In the year of our lord 2016, you would be hard pressed to find a new schmup (shoot-’em-up) targeted at the home console market. This isn?t to say that there isn?t a demand for the genre, because quite frankly there are plenty of PS4 owners out there that hate themselves. I, unfortunately, count myself among the depraved masses, just jonesing for our next trip into bullet hell. So you can only imagine how I, and many others, accepted the Two Tribes? release of Rive with open arms and perverse glee. Does this schmup/platformer hybrid from the folks who brought you Toki Tori earn itself classification as a masochistic masterpiece or is it actually a minefield of mediocre mayhem"
Guns A-blazin’
Ever since the days of arcades, gamers have deriving immense amounts of pleasure from making things go boom. Whether it was the satisfying flashes of an on-screen explosion or the rumble of the speakers in the cabinet, games offered a visceral sensation that is satisfying on a molecular level. This euphoric feeling is what makes the breakneck action of a quality schmup so damn gratifying. Rive is keen to play on these emotions by providing one of the most quickest paced and action packed titles of 2016. But even for an explosion junkie like myself, there is a limit to my patience and attention span. The game starts out as a beautifully imagined sci-fi schmup that mutates at several points in the campaign. At the end of its proverbial gaming puberty, what remains is a ...