Ryse: Son of Rome is one of the first announced exclusive titles for the Xbox One.

My preferred title would be Saving Private Roman. [Gentlemen Josh adds “Storming the beaches of Romandy.”]

Ryse originally began it’s life as a kinect game that has now evolved into game of epic Roman combat proportions. I am happy to report that the video demo you see is what we got to play hands on at the Xbox booth at E3. This is going be one of the Xbox One’s launch titles set to come out November 30th this year. From what they told me the story is going to truncate some of the more exciting moments of Roman military history to create a better experience, not a bad idea consider the timeline they would have to capture otherwise.

This game is jam packed full of raw brutal combat, but balances that out with some more responsibility as you are a leading a Roman Legion and need to command them to maintain formation and deploy the  testudo aka tortoise formation. From the video the game appears to be packed full of quick time events, while these were present during the playable demo I did not find them as distracting as they seemed to be when witnessed on the video demo. Hopefully, this is tweaked a bit, from what was explained you don’t have to use the specified button it just grants a better executed killing stroke. Considering the amazing look of the game it would be a shame to ruin it with constant slow down of action and a random color letter appearing on top of enemies.