Bionic Bay

Checkpoints are always welcome. Knowing that a challenging stretch is now behind you, an anchor point firmly embedded in the rock, provides much-needed relief in any game.

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But it can be a little suspect when they're too frequent, inserted into the middle of an already short sequence, say, making you wonder if it might be compensation for some bumpy design. In Bionic Bay, an inventive and taxing physics-based platformer, that hypothesis proves correct.

At the fore here is the spirit of the eccentric inventor with no time to explain. An opening cutscene wastes mere seconds before dropping you into a marathon of scientific oddity. Most likely referencing Another World, you are a physicist propelled into another dimension after an experiment backfires (in this case, ringing up a few casualties in the process). Another World's basic setup of side-viewed platform puzzles exploiting the furniture of an alien environment is also reprised. Narratively, though, Bionic Bay is far more skeletal, leaving you alone to run and climb around what appears to be some kind of colossal abandoned factory.

Within, you'll enjoy a range of superpowers, attained from either finding gadgets or, in the first case, body modifications. A brief but much-needed change in this environment endows you with greater elasticity, adding a trampoline boost to your jumps and a cushioned impact on falls, at least toa point. And since you'll be getting knocked around by great spinning handles and unstable gravity, or plummeting from pipes incapable of bearing your weight, greater shock absorbency can be the difference between life and a swift, crunchy death.