Rive: Ultimate Edition

Genre: 2-Stick Shooter / Action-Platformer

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Rive is a 2-Stick Shooter combined with a Platformer that has you controlling a tiny spider-tank as its owner navigates it through a massive wreck of a spaceship looking for loot, only to be swarmed by robots defending the ship.

The focus here is on the fast-paced, high-action gameplay, and the game does this extremely well. Dodging around with your ship while hammering away with a barrage of bullets at incoming foes is immensely satisfying, and the game does a good job mixing things up, incorporating traditional 2-stick shooter sections next to the platforming sections, giving you hackable drones to back you up, and options for ship upgrades as well, you never feel like the game is getting stale.

The game’s presentation is mostly pretty good, too. Your tank and the robots all look interesting and stick out enough from the surroundings that you’re not likely to get confused in the heat of battle, save for those moments when you take a direct hit and things flash brightly for a moment.

However, on the other side of things, the game keeps pushing the story about the lunky scrapper and his modern reference-filled banter with mostly himself, and… yeah, that’s just not interesting.

The game does a great job of keeping the enemies and situations you’re placed in interesting, switching things up on a regular basis, but your own arsenal feels a bit limited. You only have one weapon throughout the game, four purchasable sub-weapons (one-use only, requiring pickups to fire again), and the ability to hack one of a few select types of enemy drones to fight alongside you (temporarily)… but it would be nice if the game’s upgrade system were more fleshed out so you could really make some interesting changes to your spider tank.

The Ultimate Edition of the game on Switch doesn’t really change much from other platforms, but the changes here are welcome nonetheless: Performance optimization, HD rumble, achievements, and a (throwaway) two-player mode are welcome additions that push this version of the game to be the definitive version, even if only slightly.

In the end, even with Rive’s limitations, this is an excellent Action-Platformer with a lot to offer fans of the genre. Definitely worth a look.

tl;dr – Rive is a combination of 2-Stick Shooter and Action-Platformer that does a great job pushing intense action and a good amount of variety of enemies and combat situations. I wish the game’s upgrade system was more fleshed-out, but what’s here is solid.

Grade: B+

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