Rive: Ultimate Edition Review
Rive: Ultimate Edition is a 2D twin-stick shooter in which you play as Roughshot, a scavenger trapped in a vast, dilapidated ship from which you must escape. You’ll embark on your adventure in a Spidertank, a walking/flying hybrid ship that fittingly looks like a spider.
Release Date: November 17, 2017
Developer: Two Tribes
Platforms: Nintendo Switch
Price: $14.99
Rive: Ultimate Edition is a 2D twin-stick shooter in which you play as Roughshot, a scavenger trapped in a vast, dilapidated ship from which you must escape. You’ll embark on your adventure in a Spidertank, a walking/flying hybrid ship that fittingly looks like a spider. Using your Spidertank, you’ll need to find your way out while taking out all kinds of enemies and collecting scrap metal they leave behind, while dying quite often. Thankfully you come across checkpoints quite often because you’ll need these checkpoints, considering the amount of times you will die. Most enemies you encounter don’t do a whole lot of damage, but the amount of enemies that come at you at any given time can be overwhelming and take total concentration to avoid their attacks.
The main campaign in Rive: Ultimate Edition offers 12 missions, each with worldwide and friend leaderboards. There are also a few other modes and options to keep you coming back for more, such as single credit mode where you do not get any continues. There is also a unique co-op multiplayer mode where each person takes control of one aspect of the ship. One person will control movement and the other will man the gun, alternating after each death. I found this mode to be quite fun with friends and family.
The core gameplay and mechanics of moving, jumping and shooting are very fluid and smooth, and even though the rigid difficulty can be frustrating at times, I always found myself jumping back in for more. Unlike most shooters of this genre, you won’t find random upgrades in the environment and then lose them upon dying. Instead, you use the loot you find by destroying enemies to permanently unlock four different abilities by purchasing them after completing missions. Each upgrade has situations when they work best, such as the shotgun blasts are great for tight corridors with hordes of enemies. Homing missiles are solid for more open areas where enemies are spread out. These abilities should be used wisely as each one can only be used once before you need to find more ammo. In addition to upgrading your abilities, you can also boost your ships armor and range in which it gathers ammo. However, the most unique ability is the ability to hack. Early on you’ll hack computers to open paths for you to continue pushing forward, but eventually gain the option to hack certain enemies. These range from heal bots to literal trains.
Visually, Rive: Ultimate Edition look fantastic and runs at a smooth 60FPS in 1080p when docked and 720p in handheld mode. Even with all of the hectic action happening on the screen at once, I never noticed any slow down. The environments both inside and outside of the ship look sharp and detailed.
Rive: Ultimate Edition is a very fun, albeit difficult, twin-stick platformer/shooter. While the difficulty can be mildly frustrating, I found myself wanting to play more and more, rather than giving up. For $14.99 on the Nintendo eShop, it is a steal!
Pros
Solid, fluid gameplay
Fantastic graphics with no dips in framerate
Tons of fun
Cons
Mildly frustrating difficulty
Could use more upgrades
A special thank you to Two Tribes for providing us a review copy of Rive: Ultimate Edition.
Spareware Review (Xbox One)
Spareware on Xbox One, developed by Rusto Games, is a twin-stick shooter with light RPG mechanics with player leveling, skill trees and a unique cell management system. At first glance you might assume you just try to survive as long as possible against hordes of enemies. While you wouldn’t be completely wrong, you’d be overlooking the surprising amount of depth to the game. With 4 player local multiplayer, it becomes even more fun, just try to avoid shooting your fellow comrades.
Spareware on Xbox One, developed by Rusto Games, is a twin-stick shooter with light RPG mechanics with player leveling, skill trees and a unique cell management system. At first glance you might assume you just try to survive as long as possible against hordes of enemies. While you wouldn’t be completely wrong, you’d be overlooking the surprising amount of depth to the game. With 4 player local multiplayer, it becomes even more fun, just try to avoid shooting your fellow comrades.
The story of Spareware is pretty simple; It’s the year 2186. The environment has turned destructive and humans now live in protective city domes. Robots are rebelling against humans and that’s about it. Gain new abilities and destroy any human that stands in your way. Nothing special, but it does the job.
Before playing each level, the player can equip new gear in five categories: head, torso, left arm, right arm, and feet. At the beginning of the game you won’t have many options, as most of the gear is locked. You can collect new gear throughout the game, but if you die, you will lose everything. You can unlock gear permanently by earning achievements, a decision by the developers that I found interesting. For most players, it will become a priority to earn these achievements to unlock gear permanently. Each piece of gear will increase your stats in some way, whether it be speed, strength, magazine capacity, etc.
Every level has objectives, such as: collect an item, destroy an electric barrier, or reach the level exit. Standing in your path are hordes of human enemies wielding guns, bats and riot shields that would love to turn you into scrap metal. Leveling up earns ability points that you can use to upgrade your robot. There are passive abilities such as extra health and faster movement; or you can spend on active abilities such as mines, invincibility, or even saw-drones that circle the player and slice enemies into scrap human.
Players also need to collect cells in each level. In some ways this is more important than anything else. All of the gear you collect requires cells to equip, with typically the better gear and weapons requiring more cells. Cells are earned by destroying cars and picking up the blue cells that drop. You also are credited the cell value of any gear not destroyed at the end of the level. As you take damage you will slowly break down, piece by piece starting with the head. If your guns happen to be destroyed, you can pick up new ones laying around the level.
The graphics, sound and music are all fairly generic. Like most twin stick shooters, you play from a top-down perspective. The graphics are cel-shaded graphics that are not very detailed. Pretty much every stage takes place in the same city environment, which is a big disappointment. The music is as very plain and generic soundtrack, and it tends to repeat itself quite a bit. The sound effects are nothing spectacular but they get the job done.
I found the controls to be quite responsive and well laid out. You control your character with the left stick and aim with the right stick. Shooting is done with the left and right triggers. Manual reloading is performed with the left and right bumpers respectively as well. Active perks such as bombs or drones can be mapped to the X, Y or B buttons. There is also a transparent map that can be called up and kept on screen using the D-pad.
While I can deal with most of the issues in the game, there is one that bothers me most, friendly fire. Yes, that is right, friendly fire. As if there is not enough going on with 4 players and tons of enemies, throw avoiding friendly fire in as another thing to accomplish. You might think, well I will just disable friendly fire. Good idea, but there’s no way to turn off friendly fire. At least you can revive fallen enemies, but the option to turn friendly fire off would be nice.
Overall, Spareware is a decent twin stick shooter that is fun with buddies, just don’t shoot each other, unless they deserve it. It is available on Xbox One via the Microsoft Store for $9.99.
2/5