PaigeFTW: ‘Bound’ review: A slow, slow dance
Visually, Bound leaves nothing to be desired. A humanoid princess pirouettes her way through an ever-shifting geometric landscape, whirling and twirling her way past brightly colored triangles and pyramids, all while twinkling orchestral music warbles in the background. It seems clearly cut in the mold of Journey or Flower — another of those indie games that values sensory experience above all else in creating a game that could properly be considered “art.”
Well, I should have known not to trust a trailer.
Bound (released for PlayStation 4 last month) is beautiful to look at but an absolute mess to play.
The premise is (sort of) simple: You are a princess roaming around, trying to defeat a monster, do your mother’s bidding and generally find yourself as a person. It’s not a bad story, and I rather like that you can explore it nonlinearly, if you want.
But for whatever reason, your ballerina princess can only dance her way through each level at a beautiful, impeccably rendered and excruciatingly slow pace. Worse, her dance moves are despairingly limited, so you can’t even choreograph anything that requires more than four or five moves. Jump, twirl, somersault, rinse, repeat — for hours. Eventually, this gets boring.
While you’ll spend most of your time walk-dancing (really, just jumping wildly for speediest movement), there’re also some platforming sections to go with a clunky, unintuitive camera (always fun), as well as some cursory nods that your dancing can act as a shield in areas with environmental hazards. In these cases, as in all others, jumping is the fastest way to continue.
It’s a pity that Bound squanders its potential, but it serves as a valuable reminder that the No. 1 consideration of any game must and always should be gameplay.
