Ryte is, at it's core, an exploration puzzler. Think Myst rendered in VR after it's been rubbed around the scent glands of an Assassins Creed game to give it that familiar whiff of techistory (didya see what i did there!?)
For some reason you are about to use some rather nifty tech to transport you to the lost civilization of Atlantis to "unravel its mysteries, wield supernatural powers and, maybe, prevent a global catastrophe. Fill in the sandals of an Atlantean unfairly jailed and escape from captivity. Join forces with the clerics to find the oracle and witness epic battles where giant centurions battle for the sake of Atlantean Minds."
You're presented with a very brief tutorial at the start, how to move and interact with objects, then it's into the game for real.
As you begin the game there is a genuinely engaging little prison break scene, then it shifts back a gear and drops you in Atlantis for some basic physics puzzle tutorial action and all momentum and intrigue is lost.
The graphic are pretty good for the most part (the sea is incredibly realistic). Controls are likewise well crafted and intuitive. Voice acting could have been a lot better and often left me with a cold shudder as cringe crawled down my spine.
The issue I have with the game is that it's just not fun. I get what it's trying to do, bring back games like Myst and modernize it with a VR twist. The trouble is Myst really wasn't that good, I mean it looked pretty for the time but it was also really dull.
The initial game area is a perfect example, solve a couple puzzles to connect a beam of light by rotating concentric circles with a design on, until it all matches up.
Hardly original, but moderately interesting for a moment in VR.
Then you need to do the same at a second pillar, except wait....no... for some reason, someone has broken one of the circles into two parts and hidden them within 20 meters of the scene of their vandalism.
For a start why? Secondly I can't be arsed to even begin to look for them.
At this point I turn the game off and it was a really difficult task to build up the willpower to actually go back to it to write this review.
Then I started to notice more issues, an awful lot of bugs, in fairness my first play was pre release, but I did wait until after release day and an update/patch to go back and give it the benefit of the doubt.
But its still rough, disappearing items needed to solve puzzles, glitch inventory access, truly awful NPC character models couples with genuinely terrible dialogue and voice acting that will make you shudder.
It may very well get patched some more, but there's no way I will be going back to it. Keep in mind this is being sold as a full release, not Early Access.
VR is generally never comfortable for long periods of time and always a bit of a ballache to set up, I certainly wouldn't call foraging among fish looking for broken puzzle pieces a fun or a wise use of time.
It's a moderately interesting premise that unfortunately falls flat.
Ryte is available now on Steam for $19.99, at the time of writing this review its currently on sale with a 20%.
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