RIVE
Skip · Shooter · 2016
The verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $14.99.
- Reviews
- 84% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, Geforce 8000 series (discrete), 1 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
This 360-degree shooter/platformer hybrid lets you choreograph a ‘dance of destruction’ in insanely spectacular battles and set-pieces. RIVE feels like the explosive games of yore, pumping megapixels in true 21st century style.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
- How long it takes to beat isn't in our data. We scored it as a typical Shooter game (about 6 hours) and docked the score for the missing length.
The value story
February 2025 is where it bottomed out, at $0.89. 78 discounts in the 10 years on record. They run about 90 percent off, roughly 5 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 3 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 5 weeks.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 46 percent on value. It is pricier than 63 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 66 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Blazing Chrome ($16.99, scores 47) beats it on value, while it beats Really Big Sky ($4.99, scores 36).
Steam's global achievement data puts about 1 percent of players at this game's ending achievement. Of the 237 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 1 comes from a buyer who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written March 2020 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 74 percent of the 138 reviews written there were positive, against 84 percent overall, and those are 30 percent of everything written about it.
The drop-off
63% start to 1% finishMost players never reach the end. Steam global achievements
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
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RIVE scores 42/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). Length is estimated at 6 hours, not measured, so the score is docked. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/278100/riveThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Aug 2, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.