Review for Bendy and the Ink Machine. Game for Linux, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Steam and Xbox One, the video game was released on 27/04/2017 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 20/11/2018 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 20/11/2018 The version for Xbox One came out on 20/11/2018
"Bendy and the Ink Machine is a horror game that will forever ruin your love of childhood cartoons"
The story of Bendy and the Ink Machine originates from a small developer house called TheMeatly Games, and set up by TheMeatly, cartoonist, puppeteer (and, now, video game developer) together with fellow programmer Mike Mood. The idea of infusing the world of XNUMXs and XNUMXs animation with horror comes as an enlightenment and TheMeatly, with the help of Mood, program the first chapter in less than a week and publishes it in February 2017, receiving positive feedback and urging the two to continue. The initial idea was bring to light a 2D drawing in a 3D world, in every sense, seeing what form Bendy takes, little devil makes trouble, in the animation studio that is the game world created by the cartoonist and in which the character moves.
Thus begins, almost by chance, the epic of Bendy: the two creators then gathered around them a small staff of developers and in a year and a half they managed to conclude the events of Henry Stein, protagonist of the game.
To lock Bendy and the Ink Machine into one genre would be an understatement, it's more like one matryoshka, a doll that packs smaller pieces: a episodic survival horror with puzzle and action elements, which is constantly evolving over the course of development. The version came up PlayStation 4, tested by us, is a collection that includes all and 5 chapters needed to conclude the story plus an extra chapter, called "?", which constitutes the "archives" of the game, a behind the scenes of the characters and the different stages of development towards which they have passed.
"Dear Henry ..."
The game begins when Henry Stein, a talented animator, receives an invitation from his old partner Joey Drew to visit the old animation studio where he worked, the Joey drew studios, 30 years after Henry retired from the scene. Henry, almost drawn to his old place of work, thus finds himself in the huge studio that must have seen better days, face to face with the characters he created himself (perhaps). Joey Drew has something to show Henry, and although he is not present in person, Henry soon learns of the existence of the Ink Machine, a large ink machine that Drew wanted to install in the studio against the advice of many employees.
The first thing you notice when playing the title is that Bendy and the Ink Machine is a video game two-tone. TheMeatly colors everything that can be seen with the naked eye yellow of black: the walls, the work tables, the same ink machine and everything that surrounds us is made up of only these two colors, which will be our true constant, apart from the ink that the animators use to create the their characters: now that the studio is deserted the ink, however, gushes from any ravine, smears fountains, floors and makes some rooms unseachable, perhaps due to the excess of the machine wanted by Joey Drew and the neglect of the place. It is not difficult, in a short time and with a little imagination, to connect ink to a blood of a different color, through the "play" of vintage colors wanted by TheMeatly.
We move, therefore, in a very fascinating context, that of black and white animation, of the first successful cartoons and the prevailing noise of projectors. Bendy, the Dancing Devil, is Joey Drew Studios' most successful mascot and character and everything communicates its importance to us, from advertising posters to the countless life-size cardboard figures that accompany us and stare at us throughout the game with a grin that never changes. As a pestiferous little devil like Bendy, in fact, whatever he does, he smiles. He smiles almost disturbingly. Bendy is accompanied in his adventures by supporting actors such as Boris the Wolf, a clumsy and docile anthropomorphic wolf in dungarees and Alice Angel, defined “quite a gal”, a smart girl with small horns and a halo above her head who dances and sings. The models of these fictional characters are those of the classic black and white cartoons in which the protagonists were characters with white gloves and eyes that in English are called "pie-eyed", or like a cake from which a slice has been removed (which over time they have been "humanized" and normalized). Characters, for example, such as the early Mickey Mouse of the American artist Floyd Gottfredson or Pippo, who inspired Boris the Wolf; a world to which Bendy & Co. owes a lot.
