{"id":4776,"date":"2025-04-17T00:10:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T00:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/?p=4776"},"modified":"2025-04-17T18:19:32","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T18:19:32","slug":"bionic-bay-review-the-best-action-puzzle-game-since-portal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/17\/bionic-bay-review-the-best-action-puzzle-game-since-portal\/","title":{"rendered":"Bionic Bay review \u2013 the best action puzzle game since Portal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\"Bionic\t<\/div>
Bionic Bay – it’s pretty and pretty hard (Kepler Interactive)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A 2D platformer whose inspirations include Limbo<\/a>, Dark Souls<\/a>, and Portal<\/a> is one of the most inventive, and difficult, games of the year.<\/p>\n

In the formative years of video games<\/a>, when you had to put a coin in a slot to play them, everything was brutally difficult. Not necessarily to the point of being unfair – manufacturers didn\u2019t want you to feel as though you\u2019d been fleeced when you died – but tricky enough that a steady flow of coins would be needed from all but the most accomplished players.<\/p>\n

When home consoles first emerged the same philosophy continued, partly because it was before the era of save points, so every time you started up a game it was from the very beginning. After the advent of memory cards, hard drives, and cloud saves, video games became a more mainstream hobby, and developers deliberately made them more accessible to appeal to audiences unused to being digitally brutalised for fun.<\/p>\n

Because history is cyclical, and too much of a good thing tends to get boring, over the past decade there\u2019s been a move back to games that offer a far greater degree of challenge. Roguelikes are one indicator that difficulty is back in fashion, but it\u2019s FromSoftware\u2019s Soulsborne games<\/a> that have been at the forefront of the movement to stop mollycoddling players, instead treating them like adults – albeit adults in a boot camp built to make them better players.<\/p>\n

Bionic Bay doesn\u2019t look or sound like a From game, but it\u2019s inspired by the same ethos of honest yet unforgiving challenge. It\u2019s a sinister-looking, side-scrolling platformer that\u2019s immediately reminiscent of games such as Limbo and Inside<\/a>. Like its inspirations, Bionic Bay is a game of few words, preferring to let its environment tell you most of the things you need to know about both its story and the mechanics you can harness to make your way through its gargantuan, bio-mechanical landscapes.<\/p>\n

Your set of moves – a dash, jump, and roll – can be put together in various combinations to bridge gaps that look unachievable and make precision jumps through gaps so tight you\u2019re initially convinced you\u2019ve got the wrong idea about where you\u2019re supposed to be going. You also get given a teleporter that you can attach to objects and instantly swap places with them.<\/p>\n

That easy-to-understand mechanic is soon put to increasingly complex use, from allowing you to make your way across even larger chasms, by beaming islands into the right place to hop across, to building – and then moving – barriers that prevent you from being vaporised by scanning laser beams. There are sections where you can slow down time for a few seconds, or punch objects with disproportionate force, and that\u2019s all in the opening few hours.<\/p>\n

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