Ryse: Son of Rome is a video game based on two core pillars: quick time events and wanton slaughter. Players take on the role of Marius Titus, a Centurion in the 14th Legion, and with him fight their way through a linear story populated by barbarian-filled skirmishes, chopping off arms and slashing throats as they go.
It's incredibly violent, and very good looking. The level of graphical fidelity that Crytek has managed to achieve for this Xbox One-exclusive hack ‘n' slash is to be admired. Marius' armour glistens on his back, his enemies grimace as he hacks away at their limbs, particle effects drift through the air, the environments are gorgeous, the character's facial animations first class, the staging of the drama magnificent. This is blockbuster entertainment. If I had popcorn in my hand instead of a control pad, I'd have chewed my way through buckets of the stuff during the 7/8 hours of the campaign.
The setting is an enticing one. Is there a period of history as captivating and intriguing as that of ancient Rome? I think not. It's a rich tapestry of stories and mythology, overflowing with iconic historical figures and compelling tales of war, romance, honour and betrayal. Before I put the disc in the console I was looking forward to taking a trip into the past, wielding a sword and cutting my way through one of my favourite periods of history.
It starts off promisingly enough. We're in Rome, Nero's there (the Emperor who allegedly played his fiddle as the city burned), barbarians are attacking, and we're introduced to the control scheme that's to keep us company for the duration of the campaign. ‘A' is a defensive block, used to deflect incoming blows and make room for counter-attacks. ‘Y' is a shield bash, there to open up enemies to swipes from your Gladius. ‘X' is the main sword attack. ‘B' rolls Marius out of harm's way, allowing for quick flanking and avoiding heavy blows. ‘Right Trigger' initiates the grizzly execution moves.
You know which button to press because Crytek colour codes the experience for you. General combat is a bit more open to individual interpretation; enemies charge in and you must parry their blows before going on the offensive. Thrusting your shield in the face of a more defensive opponent should open them up for blow or two, and once enough hits have been landed one of two icons appear above the head of your foe. A white skull denotes that enough damage has been done and an execution can be performed, a red skull is the same, but it's fleeting and the execution move must be initiated quickly or the chance will pass you by. Pulling the trigger brings on the execution move, and your enemies will glow yellow (‘Y') or blue (‘X'), changing colour to indicate which input you're supposed to press and when. It doesn't matter if you hit the right buttons or not (or indeed, if you press any buttons at all), your enemy is dead at that point, but if you time your button taps correctly, you'll get a better reward for your killing and a smoother action.
Rewards are user-defined. Mapped to the D-Pad, you can get a health boost, increased Focus (which when activated slows down your opponents and leaves them vulnerable to quick attacks), additional experience to be spent on levelling up, or a damage boost. It's an elegant system, encouraging you to analyse your current situation and assign your execution points accordingly. If you're in fine health but you've got no Focus, you can stock up that ability. If you've got both you can boost the amount of experience you'll get for your kills or increase the damage you're dealing.
At first the fighting's actually quite fun. The QTE combat system is more focussed than simple button mashing, and death accompanies a lack of coordination when taking on groups of opponents. The controls are responsive, so if you're attacking one enemy in front of you and another comes at you from behind, pushing the analog stick backwards and hitting ‘A' sends Marius' shield flashing backwards, deflects the blow and allows you tackle the new threat. Crytek has done a good job in creating a comfortable and responsive system. The only problem is that it never evolves beyond that initial promise.
As you move through the eight chapters of Ryse's single-player campaign, you come up against a succession of scenarios where you face off against small groups of enemies in enclosed spaces, and every fight is pretty similar to the last. The enemy types vary a little, that much is true, but even then the tactics you'll employ to defeat them don't stray far from a set pattern of dodge, deflect, block and slash. It doesn't help that, despite the fact that the game is beautifully rendered in almost every aspect, the enemies you face all look eerily similar. It feels like there's some kind of ancient cloning experiment going on, and with the different fights feeling so familiar, a little more variation in enemy skins would've gone a long way.
Boss fights are little better. It quickly becomes clear that the quickest and surest route to victory is lots of rolling around your enemy/enemies, and swiping them with quick blows to the back before they have a chance to reset and come again. It's obvious that this is how they've been designed, because no matter how far away your enemy is once they've spent their heavy attack (you know it's coming because they glow red to prompt your roll), they always hang there just long enough for you to dart in and connect a hit or two. What could've ended up as some interesting boss battles just descends into Marius rolling around like Sonic as he nibbles away at enemy health bars.
