Initial Impessions of Ryse: Son of Rome

I had not heard a great deal about Ryse: Son of Rome prior to my purchase of it on launch day other than it looked incredible. I try to make a habit of not making blind purchases, but in this case I made an exception. Even if the action was entirely lacklustre, if the visuals were as impressive as I had heard I wanted to see it for myself. The good news is that the game is, for lack of a better term, beautiful. The bad news? The game's action is entirely lacklustre. Again, of course, I have not completed the game yet. These are simply my initial impressions of Ryse: Son of rome.

Ryse is a fairly simple game. You play as Marius, a Roman soldier capable of dispatching several barbarians at once with a few presses of the X and Y buttons. The combat in the game might be equated to something out of the Batman: Arkham series. You enter a room filled with enemies and you bounce around them, snapping to whichever enemy you are focusing on while countering and dodging their attacks. Eventually after wearing down your assailants, an icon will appear above their head prompting you to perform an execution. When this happens you will be forced into a quick time event (albeit an entirely forgiving one) in which your enemies flash either blue or yellow and you must press the corresponding coloured buttons on your controller. These executions look impressive, but begin to wear thin after about the tenth time you see one.

There are some interesting mechanics at work in the executions mind you, as you can select different attributes for your executions that might warrant you extra experience, life, damage or focus. These are however, not interesting enough variations in the combat to keep it interesting the entire way through.

By the point I am at in the game (an hour or two in) you will have found yourself trudge through several of these combat encounters, a few bad turret sequences and a couple of areas where the game tasks you with throwing some javelins at a bridge. None of these are particularly exciting after the first few times that you do them, but its not outside the realm of possibility that the game might keep one going based solely on the fact that it looks incredible. I mean seriously. This is one of the best looking games I have seen in a while. Next ten video games, y'all...they're here.