Game Review: Rime

We finally finished Rime!  If you didn't read my previous post, it was one of February's PSPlus games and is rated PEGI 7 because it contains "pictures or sounds likely to be scary to young children".  And yes, the eerie black liquid people are scary (reminiscent of No Face in Spirited Away).  But it wasn't too scary for Seb.  A bit of mild peril is sometimes needed to make a great story, after all.

The game is beautiful, visually and aurally.  Unusually, you are a boy, without all the crazy abilities you usually have in games (ridiculous jumping, climbing, fighting, etc).  He has a lot of limitations, and those jumps where he only just makes it are heart stopping.  It reminds me of The Last Guardian in a lot of ways (though it is certainly more colourful!).

The story is opaque, but I think Seb took it more at face value and enjoyed it without really understanding it.  It is supposed to be, I think, a allegory about grief, but Seb thought it was a story about a shipwrecked boy trying to save the people on an island who'd been struck by some terrible curse.  He really loved the two-legged friend you create, and he loved 'Mr Hint' (the name Dad gave to the fox, which seems to have stuck).

Seb said the story was sad, which it was, and he said there should have been more puzzles.  I'm not entirely sure if by that he just means he wishes it was longer.  He was a bit disappointed by how it turns out with the hooded figure, but I won't say more in case you want to play it and try and figure out what on earth is going on!

All in all we enjoyed it.  It isn't a game a 5/6 year old could manage by themselves.  Seb had trouble with some of the 'parkour' and we had to solve a lot of the puzzles for him.  It did keep him engaged, even when we were doing controlling.  He kept wanting to play it and find out what happened next.  I'd certainly recommend it as a family friendly adventure, so if you have PSPlus and haven't downloaded it do it now, before the March games are out.