Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) represent a transformative technology for achieving the ambitious performance requirements of 6G wireless networks. This comprehensive review examines advanced beamforming techniques incorporating RIS technology, presenting a systematic analysis of theoretical foundations, implementation challenges, and future directions. We develop a rigorous analytical framework that characterizes the fundamental performance limits of RIS-assisted beamforming, demonstrating that system capacity scales as O(log N) with the number of reflecting elements while maintaining energy efficiency that follows O(log N/N). Our analysis reveals that hybrid approaches combining traditional optimization with machine learning techniques can achieve 85-90% of theoretical performance bounds while reducing computational complexity by approximately 80%. We present a detailed examination of practical implementation challenges, including hardware impairments, channel estimation overhead, and real-time optimization requirements. The study establishes that RIS-assisted beamforming can enable a 300% increase in spectral efficiency and 60-70% reduction in power consumption compared to conventional massive MIMO systems. Additionally, we identify critical research directions, including distributed RIS optimization, multi-user scheduling, and integration with artificial intelligence frameworks. This review provides a comprehensive foundation for researchers and practitioners working toward the realization of RIS-enabled 6G networks, offering both theoretical insights and practical implementation guidelines.