Ryse reminds me of Knack, both received poor overall meteoritic scores but are enjoyed tremendously by gamers. I haven't played Ryse but a few of my friends who own XboxOne have enjoyed it and I've played Knack and I enjoyed it tremendously and swayed some of my friends to give it a shot and they love the game.
Maybe we're just burned out from all the FPS releases we've seen recently but it was a breath of fresh air to play a "plat former" for once.