’s Talk About…: A game made in the last five years

Okay! I’m always up for talking about Dragon Age: Inquisition! I can talk about that game a lot!

No? You all are tired of me talking about Dragon Age?

Okay! I’m always up for talking about Mass Effect! Let’s talk about Mass Effect: Andromeda! I can talk about that game and that series a lot!

Oh. I’m doing it again, aren’t I?

Okay! Let’s talk about RiME!

I’m honestly not sure why people aren’t talking about this game more. I went to my local GameStop and they didn’t even have the game for sale. Ever. No promotional materials, no empty spot on the shelves where it should have sat.

I looked online. No one seemed to be talking about it. It got the slightest amount of hype before being dismissed as little more than an homage to games that came before. As a puzzle-adventure game that has a style and theme reminiscent of Shadow of the Colossus, ICO, Journey, and any given Zelda title, I can see why it might come across as having less than a small amount of intrigue to keep a player’s attention.

But… I can’t stop playing it. I’ve been thrown into a world (almost literally. The main character washes up on shore), given no explanation, and then been shown a great, big, beautiful island paradise to explore.

Oh, and there are these adorable little pig things.

There is hardly any explanation, and yet the game somehow feels natural to play and allows the player to explore, even down to pressing every single button everywhere until something works. There is an occasional prompt around incredibly important items the first time, but then the player is left to learn, retain, and explore. Each of the puzzles builds on the skills previously learned, and so I can see some of the upcoming puzzles being quite complicated.

After wandering aimlessly and shouting at things in the game (again, literally), I met a mysterious figure who vanishes into thin air when my character approaches him. I have an inkling as to who the figure might be (in a macro sense), but that doesn’t mean I’m not having fun finding out how we’ll get there and how the story will unfold.

I also met a little fox friend who also appears to have some special powers, who acts as a gentle guide later in the game, happily bounding ahead in each new area and waiting for you to figure out all the puzzles.

It’s fairly short as far as games go; I think HowLongToBeat puts it somewhere around ten hours. But, like we know from Journey and Shadow of the Colossus, it’s not the amount of hours in a game that matter, but the amount of game in those hours.

Have you played RiME? Have you even heard of it? What is one recent game that you’d consider a hidden gem? Or, what’s your favorite game from the past five years? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll see you soon!
~ Athena

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