It's not Space Jam, but it still has basically Jordan-esque Half Court Dunks...in Space
For a game that dips its toes into a handful of genres, some of which I would never have considered my cup of tea, I walked away from this game joyfully surprised. Between the amazing soundtrack, tantalizing art design, and a core gameplay mechanic that I ended up really digging (I mean, who can resist celestial orb b-ball!?), I was able to not only tolerate but at times enjoy the text-heavy parts of the game.
Super Giant Games do a lovely job crafting characters that are both visually and narratively engaging and these are ultimately the main draw to me from a narrative perspective. It’s often something developers fumble – creating characters I actively want to know more about. Seriously, how often do you open up the biography section within a game’s menus? I know I usually don’t. Yet each time I got that notification saying a new note was added to someone I liked, I would happily pop in, learn a bit more about them, and then carry on with my space dunking.
And boy is the space dunking fun. For those unfamiliar with Pyre’s story and gameplay, it revolves around a cast of exiles who must successfully fight their way out of Downside and back to their homelands in the Commonwealth. To do this, they must successfully compete in a ritual known as the Rites, which entails class-based heroes making sick trick shots and space dunks on an adversary’s flame (i.e the goal). Overall, it’s a really cool concept, with some really fun mechanics. It must be stated though that I think the developers at Super Giant Games do themselves a disservice in how they’ve crafted the difficulty ramp in the game. The core gameplay is a fantastic concept that offers a lot of interesting mechanics late-game, yet it stumbles in two ways. One, I rarely encountered a foe that offered any real challenge to me. In fact, the only match I lost was the final one (I’ll come back to that in just a bit). Two, they layer on the mechanics too slowly. This results in the first rounds of the Rites being too simplistic, and then, by the time some complexity is introduced, I already had a firm grasp on the AI’s patterns and was able to successfully take on any challenge they threw my way. All that being said, I can’t stress enough how fun it is to make a leaping Michael Jordan-esque jump from half court with one of your heroes to weaken your opponent’s flame.
I will admit though, I found the story repetitious and quite tedious towards the end and my interest in the soundtrack and celestial basketball could only last so long.
<Removed this section due to spoilers.>
I don’t want to drawl on for too long with this review, so I won’t get into detail on the amazing work Darren Knob did with the soundtrack. Instead, I’ll let his work speak for himself. Seriously. I’ll even do the work for you. Here’s the link. Do yourself a favor and go listen to this soundtrack…like right fucking now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH3Aoj1nw58
So with all that in mind, if you’ve got multiple video game itches you want to scratch all in one go, then I can easily recommend Pyre. It borrows its inspiration from so many different genres and games, and then packages it all up with amazing presentation skills on both the audio and visual front. All this in mind, there is the one standout stipulation: you have to be okay with a lot of reading, as it’s a very text-heavy game.
TLDR:
- It’s sick space basketball with a cool cast, amazing soundtrack, and good art
- The blend of genres is unique, and scratches a lot of different itches
- I found the game’s difficulty to be a bit lacking, and left me wishing it asked more from the player
- The story waivers a bit midway through the game as the story attempts to wrap things up
Overall Score:
8/10