Developer: Two Tribes
Publisher: Two Tribes Publishing
Platforms: PC, Mac, PlayStation 4
Tested on: PC
RIVE – Review
RIVE is, as it describes itself, a metal wrecking, robot hacking shooter/platformer hybrid where you take on the role of Roughshot. It features land, underwater and air combat, a unique hacking system, an upgradeable tank and a rather lengthy story mode. Jump into your spider tank, shoot enemies and kick ass in this new game by Two Tribes.
Story
In RIVE, you’ll be playing as Roughshot, a man who loves loot. When cruising around in space, you found that a large starship was in the middle of an asteroid field, so of course you decide to check it out. Once inside the ship, you try to find any loot that is worth salvaging, but you might have bitten off more than you can chew. The starship is full of hostile robots and contraptions that try to kill you. After finding a fueling station you decide it’s time to leave the starship, however the ship’s AI won’t let you off for some reason, it wants you to test its defenses. Now, you’re trapped inside of the starship, and your only goal now is to try and make it out alive.
RIVE has quite a bit of interesting dialogue in it that will tell you more about the starship and the AI that controls it. However, you can decide to completely ignore the story if you want to, because it’s the ships’ AI that brings the story to you. You can just kill the messenger robot and you won’t have to listen to any of his ramblings anymore.
Graphics
The graphics in RIVE look very nice overall. They’re not ultra-realistic, but they look great and go together well with the games’ art style. The scenery has kind of a steampunk look to it, as you’re inside a dark space ship full with robots. The graphical effects also look pretty nice and fit well with the rest of the game.
Sound
Sound wise, RIVE is also doing great with superb music and nice sound effects to go with it. The music is just awesome and when there’s an intense fight or a boss fight it really reflects the tension and hectic gameplay that sometimes occurs. Most dialogues in the game are also narrated, and the narration is also fairly well done, that is always a big plus in our books.
Gameplay
RIVE is an action-packed robot hacking shooter and platformer hybrid. It can be played with mouse and keyboard or with a controller, which is always a nice thing to include for platformers. You have to shoot and jump your way past enemies, obstacles and even moving trains in order to get out in one piece, but it’s not always that easy.
The basics of the game are pretty simple, you just move around, shoot enemies and jump. Killing enemies will sometimes awards health packs or special ammo as well as nuts, which you can spend in the shop in order to buy special weapons or robot upgrades. There are a total of 13 levels in the game including the epilogue, where each level adds an extra layer of difficulty by adding new enemies or obstacles that can get in your way.
It’s not all about just shooting though, quite often you will have to do some platforming in order to progress, but most of it is pretty straightforward. For some bosses and rooms you’ll have to shoot and do platforming at the same time, which can get extremely difficult if there’s a lot happening at once. In addition to shooting and platforming, the game also features hacking. This allows you to hack switches in order to open gates, but later on in the game you’ll also be able to hack enemies which will then fight for you, something that can be extremely useful in hectic situations.
RIVE also features a lot of other things, one of them is Steam Leaderboards. At the end of every level you’ll see your accumulated score and how well you’ve done compared to other players. This definitely comes in handy for the die-hard gamers who want to top the leaderboards.
Besides story mode, RIVE also features a single-credit mode and speedrun mode. In single-credit mode, you have to try and get as far as you can with just one life, which is pretty ridiculous as there were probably hundreds of deaths during my playthrough. Speedrun mode is, you guessed it, all about speed. The game is played at a fast-forwarded pace and there are also timers all around the place, in order to keep good track of your times.
Conclusion
RIVE was an awesome game to play from start to finish. It features an interesting story, humor, action-packed gameplay, great music and nice graphics. There isn’t much bad to say about this title, except for it being quite difficult at times which can lead to frustrations. However, it feels extremely rewarding when you finally pass a very hard section of the game.
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