Rime (PlayStation 4) Review

Rime begins humbly enough, with a boy marooned on an island, and immediately control is given. The unnamed protagonist who wears a striking red cape is given overwhelming freedom to explore this island. The flora and fauna that the island is teeming with manages to make such a lonely place feel alive. From boars, seagulls, boars, crabs and even lizards (which evoke memories of Shadow of the Colossus), these are little details that most developers would not take the time to include, but in an adventure game like this they also serve the narrative's themes.

Attention to detail is where Rime shines, and the nuances are present in gameplay and visuals because this game does zero handholding. Tequila Works rose to the challenge to have no obvious tutorial and absolutely no spoken dialogue whatsoever. The designers exhibit pure genius in how they convey so much with so little, and as it stands, Rime is a flawless example of storytelling in a video game, with zero interference from tedious cutscenes.

Rime's structure is interesting; at first it seems like an open-ended nonlinear world where puzzles can be completed in different orders. That is only really true for the first area, and after that it becomes more level-based and the path becomes more linear as the story gets more focused. Each zone of the island has its distinctive theme and setting. From the sun-scorched ship graveyard, to the gloomy, rainy black rock citadel, every locale leaves a strong impression.

As far as adventure games go, this one is pretty long and clocks in at about ten hours. The extremely well-hidden extra areas make for decent replayability, which is very rare in a game like this. The hidden collectables are worth getting, since they provide more context to the narrative and sometimes even are alternate outfits for the boy.

As mentioned earlier, Tequila Works loves to make its games with obvious and understandable homages, which are likely because it's easier to convey what kind of game it is. The most pronounced games that the developer references are Ico, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Journey, The Witness and Myst. The aesthetics are clear where they were inspired by, but in spite of that the designs do come into their own, and there are even some shades of Studio Ghibli in the somewhat anime-esque look of the boy.

 There is not a single poorly mapped or stretched texture to be found, and the eye-popping surface effects on display for pretty much everything seen in the game never fail to impress... even if they do come at the cost of an inconsistent frame rate. Some of the most impressive visuals are the rain effects and the real-time reflective surfaces that have a very life-like warping and brushed imperfections. The developers pushed the Unreal Engine on PlayStation 4 pretty hard, but it would have been preferred if a performance mode was included as an option, which several titles have been offering as of late.

What makes a good adventure game is the puzzles and design. As time has proven, graphics are not enough to make a game, and thankfully, Rime not only looks amazing, but it has some of the best puzzles designed in a 3D video game. Somehow, the fact that the unnamed boy has a very limited amount of actions means the game manages a wide gamut of puzzles that utilise the environment in interesting ways that people who played The Witness may be familiar with, which involves perspective and shapes.

Some puzzles rely on the lighting or manipulating the real-time day and night cycle, and others will use spatial distortion, like the Lost Woods from The Legend of Zelda. All of this, on top of classic block puzzles, basic platforming and the standard find-the-key road blocks, make Rime an extremely varied and diverse adventure. It is not a terribly hard adventure game and is for the most part pretty easy, but there may be a couple of head-scratching moments that may impede progress for some people. There are some annoyances, such as how stingy the game is with what is considered a climbable surface and what isn't, and how much of the climbing and platforming is fairly braindead, which plagued pretty much every game during the seventh generation of consoles.

Tequila Works has its work cut out. If Deadlight and The Sexy Brutale suggested that they had some talent, Rime utterly cements their status as one of the greatest developers working today. When the credits start rolling it will be apparent that the developers were very passionate about making this game and it was clearly a very personal project for everyone involved in its making, which is not surprising considering Rime's central theme. This is the kind of game that, when replayed, suddenly everything has a new meaning and significance, including the reliance on symbols and lack of dialogue. This is a deft skill not any developer is capable of, and many that try result in a pretentious incoherent mess. Rime is the rare game that manages to connect on a personal and human level, while flawlessly being a satisfying adventure.