"Dreams come true"
The context just described is revisited in a horror key: as mentioned, the game takes place thirty years after the heyday of Joey Drew Studios, which we find abandoned, corrupt, silent. Henry is the only one who has set foot in the building after years, it seems, and after a fairly short first chapter our aim will be to escape from a place haunted by an ink creature, which we will find to be the same Bendy, which will become more insistent as the chapters pass. The first chapter it therefore has the task of introducing the player to the history and modus operandi of the game, as well as to its atmosphere, and in this he succeeds. Moving pictures, this is the name of the introductory episode, is the more psychological chapter of the lot, while the others (despite some parts), according to the writer, sees the player getting used to the rhythm of the game rather quickly, with a very particular horror component applied to the context, but which is soon weakened and felt less. There is no shortage of so-called jumpscare, which tend to taper off during the game (better this way). The chapter (like the game) is governed by silence and sudden sound effects that are the real "culprits" that make the players jump. At the beginning, for this and for fear of the unknown, we proceed rather slowly, but once you have learned and completed the chapter, this will be completed in half an hour, or ten minutes scarce in case of repeat: Motion picture was created in less than a week and its brevity, in short, it proves it. A first experiment, however, very promising, which allowed TheMeatly to continue the work - according to them, abandoning all the other projects in progress. From the unexpected success, it is understood that the developer house did not have any particular plans for Bendy and that they developed and conceived the game over the course of the chapters and it is this, perhaps, that has affected the game in its entirety, in the end.
The first chapter also has the burden of introducing us to the controls and what is possible to do in the game world: the character we control, the animator Henry Stein, can jump, run, take objects (only those highlighted further in yellow) and use for combat (from the second chapter onwards) a makeshift tool like an ax or a pipe that will make us feel safer - at least for a while. For the rest, the game is quite guided: it will be necessary to follow the objectives to advance with the story, and each objective will have a more or less useful suggestion to its success. Often it will happen to do backtracking, and it is advisable not to rush into doing it: the creature named during the game as the ink demon has the ability to move quickly through walls and pick up on sudden movements of Henry, to then signal his arrival with the sound of a beating heart and appear with his smile to chase the player. The latter, running away, can take refuge in the so-called Miracle Station, truly miraculous hiding places as Bendy will end up interrupting the chase even if you enter them in front of his "eyes". For Bendy, and all the other creatures that will chase us, like the three members of the Butcher Gang (a bunch of villains in Bendy's cartoons), hiding will be a 100% safe haven; Bendy himself helps facilitate this mechanic by much anticipating his actual arrival. Basically, when you see the walls darken and hear your heart beating, you run for your life, which if Bendy catches you is instant game over. Once you figure out the trick, however, Bendy will lose a lot of her charm.
Thanks also to a device that is very reminiscent of the one used in the saga of BioShock, also here it will be possible to know more about the animation studio through gods recorders left by employees, scattered throughout the game, which will make us better understand the between the characters and Joey Drew's decision to install an ink machine, for example. Some of these recordings will be fundamental to solving puzzles, such as finding an object (example: keys) or playing a particular melody to open a room necessary to continue with the adventure. Some of these puzzles, like the two aforementioned, will be randomized to each adventure undertaken.
"The creator lied to us"
And the adventures could be many: the time has come to talk about the so-called "elephant in the room", the one that most has us disappointed of the game: the rescue system. Bendy and the Ink Machine is a game where you can't save your progress. Or rather, the game saves progress only during the game, ergo, if you turn off the console and turn it back on after a few hours, the save will disappear, forcing us to start from chapter 1. In fact, therefore, to complete the game without losing progress you will need to play the title from start to finish, all 5 chapters, for an average total of about 5 hours, either without interruptions or by pausing the game, resting the console and hoping that there will be no voltage drops in the next few hours.
After various tests carried out on its own skin, this mechanic of Bendy and the Ink Machine seems to us the most inexplicable and criticizable of all, making the game a meaningless race until the end credits, after which it seems that the save file remains without the risk of it being deleted and with the possibility of choosing the chapters to replay (even if, perhaps, you don't want to do it anymore). The game, to be honest, warns the player - in a small way - that their progress will not be saved, but the reason for this unacceptable choice is not known. It goes without saying that the experience during the qualification test was strongly compromised: the writer had, in fact, to replay the first chapter and part of the second to the bitter discovery that he had lost almost an hour and more of play and had to finish the title in the middle of the night without wanting (and being able to) interrupt the game in any way, with a dangerous storm raging outside the window.
The title would certainly have had another flavor if it had had a normal, non-retrograde save system like this one, and very confusing too, to be honest: scattered around the game are machines where it is possible. stamp the card, accompanied by a nearby poster that states that by using them the game will be saved: well, stamping the card is equivalent to a checkpoint that will allow you to resurrect in the event of death from a statue of Bendy and resume the game from where you left off, but not to resume the title the next dayfor example, by closing the application and turning off your console. If you close the game, like it or not, you will have to start over. These machines, which could have been a very nice gimmick if implemented with a conscience of cause, are a rescue system that exists in the here and now and, therefore, in fact, ephemeral. If you decide not to use these machines on death the character will not respawn, starting again from chapter 1. It is better to "save" often, therefore, but knowing full well that if you want to complete the game TheMeatly ill-thought of forcing the player to finish it in one session.
