RYSE: SON OF ROME

Crytek's hack 'n' slash was a dud on launch, but now?

- By Rick Lane

It's easy to write about why great games are worth remembering. I could fill pages discussing the possibility spaces of Deus Ex, the absorbing atmosphere of Thief: The Dark Project, or the endless inventiveness of Half-Life 2. These are the Good Emperors of PC gaming - the Trajans and Hadrians whose deeds have been passed down to us in glowing detail.

Sometimes, though, it's more interesting to seek out value in the medium's lesser rulers, its equivalents of Domitian, Nerva and, yes, even Nero. What could be more appropriate for such an exercise than Crytek's classical testosterone injection Ryse: Son of Rome, a game that I'm betting you'd forgotten existed until you opened this page?

An Xbox One launch title released later on PC, Ryse: Son of Rome blended Batman: Arkham Asylum's combat with a hyper-masculine Gears of War-style adventure, wiping its sweaty pits with the towel of history as it went. Transporting players from Rome to Britain and back in less than six hours, its most discussed feature on launch was its brevity - a factor that doomed it at a time when vast open-world games were on the cusp of industry dominance.

Revisited today, is Ryse: Son of Rome the dumb, mediocre hack 'n' slash it was painted as at the time, or it is the victim of a historical smear campaign? The answer is intriguing. It's true that Ryse: Son of Rome is just as brawny, brainless, and brief as it was 12 years ago, but those qualities make it easier to recommend now than they did back then. And despite its console origins, it's a curiously significant game for the PC, signifying the decline and fall of Crytek's era as PC gaming's poster-boy.

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