The Impact Factor

Polygons and Pain

Review

Bound, Plastic (PS4)

Abstract: Bound is a narrative told through motion. You explore a beautiful and abstract world as you relive your past and confront your fears. Bound learns from a long legacy of 3D platformers while creating an identity completely its own. Balletic dance permeates the experience, bringing life to cold geometry. The game’s emphasis on short cuts and speed runs in subsequent playthroughs unfortunately highlights some of Bound’s weaknesses, like its imprecise controls and long load times. Taken as a whole, Bound is a wonderful experience that is much more than it initially appears.   

For me, it was a tree house. Well not a tree house really, more like well-worn 4’x4’ square of processed wood nestled precariously on top of a Y-shaped corner of branches. The tree was a short walk into the wooded area behind my home. I’d climb, recklessly so, to perch in my spot. Time would stop. It was just high enough up to see the tops of other trees, but not nearly elevated enough to feel in danger. Cold or warm, windy or still, I’d climb to my hideout to be away from it all. The tree house was my answer to the same question Plastic’s Bound poses: as a child, how did you cope with pain? In Bound the answer is a beautiful combination of ballet, monsters, and geometry.

Bound begins as the protagonist, a pregnant woman, comes across a quiet beach. Journal in hand, she begins her walk down the sandy path towards a house. Along the way she’ll open up her journal, which is filled with fantastical images of trees, paper planes, mother and daughter and father and son, abstracted into compositions of jagged shapes. Bound’s narrative unfolds as a reflection of the past, a view into the world the game’s protagonist created as an escape. She is reliving her most traumatic childhood memories as she grapples with fundamental issues of family and forgiveness. Bound takes full advantage of its medium, sharing its story with players through actions. The game seeks to evoke emotions through movement, telling a familiar story in a new way. The story spans a few levels, each manifestations of her past pain turned fear. Bound escorts you through five vignettes in an imaginary world she called her own. Levels end with a reconstruction of the traumatic memory in a 3D space you can freely explore. The game culminates in a difficult decision that feels earned. Despite some looseness of the story itself, Bound does an admirable job at creating a narrative with which players can engage.

Face your fears.

Bound’s world is fantastical and bizarre. Bound transports players into a vibrant, chaotic, polygonal world. Shapes float in a barren expanse, reacting to the player’s presence. Monstrous structures assemble into existence as you draw near and orderly disassemble as you journey away. In this world we play as a masked young princess. Across the different vignettes we see conflict between king and queen in a world that struggles to adhere together. Bound’s world is unlike anything I’ve seen in games. It’s visually striking, stunningly beautiful, and has a signature that quickly imprints itself into your mind. Despite its abstract nature, each of the game’s levels is distinct and memorable. Bound’s world was what first drew me to the game and remains a clear highlight of my experience after playing.

 

Bound has a game world I'm not soon to forget.

Gameplay in Bound derives from a long lineage of 3D platformers. On the surface, your task is quite simple—follow the linear main path through each level jumping from platform to platform, up and down ladders, with very light puzzle solving to make it to the end. Along the way you collect memory fragments, glowing shards that both serve as a breadcrumb trail if you get lost in the dynamically shifting world and to complete an end of level mosaics. The controls are quite simple. The player can walk, run, jump, roll, and… dance. Heavily inspired by balletic movements, dance is an essential aspect to playing Bound. Movement has a lightness to it only seen at the ballet. Running, jumping, shimmying along edges, everything is steeped in dance. Motion capture is utilized brilliantly, creating a character that looks and feels human. She’s elegant and graceful. If that weren’t enough, Bound features a button dedicated solely to dancing. Dancing affords a couple advantages to the player. You dance to complete a level and dance to unlock large memory fragments. Most importantly, the player dances to bypass a level’s entrenched obstacles. You dance to fight your fears.

As I mentioned above, each of Bound’s five main levels is a powerful vignette from the protagonist’s past. Each of these centers on a childhood fear: steam, trees, pearls, shout and planes. These fears manifest themselves as physical barriers in each of the levels. Trees are nests of tendrils that grab the player and hold them in place. Planes are paper airplanes that swarm the player, again preventing movement. Dancing frees you from these fears. But there’s so much more. As you play through Bound, each level you complete conquers a fear. For example, conquer the planes level and you’ll no longer be affected by the swarms. This alters the way you play through subsequent levels. Sections that were previously blocked off now become open for exploration. The world adopts more striking colors and warmer tones. Bound is different each time you play, assuming you choose to complete levels in a different order. This offers a unique kind of replayability that I appreciated in a short game like Bound (you can complete your experience in less than 2 hours).

Dance will set you free.

Conquering fears and opening new paths are only one small part of the beautifully designed 3D worlds in Bound. These wide-open spaces are absolutely packed with depth. Levels are replete with hidden memory fragments, telegraphed shortcuts, and fear-blocked paths. You’ll also discover hidden and highly skill intensive sequence breaks, which allow the player to skip huge sections of the level. Bound wants players to find these, and even dedicates a whole mode to speed running the game (completing it as fast as possible) Bound’s main path is easy to complete. Bound’s fastest paths are punishing and demand precision. It’s a great feeling to discover a shortcut the hid in plain sight, or find a hidden path that shaves five plus minutes off your completion time. Despite not having the usual bells and whistles of 3D platformers, like oodles of collectibles and enemies to defeat, Bound offers players plenty to do.

By emphasizing short cuts and speed runs, however, Bound highlights some of its biggest weaknesses. The game’s platforming works well when players are taking their time and absorbing the fullness of the experience. The controls are less than ideal when placed under the magnifying glass speed runs demand. Jumps often feel imprecise. It can be hard to know if you’ll make a jump or fall to your death. Bound has a finicky ‘edge guard’ system that, in theory, is there to help players with difficult platforming sections, but in practice detracts from the fluidity of the motion. Bound implements some smart systems to avoid bad camera placement (endemic to the genre) like having shapes disappear when they would block the screen, but camera problems still arise from errant level geography and during non-horizontal movement. The game’s speed run mode is a disappointment, too. Levels have unskippable opening and end sequences that frustrate as you repeat a level over and over. Repeating is another act of frustration, as long load times make it feel particularly painful when you mess up your run. I typically like pushing myself in platformers to complete these challenges, but some design incompatibilities prevented me from investing myself in Bound beyond its story playthrough.

As much as they are emphasized, speed runs are not the best part of Bound.

Bound exists in great company, however, as one of the few games I’ve ever immediately played through a second time after first beating it. I wanted to see how the world changed, how my play had evolved, and perhaps most strikingly, to make a different narrative decision at the game’s end. Bound is more than visuals. Bound isn’t style over substance. Bound is, in a number of ways, about how one copes with strife. For me, I’ll always think back to my tree house. Bound makes me wish I could have escaped to its world, though. Bound’s was fantastic.

Bound

4/5