Also think what impression it must have made having to finish the game tired (but indomitable) after one rather anticlimatic final boss fight, and be rewarded with a bug that doesn't show the credits but the perennial black screen and your face, in the darkness reflected in the screen, sure that the game did not save and you have just lost everything you have done in 5 hours. It didn't - the game saved, thankfully, but it all tasted bitter and not at all rewarding or stimulating.
Another criticism that the game deserves is the translation: it is inaccurate and full of errors, even grammatical, with translations of surnames seasoned with some small formatting errors. Bendy and the Ink Machine seems to be the result of a job done in an amateur way, as some (not all) of the examples that are worth a thousand words demonstrate:
- "Enter the archives";
- "Give it to me";
- The negative expression “Alice she doesn't like liars” becomes positive in Spanish: “Alice likes liars”;
- Bertrum Piedmont becomes ilare Bertrum Piemonte (at least they have not translated the name);
- His lair is "close by", "close" in English, it is literally translated "closed by";
- The searchers, the masses of ink to be axed in the game, become the mysterious "sensors" until the fifth chapter, where they become "researchers", and in the extra chapter "seekers";
- What is clearly a plunger during a chapter 3 commission is seen by translators as a "plunger".
Furthermore, we point out an incorrect translation that made us suffer and waste time in chapter 3: at a certain point we will have to collect, on behalf of a character, different objects by going "Up and Down" (as the chapter is called) with an elevator to the different floors of the building. An incorrect translation led us to look for such objects in one plane instead of another: in the goal the marked plane was number 9, in reality, the plane in which to conduct your research was number 11. Only in the specific plane, a depending on the different errands with Bendy in tow, there is what we seek. A translation that appears embarrassing and frankly not very respectful given its hurry for a PlayStation 4 port months after the release of the individual chapters.
The stages of combat are shown barely sketched, with a 'very inaccurate hitbox weapon, especially in the most agitated phases, in which it seems to hit in vain and consequently perish and in general one "back and forth" strategy, to give it a shot and take it, and then go around the enemies or bosses and let the automatic regeneration take its course, to then repeat the thing to the point of trivializing it. The design of the bosses is quite inspired, but other than that, the game does not give much means either to dodge or to attack, having to resort to the circle technique due to the general clumsiness gambling in these parts suffers.
The story outlined by the small development team is very interesting, and essentially talks about how Joey Drew tried to lift the company from a difficult time, how Bendy became an ink abomination and how the two are connected. An original idea with several twists that perhaps it would have deserved even more space, if not that the “peculiar” saving system and the chapters with a limited duration did not allow it. Another mechanic that demonstrates the originality at the base of the title is a special viewer that debuts in the last one and that allows you to see messages and aids written with an invisible ink on the wall, together with the other thousand written with ink already present. The viewer enjoys only partial use in the fifth chapter, but once the game is completed it can be used from the beginning revealing interesting details about the study.
Playing Bendy and the Ink Machine exudes the feeling of playing a scale BioShock: a micro world gone down the drain, teeming with ink and corruption, with characters that you can only get to know through tape recorders, cartoon posters and areas where the bewitching atmospheres of 1912 (Bioshock Infinite) or the 50s (BioShock) echo, this time, in yellow and black, with an appropriate music, dropped in the first (and last) days of classical animation, made of ink and blood which, perhaps, in Bendy and the Ink Machine end up being the same thing.
It's harder than you think to give a verdict on Bendy and the Ink Machine. Surely Bendy would have deserved more, being a game with great potential, but betrayed by a mechanic such as the dubious rescue system that is on the verge of the unforgivable, experienced on the skin of the players. The botched translation should have been more curated and needs a patch (and an apology). There is also the feeling that something is missing from the story, original but worthy of further study: a few questions at the end were answered, leaving some things pending and their own mystery. Bendy & Co. offer limited replayability, soon losing the sense of wonder and the sense of danger, the latter only felt at the beginning. If these deficiencies (from deficit, to miss) are corrected in a possible sequel, the game - and the player - will benefit greatly. Until then, Bendy and the Ink Machine remains a deserving but conditional title. A vote of confidence, therefore, for a fledgling indie development house and an invitation to review several things before Bendy comes back to their door.
► Bendy and the Ink Machine is an indie-Puzzle game developed and published by TheMeatly Games for Linux, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Steam and Xbox One, the video game was released on 27/04/2017 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 20/11/2018 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 20/11/2018 The version for Xbox One came out on 20/11/2018
