RYSE: SON OF ROME Impressions - E3 2013
The long awaited Ryse is here, or at least coming soon, now with the subtitle Son of Rome, and it looks absolutely amazing. Coming from Crytek (the reason for the weird spelling) this could be Microsoft's answer to Sony's God of War franchise.
What intriguied me about Ryse was it played sort of like a squad based shooter although the game and setting is entirely different. The game is brutal, with arms and legs going everywhere, but it also has a sense of strategy that is blatantly absent from games like God of War. It also seemed to combine a parry/counter attack system with a quicktime event system, much like the Batman: Arkham series. It also reminded me quite a bit of the Playstation exclusive Heavenly Sword due to the massive amount of quicktime events. It got a bit repetitive, and yet there was pandemonium on the battlefield. Multiple enemies will approach from the front, sides, and back, and the camera is closer to the player than in Batman, so you don't realize they're gunning for you until the camera zooms out a bit. I noticed this and used that as my proximity alarm.
The controls are fairly simple. Y is shield attack, X is sword attack, A is your parry/counter which you will probably be mashing, and B is your action/execution. RT was used to throw javelin/spears at archers in the distance and LB was used as my commands. I also sprinted a bit by pressing LS.
Overall, Ryse seems promising. There is a lot more I would have liked to see, but I'll take what I can get.
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