Rive (2016)

For me the proposition in Rive is pretty straight-forward, you either enjoy being challenged and wanting to throw your controller or you don’t. With repetition, experience, and some luck you can absolutely master the levels the game throws at you, it just isn’t a game you’ll be conquering too quickly as there are many sections that required some trial and error to understand and the action simply doesn’t often let up. Fortunately the checkpoints seem to be well placed and spaced, though in a few cases the way the checkpoints are essentially a snapshot of what was happening at the time you passed through it didn’t work out so well. All in all it’s very much a game with its own rules and style though and if you just haven’t been feeling pushed with your shooters it will happily fill that role for you.

I hope it's clear by now that Rive is excellently made, and I had a great time flying through space alongside Roughshot. It's clear that the developers behind it were passionate about making the best experience possible. Rive holds its ground among the best 2D shooters available on PSN – it's a title which I would readily recommend to anyone with a free afternoon and an affinity for twitch gameplay.

Rive is an insanely challenging yet satisfying game that is mostly shoot-'em-up, but tosses in a few genre wrinkles as well. It is an unapologeticlly brutal game however, and it could use a handful tweaks here and there, but the overall experience is still a fantastic one.

One of the best just got even better! RIVE: Wreck, Hack, Die, Retry! was an exhilarating ride for fans of all styles of space shooters to start with, but now even more genre enthusiasts can enjoy this stunning effort thanks to the extra difficulty mode offered. As for those who signed up for the initial release, they also have some fantastic reasons to come back and enjoy the excellence that Two Tribes has delivered. Will this superb shooter be transferred to Nintendo Switch now, rather than staying on the near enough finished Wii U? Given how amazing this update was, the only thing that could possibly better it would be the promise of further tweaks, and maybe even a multiplayer element, all in time for a Switch release! For now, PC and PlayStation 4 gamers are in for a massive treat with this sublime update…

The game might be short, but there’s a lot of replay value in it if you want to get all of its trophies, including what will surely be a very hard Platinum trophy. For the main game, you can expect to be done in 4-6 hours, and since you’ll need to replay it here and there to get the rest of the trophies, you better learn what the game has to throw at you! I loved Rive, and hopefully, you give this one a try!