The Bouncer

THE BOUNCER!!!!!!!

I’ve been in a lull recently, a slump, I haven’t really wanted to do much of anything, game related with the exception of take on a hunt or two in either Wilds or Generations Ultimate. Occasionally I’ll find myself seizing up like a stuck bolt and nothing will knock it loose until one day schwack - something will come along and give me a healthy dose of WD-40 and a hearty wack with the back of a wrench. After a very busy stint of work/travel/family I found myself with a quiet Saturday and a friend who was willing to mess around with a game that was on both of our backlogs.

I played through this on the Steam Deck, but it’s a Playstation 2 game. In fact its one of the few games on the system that took advantage of the DualShock 2’s pressure sensitive face buttons. This is a cool mechanic that means the way you press X will be the difference between a light attack or a heavy attack. This is super cool, in theory, until you learn that PlayStation has a patent on this technology and most other controllers other than the DS2 & 3 do not have this functionality. The emulator I was using defaulted to heavy attack, something I hadn’t noticed until I bought one of the characters’ Extra Moves and needed the game manual to decipher what their button scheme meant. I think if you hold L1+[BUTTON], and there wasn’t an Extra Skill applied, then you do some other kind of move. But without playing around with the emulator’s control scheme I couldn’t be sure that its causing a light attack.

The combat is good, but I’m tempted to reserve my judgement because I did not get to experience the full depth. As you fight through the levels and wave, your currently selected Bouncer will earn Bouncer Points, these are used to buy upgrades as well as additional moves. In my time with the game (~6 hours) I purchased maybe 5 of these Extra Skills. I was worried that I would be stuck with only heavy attacks, given my problems with the buttons. The moves I did unlock were good additions to the repertoire, but I really need to see this in action on proper hardware in hopes to see how everything congeals, how well you can string combos together. As it stood, until I started through in the extras and using L1 to change up the attack style, most attacks would just knock down the enemy. For a game like this you really want to be able to get a hit in during an opening and then use follow-up moves to string a combo together, before they fall down, where hopefully you have one more move that can do floor damage. My combo streaks were not great, but it was still fun.

When I started this game it was overcast, and by the time I got into what would be my first run, the rain was so hard that I could almost not hear the sounds of Dog Street coming out of my tv. The Bouncer is part movie, part choose-your-own-adventure and all 3D beat-em-up. It ended up being the perfect game for a lazy day - or two as my experience with it spilled into the following Sunday. I think the fun of this game is has by directly engaging with the characters and story. There is a moment in the story where you are outside of a train station and Volt yells “when you hear the whistle it’s time to get on.” Sure enough there was a whistle, and I still hadn’t beaten all of the enemies on the platform. The game cuts in and our bumbling heroes are seen running towards a moving train, two of them jump on and the third, Sion, is falling behind. He picks up the pace and jumps! A hand reaches out and snatch he’s pulled to safety on the back of this train. It was a fun moment, and on my follow-up playthrough (where I chose Volt the entire way through) I managed to defeat all those enemies on the platform and the three of them walked onto the train without issue.

This is one part - a big part - of the fun of The Bouncer. Small changes, bits of lore, character development and backstory all unfolding over the 2-hours of gameplay. Getting to experience this story from different viewpoints and making small changes in the story is the meat on the plate - the entire meal is based around this premise. The game is on the shorter side and it rewards you for playing through a few times. It also lets you carry your progression through - characters will maintain levels and moves purchased. This is helpful because if you restart with a weaker character, your bros will be all big and strong and able to take more punches while you run around all scared.

The way this game changes character perspectives is possibly it’s most feature. After each cutscene, just before a fight, you get to choose your character through a character selection screen - a mechanic which is doing double duty. You aren’t just choosing who to control in the upcoming fight but it’s also a de facto dialogue tree. Whichever of the three bouncers you choose, they’ll be the one to respond to the moment, they are the one you fight with and after that fight their story is the one the game tells. There are sections of the game where this results in small asides or simple reaction shots - I’ve very much enjoyed seeing these three times over. The more you get invested in these dummies the more you’ll want to hang out with them - there are also big sections that break apart the gang. In one run-through you’ll show up to a room and not know how the other two bouncers ended up there. Playing through as one of them will reveal those secrets! These are some of the most rewarding, you’re seeing this story play out from three perspectives while also knowing how to use your character. Have you put enough points into stats? Do you have the right moves to help you get through gauntlets with no save points and no health refreshes? It has its challenging moments, but if you’ve played other beat-em-ups or character action games its not insurmountable.

It’s a fascinating game, it does things I don’t think other 3D beat-em-ups have done, but I guess I’m not familiar enough with the genre to make that judgement. I’m inclined to walk back to some older 3D beat-em-ups like Die Hard Arcade (1996), Dynamite Cop (1999), Zombie Revenge (1999) or Fighting Force (1997) to see if this stands up with those, if it is an advancement of the genre in anyway. My feeling would be the story, writing and voice acting, along with the character story routes could stand up as some of the best of the genre. Rappy, the friend who came along on this journey, had completely different experiences than me. He too had a great time, almost more so than I, commenting he

“[wished] there were like a zillion of these bouncerlikes”

and I whole-heartedly agree! Blending narrative pathways and unique cut-scenes with any kind of gameplay of choice seems like a win. I wish the conversation around this game was more about the work that went into trying something new and unique, a game that tried to push a genre beyond stage-stage-boss archetypes, using it as a vehicle to tell an evolving, unique story. It’s funny, littered with self-deprecating humor and light ribs across all the characters really giving you a senese that these characters have history. You start the game already in the middle of these characters stories, which is one of the more common complaints about this game, and I sort of agree. There are loading screens that deliver little blips of lore through short scripts, memories from your current characters’ pasts. Since I was emulating this it was tough to read, but I was able to read them through screenshots. To me, this made the world, and the story that plays out - which is ALL about people re-connecting later in life; examining your orbits, seeing who you still have connections with though you haven’t spoken in years - that story ends up being more believable as a result. And finally, it really helps dangle the carrot to get you to go back in.

Final Thoughts

I’m forcing myself to wrap this up because it feels like I’m on the verge (to be polite) of rambling. I should have used my thread system to type this out during but in the moment I was ready to fucking game. I liked this game so much, it felt so fresh that its making me roll out a new way to classify games. I will never be satisfied with rating things out-of-so-many-stars, trying to scale something out-of-10 doesn’t really convey my feelings about a game. I’ll go into this further in a blog post, but for now, let me introduce you to BUFF CERTIFICATION. If a game has that something-something that really clicks, that closes the circuit between my prefrontal cortex and amygdala, it can be classified as certified buff. So congratulations, team who made The Bouncer, your game is officially BUFF CERTIFIED.

This game is ...

Sion, wake up! you're buff now!

Because The Bouncer offers awesome, customizable beat-em-up action combined with lots of endings and real motivation to give it multiple playthroughs, I hererby declare it Buff Certified!

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