Review: Rime is beautiful, but it's all a front

It's always worth taking in the sights and sounds of Rime, but there's little else to do.

You wake up on a beautiful island. Concrete towers emerge from the water, picturesque ruins lie everywhere, paving stones are encrusted with code, and there appear to be puzzles and mysteries around every corner.

Sound familiar? If you've played The Witness, last year's brain-blowing puzzler by Jonathan Blow, it should. Rime is quite literally the same game. But worse.

Rime was first announced in 2013 as an Xbox exclusive action-RPG, but Tequila Works' third release has evolved into something that tries to jump on a bandwagon of games that attempt something a little more ethereal and emotional.

Take The Witness, throw in parts of Journey, Abzu and The Last Guardian, then dumb it down and you pretty much know what you're getting with Rime.

You're a small boy and you've just been shipwrecked. You wake on a sun-drenched beach with seagulls squawking and crabs scuttling around. You set off on foot and start exploring the island and surrounding waters.

It quickly becomes obvious what you're supposed to do, as Rime's path is laid out clearly in front of you. Explore, solve a quirky puzzle, interact with a small animal, then do it again. If you ever get stuck, there's a yappy fox barking you in the right direction.

The scenery is Rime's best asset, and it's always worth gazing around at skylines from clifftops to soak in the sights - especially when they're lit up by neon chemtrails at night.

But it's the puzzles that really let down Rime. They're incredibly simple, from moving blocks to open doors, to line-of-sight tricks, and occasional codebreakers so easy my seven-year-old son worked most of them out instantly.

That's fine for kids, but Rime lacks any kind of deeper meaning for anyone else.

A scene from Rime.

It doesn't have the hair-pulling frustration of The Witness, the emotional connection of The Last Guardian, the graphical power of Abzu or all of the feels of Journey.

It's just kind of there. Kids will dig it, and it looks great, but really, it's just a front. This is one Rime that's desperately missing a reason.

Rime

Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch
Rating: PG
Verdict: Why this puzzler lacks puzzles is the real puzzle