Ryse: Son of Rome is one of those games that could actually, possibly sell me on an Xbox One at some point, as I really do love bloody hand-to-hand — or sword-to-sword — combat. Ask anyone on my Steam friends list what game I play the most and they’ll probably be able to easily answer with Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, where I’m hacking through newb archers and decapitating Knights for fun. Of course, Chivalry is a game about precision strikes and blocks, while Ryse looks more like ye old button masher with QTEs, but that can still be pretty fun, right?
Some of the gameplay previews going around were downright odd, as the word got out that you couldn’t die in the game, as it was aimed at casual fans. We’re not talking “oh, demos at game shows are just like that” or anything here, it was an actual mechanic. Apparently that has changed — thank god — and they’ve done some other tweaks to the gameplay to make it a more fluid and fun experience. They’ve apparently done away with the QTE stuff in lieu of having enemies light up as a color corresponding to the buttons on your controller. So one guy will glow yellow and other will glow blue, which means either Y or X on the controller will hit one of them. This certainly helps to make this at least a moderately immersive experience.
Oh, and they also announced Gladiator Mode at gamescom today, which is your basic “Hoarde Mode” that you see in just about every game known to man these days, but looks like it could be pretty fun.
