REVIEW – Let’s be precise right from the start: Bound is one of those titles that tries to be deliberately less a video game than an interactive work of art. It’s doesn’t want to challenge you or absorb you with a range of clever game mechanics. Instead it wants you to wow you with its visual flair and technical achievement, while hopefully making you think and feel something about the world that it presents.

 

If that’s the sort of game which isn’t your cup of tea, then it’s safe to say that you should leave Bound won’t be for you. On the other hand, it’s too imperfect to be judged as a masterpiece on the scale of Inside or Journey, but still, it’s a game well worth playing.

The pregnant woman and the Princess

It’s a strange title that actually works on two levels: it’s both the story of a princess discovering a strange world of fantasy, memory and the dream of a pregnant woman on an empty beach and the interior tale.

The princess, who wears a mask and strange clothes, works as a ballet dancer. She moves gracefully through blocky landscapes that assemble, twist, transform and disassemble before your eyes. It’s hard to choose what’s more impressive; her beautiful motion-captured animation or the endless shifting of those surreal landscapes, which seem to have been dragged whole and writhing from some artist’s mind.

There’s a real-world framework to Bound, one in which the pregnant central character woefully trudges barefoot across a beach, but the majority of the game takes place within her vivid daydreams, in which she’s both a princess and ballerina.

You don’t have to work too hard for the metaphors; Bound is partly a game about how art – the princess’s dance – can form a shield against the worst that life throws at you.

Forget Super Mario, it’s arthouse all the way

As in Journey, movement isn’t just treated as a necessity of the gameplay, as a means of getting from one point to another, but as an expression of joy and healing.

This title is actually a true 3D platformer, but still one that’s closer to the surrealists as to Super Mario 64. The princess skips, leaps, rolls and cartwheels through each sequence, but with a squeeze of the right trigger she also dances through them, her movements sending ribbons floating around her, acting as a barrier to keep her safe from harm.

And in Bound, there’s quite a lot of that. You’re not alone in these strange dreamscapes. Huge figures stomp, climb and occasionally smash their way around. You’ll find yourself assailed by what appear to be glowing red flames, dangling tentacles or aggressive flocks of paper planes.

You’ll receive instructions from your mother, the queen, who seems to see the princess as a weapon in an ongoing battle, not a child in need of love. And when each sequence reaches its climax, it’s usually dance that will help you escape, as you help create a dance and a song that will take you forwards, sliding on a massive ribbon of light towards the next stage.

As you progress, you’ll also rediscover memories, ingeniously depicted as shattered, static scenes that only come together under your first-person gaze. In their own, rather ambiguous way these tell the story behind the princess’s story, helping you pull together the narrative that our heroine’s journey alludes to.

Not for the hardcore player

Unfortunately, the gameplay element in Bound is the weakest link. Regarding the challenge: it’s intentionally low, with almost perpetual checkpointing and artificial limits as well that make it hard to throw yourself off an edge or miss a jump. That’s not necessarily a problem per se, but this title is also lacking puzzles and the mechanics don’t grow any more inventive or interesting as the experience goes on either. It’s a strange experience that it’s virtually not as satisfying to play as it is to watch and listen to.

Then again, there’s a lot of pleasure in the audio-visual spectacle and in simple working out what’s going on. Here the game’s structure actually helps. It’s a short title, but also you’re incited to play again. You can go through the sequences in almost any order, and the sequences you play early on will define what threats you face and what path you take in the sequences that follow.

This gives you a chance to work out new ideas or try out new paths that you missed last time, while building up a deeper understanding of the storyline. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t like a longer game with better gameplay, but it helps, as does a speed-run mode that unlocks once you’ve finished your initial run through the game.

-BadSector-

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Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Developer: SCE Santa Monica, Plastic

Genre: 3D platformer

Release date: Aug 16, 2016