There's a few other mechanics that break up the pacing. At times you'll need to join up with your men in a testudo formation (a shield wall) and take cover from enemy arrow fire, at other points you'll need to issue orders to the soldiers under your control and defend certain strategic positions. This can be done one of two ways. You can either hold ‘LB' until a short timer runs down, or use Kinect and bark the order when prompted. The mic worked really well, and I don't think there was one time that it missed an audio cue. You can also pick up throwing spears (Pilum), with ‘Left Trigger' aiming and ‘Right Trigger' releasing your Olympic-quality throw. Lastly there's the semi-automatic Scorpio; a giant crossbow that you'll man from time to time as you repel waves of enemies with flaming bolts of death (and explosive barrels that flash red and are on hand to be destroyed).
When you're not fighting, you're upgrading your skills. The campaign itself will only take a few hours to complete, so you're constantly updating your abilities between missions. There's two ways you can improve Marius. The first is his skills: Health, Focus, Gain, and Combat. Beyond that you can unlock new executions to add more flavour to your killing. There's a decent selection of animations, including some great double executions, but even with the variety on offer, you'll soon start seeing a lot of repetition.
The cutscenes that tell the story are of the highest visual quality (there's one in particular that uses a distinctive animated art style that's a real highlight). The acting is decent across the board, with good motion-captured performances from the cast in all of the major roles. It's a shame then that the story the actors tell in the accomplished cutscenes is absolute nonsense. I'll not go into specifics, just to avoid spoilers, but needless to say it's not very accurate in its depiction of the past. They borrow a bit from here, another story element from there, and then mash it together for a narrative that's as cliched as it is ridiculous. It's also quite clear that Ryse badly wants to be Ridley Scott's Gladiator, and you'll constantly see things that remind you of that movie. As I mentioned earlier, I'm really interested in this particular period of history, and good chunk of Ryse's potential audience will also share a similar interest. With so many incredible events to work with, I'm confused why they felt the need to change so much. History is butchered here like so many barbarian limbs: regularly and without mercy.
When you're done with the campaign, there's multiplayer modes, which include co-op and solo arena battles. We played a few rounds of the solo game and it was pretty standard stuff, very similar to what you'll experience in the campaign. You take on waves of enemies in huge fighting arenas (that are absolutely jaw-dropping in their scale), stringing together combos of blocks, hits and executions while avoiding damage from a range of different enemy types. When you battle in the Colosseum you'll be treated to a selection of different environments that rise up from ground on mechanical platforms, and your main aim is to keep the crowd happy by killing in style. It was a nice distraction, but it's so similar to parts of the campaign, that I can't see myself returning to the arena very often. We couldn't get a co-op game as we missed the online session that was set up by Crytek for reviewers and there was nobody on hand to play with when we tried later, but we'll venture on post-launch and if playing with someone else greatly improves things we'll make sure to let you know. We're not holding our breath.
You can customise your gladiator with items acquired from booster packs. You can either use in-game credits earned in the arena to buy these packs, acquiring random objects that you may or may not want to equip, or you can buy them through micro-transactions. The most costly will guarantee more rare items and consumables. However the most expensive pack will set you back around £4.50, and earning that much credit will take a considerable investment of time. You can also buy gladiator skins to wear in the arena, if you want to get dressed up in something specific.
The other thing you can buy with your hard-earned money is more executions to be used in the single-player campaign. It's purely a cosmetic thing, but much more divisive than including paid-for multiplayer skins/content. As far as that goes, we'd advise you to keep your money in your pocket, as you'll unlock most of the execution animations in your first play-through, and if you like the game that much that you want to see all the content, a second pass isn't going to be too much of a hardship. With micro-transactions appearing in Forza Motorsport 5, Crimson Dragon and now Ryse, it's clear that Microsoft sees this as a big part of the future for Xbox One, at least as far as their first-party titles go. I'll leave the discussion of whether we should be having to grind for content in games that we've already spent money on for another time.
Micro-transactions, however, are the least of Ryse: Son of Rome's sins. The main problem here is that while the combat system works fine, and is suitably gory, it doesn't continue to engage for very long and after a while you're just going through the motions. There's just not enough depth there, and in just one run through the campaign you'll have sliced off enough identical barbarian arms to last a lifetime. The story was not to my tastes at all, wallowing as it did in historical inaccuracy and cliched elements (although I'm sure some people won't mind that at all). Yes it's very pretty, but it's also pretty dumb. It might be a great advert for what Xbox One can do from a technical perspective, but it's also likely going to be one of those launch titles that nobody remembers in a couple of years time.
