Ryse: Son of Rome is a third person action adventure set in ancient Rome circa 68 A.D. Its protagonist, General Marius Titus, is fueled by his desire to avenge his family’s murder; the game wastes no time in drawing the player into the gameplay, immediately forcing us to take part of the action after a swooping view of the battlefield.
The gameplay is extremely linear and stays true to the ‘button mashing’ action genre. The player works their way across a set path clearly indicated by blue sheets whilst facing waves of enemies. We repeatedly press buttons to punch, kick and use our shield so nothing complex is asked of the player, however QTE responses are prompted for action sequences to be executed correctly by pressing the corresponding button highlighted by the color on screen, however this also becomes monotonous overtime. The developers did try something new and took advantage of the Kinect voice command feature however you can only use it when prompted to. The vibration on the controller is setup to inform you when you’ve successfully landed a hit. In addition it is used when the character is climbing; giving the player a tactile feel of the action on screen.
During a cut scene Titus was thrown into the sea, I thought it would be a change in dynamic however the cut scene continued, placing the general on shore; which resulted in the repetitiveness of pushing the analog stick forward and the bursts of button mashing.
