[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIpt4FRFy10]
If you’re paying attention at all to Microsoft’s Xbox One launch spread, you’ve seen Ryse. It’s the console’s debut showpiece, the platform’s visual pièce de résistance, the thing you’re going to fire up and fool around with come Friday, November 22, telling yourself that this, this is why you paid hundreds of dollars for a next-gen system.
The danger, of course, is that Ryse turns out to be another empty (if immaculately tailored) shell, a vacuous graphical tour de force into which you’ll pour money and time and ballooning disappointment as you wait for something more than hundreds of blood-spattered, gladius-swinging, visually flawless legionaries goring and stabbing enemies like a leather-and-iron typhoon to shake you from your languor.
But then this is Crytek, the folks responsible for the original Far Cry and the Crysis series. Surely they’re aware that gamers want more than mere spectacle in 2013. We can hope, because even at 900p native, Ryse looks unbelievable.
Crytek / Microsoft Studios