Rime Arodaky
You'd be forgiven for thinking Tequila Works' Rime sounds a heck of a lot like thatgamecompany's Journey. These lighter puzzles work here, as they do in games like Inside, because the world carries Rime PC Download them. In some of the game's chapters, the puzzles meld with the game's unfolding, wordless narrative in a way that makes both feel like essential parts of the experience.
There are games where I look back on the wordless screenshots I took while playing them, and remember Rime fondly why I stopped to soak in the scenery. In some cases, it's for tedious review reasons of recollecting as much of an experience as I can. Yet mostly, they're for the very same reasons I take a photo in the real world: to preserve a moment. In Rime, the moments were just relishing in the game's expansive, serene scenery. No feelings caught, no deeper emotional musings had about the sanctity of life. Just a pretty view. Nothing more, and nothing less.
As failings go, this is fairly minor, and I'd rather see everyone get through RiME's powerful story and experience Rime all that it has to offer than see it spoiled by frustrating puzzles or - as was the case with The Last Guardian - by hours wrestling with inconsistent game mechanics. While RiME never throws up anything as near-miraculous as The Last Guardian's Trico, it's telling that when it slips into similar territory, it feels on surer ground.
Unlike those games, in Rime, death is of no consequence - fall too far and the screen will cut to black, only to place you back where you started. Get caught by the game's only real antagonist, a dinosaur-like bird that swoops down from above, and you'll lose only seconds of progress, rather than minutes or hours.
