If you’ve come to Bound looking for anything like you’ve played within the last few months you may want to keep looking, Bound is a game all its own. With amazing visuals, motion and music, Bound is certainly an experience, but as for calling it a typical game? It’s not quite that.
Firstly, big thanks to the people at Sony for sending us this game copy to play around with and review. Developers at Plastic, along with SIE Santa Monica Studio, have come up with a game that astounds the eye and cryptically tugs at your heart-strings. Bound is the epitome of the well-financed indie game, it has a certain feel to it like Journey or Flower. The player weaves though an assortment of memories in a woman who is reflecting on her childhood; you travel through the art in her sketchbook and battle demons of her past while learning about her family and its questionable dynamics. Bound’s plot – like a lot of indie games – isn’t the main focus. It does have a discernible story, but it’s more the visuals and interaction that are the focal point.
The memorable quality of Bound that will make you want to pick up the game is the art direction. Many elements of the art style seems to be contradictory but it works as a whole in near perfect harmony, which sounds like pedantic dribble but let me explain. The motion capture and movement of the main heroine are ballet moves, every step is a dance and every movement is another piece of a larger choreographed waltz. Dance styles like ballet focus on fluidity and curvilinear form, the protagonists little ribbons are a great indicator of this. They all move with a flowing motion; when compared to the rest of the art design they’re polar opposites. The stages, objects and “enemies” all have a polygonal/cubic look to them, platforms you’ll dance across are rectangles and squares. It’s this binary that makes these visuals so impacting and it’s a good thing the art is so great, because some other aspects are lacking.
For the most part the game was solid in its level designs – however, there wasn’t too much to explore or challenge a player. In Bound, the motivation to move forward comes from the sense of wonder each new area holds. If Bound has a flaw, it’s that the levels do get a little repetitive and it would have been nice to have something to drive the player through the level, rather than just to the end.
Bound is a great game for those looking to try an experience that is outside the box. If you’re looking for “A spine tingling edge of your seat thrill” this is not your scene; if you’re looking for “Wow, what a beautiful, color-filled and entrancing world,” Bound might be right up your alley.
