RIVE Review for PlayStation 4

*There May Be Spoilers in this Review

At first glance, Rive may seem like your typical indie side-scrolling platformer, but “the metal wrecking, robot hacking shooter” certainly has more to offer. This game is so explosively action-packed that it is not surprisingly made by the same indie studio that brought the Worms series to life, Two Tribes. This “360-degree shooter” allows you to interact with your environment and destroy pretty much everything in your path aside from permanent structures. A word of caution, not all things should be destroyed and may end up harming you! The most unique feature is perhaps the hacking, which allows you to take over your enemies and exploit them to your benefit.

There are also special abilities you can craft and unlock that are absolutely essential when powering through heavily enemy populated areas or tough boss fights.

As for gameplay, Rive follows an interesting array of controls that allow you to jump, shoot, hack and use special abilities to navigate through the hazardous environments. I found the controls to be incredibly fluid and this made navigating the expansive terrain much more enjoyable. The only issue I had was how easy it was to miss exploring areas altogether.  Thankfully, this is remedied by the ability to replay levels. The game did not really get boring or repetitive due to the constant amount of action and wide variety of modes including single credit, speedrun, daily challenges and battle arena. Needless to say, this game features a mode for every kind of gamer. This also makes the replay value very high in my opinion.The storyline isn’t very complex, but I find that this is not something I miss in games where gameplay is entertaining enough on its own. The interesting thing is that this game also allows you to “kill” the story entirely by destroying the robot narrator/companion you meet on the abandoned ship. I think having the option is great if you aren’t too interested in the story or don’t feel the need for one.

The only real problem I found with this game was its ability to go from 0 to 100 in regards to difficulty. Although, I did find the surprise to be an enjoyable challenge and certainly kept the game going so it really didn’t end up being too much of a con. It did force me to replay certain parts, but it always seemed to respawn me just before the area and eliminated a lot of the frustration of trying to get back to a certain area. It also helped that this game has a lot of ridiculous humor in it that keeps the experience light hearted.  Overall, I feel that this game has lots of appeal to a wide array of gamers. I think that this is the type of game anyone can honestly enjoy and I feel confident in saying it is well worth the money.

Rate: 10/10

Watch the Official RIVE Release Trailer:

RIVE is available for PS4 and PC on Steam.