I don’t have the same patience I used to have. Here’s Rime, a game which makes me glad I’ve never tried to sell these posts as objective reviews and only ever made them about my personal take on a game.
Our protagonist washes up on a strange island, chock-full of puzzles for them to solve, aided by a fox spirit and a mysterious person in a red cloak always just a little out of reach.
Gameplay is largely free-roam- there’s usually a particular barrier to clear in order to progress to the next gameplay chunk, but unlike (for example) Portal’s closed-chamber puzzles, Rime has you exploring the island for the right cave or temple to enter. Patience fails me here, with Rime making a few decisions that are just aggravating.
If you fall too far, you’ll be returned to where you’d just jumped from. That’s nice in platformers, but the platforming isn’t supposed to be the challenge here- so when I’m 90% of the way through a puzzle and notice that, actually, I can’t finish it without doing something elsewhere, I can’t just jump down back to the central hub- I have to un-do all the stuff I did. Why? Why not just let me hop back down and come back when I’m prepared for this area?
That wasn’t the only frustration. At one point I went off the beaten track to find a weird fish statue which dispensed little glowing orbs that exploded with light when thrown. It was very far away from pretty much everything else, and the use of the orbs was not obvious. Coupled with the fact that the child’s walking speed is pretty sluggish, attempting to solve that puzzle became a slow loop of walk… to the fish… pick up… the orb… walk… all the way back… try to use the orb… it does nothing… walk back… to the fish…
And all along the way there’s very specific areas with fireflies buzzing around which looked like obvious indicators of ‘you have to do a thing here’ but were red herrings!!!!
Fin or Bin:
Is it me? It’s probably me. I’m sure there was a time I would have overlooked this stuff. Might not even have noticed it at all. But with 45 other games fighting for my time and attention, I can’t justify spending it on a game which irritated me so much. Off to the Bin.
(Steam)