We've got a head-turning beauty of bloody historical fiction set at the time of Nero nearly two millennia ago. This is a third-person action game, though it doesn't look that much like action games I've played before. We don't play many games set in this era nor have we gamers had many chances to line up with centurions against barbarians in ancient Rome or charge the shores of Roman-occupied Britannia.
We also don't play many games where the camera is in this tight. The characters are often massive in Ryse, as if the designers wanted to impress you with the Xbox One's graphics by making it seem like you're closer to them. "Here, look at this!" Ryse says as it grabs you by the collar and moves your face to the TV.
Some games show off graphics just to, well, show off. Rarely can you point to great graphics and say that they improve the gameplay, but in Ryse, they do. They help distinguish Ryse from being just another brawler. They excuse, to some extent, the game's constricting linearity and invisible walls. They aidRyse's gameplay by supporting a melee combat system that works best if you, the player, visually "reads" your character's movements.
See, Ryse risks being an awful game by introducing the oddity of combat sequences that are impossible to fail. The game allows the player to activate optionally-interactive finishing sequences, dubbed as "executions," that will work play out and kill an enemy even if you do nothing. What could be a travesty, however, turns out to be something novel and enjoyable: a combat system that switches from manual to automated and that, when it switches, rewards players who read the graphics well. It empowers the player who can anticipate their character's next moves based on his complicated animations and who can do this with such finesse that they can rack up scores, chain combos, purchase more extravagant moves and, all the while, infuse their character with better and better stat boosts.
