Recent reviews by epicplayer40

I will state here now that, while I did (mostly) enjoy my time playing Bonelab, if you are expecting a linear singleplayer story with occasional extras like Boneworks then this isn't what you're looking for. The extra side content is an imperative part of the game and you will be heavily encouraged to at least check them out rather than sticking just to the story.

Overall I feel like the story levels and plot were less cohesive than Boneworks felt. In Boneworks you can stitch together how each level leads into the next, and the environments all had a similar feel and atmosphere that was consistent in style. Bonelab feels disjointed about a third into the game where you suddenly start jumping from one very different looking area to the next. It feels like you're being artificially teleported to these minigames (which you basically are) that have little connection to the main story aside from gaining another avatar for your Ben 10 shoulder watch.

Now it's time for the spoiler talk.

The first level of the game is very good in my opinion, it has a memorable set piece at the beginning and exploring the area while reading notes built up an atmosphere similar to Boneworks.

After the first level you arrive at the Lab. And at this point a lot of people get confused wondering where the rest of their $40 game went. The game doesn't do a good job at explaining what to do and why you need to do it. And then the entire crane incident takes a long time to complete, giving you plenty of opportunities to reflect on why these design decisions were made, let alone without a clear goal in mind.

The next few levels are fairly standard corridor shooter affairs with the odd gimmick physics puzzle showing up. The locations themselves feel less memorable than the different locations of Boneworks.

A personal highlight for me was the rollercoaster ride you take, it took me by surprise and it was one of my favourite sections of the story.

Eventually you get sent on a mission by big boy Jimmy to find avatars. Beginning the "make the player play funny minigames to unlock characters to progress" section of the game:

The city brawler section was alright but my index controller joystick decided to bug out on me, so I had a hard time making my way through and finding out where to go.

Bridge parkour was a hard time yet again because of my controllers (I don't blame the game for this, just thought it'd be worth pointing out) so you could imagine me failing simple jumps while fartcore techno dubstep shouts in my ears.

Heavy punchy segment was enjoyable for me, tossing around skeletons and KO punching enemies in 1 hit is fun. Stressful but not really difficult.

DA MOOOOOON was a confusing area. It's a sandbox level slapped in the middle of a story so you don't really know what you're supposed to be looking out for. I spent a while jumping around with low gravity, eventually using 2 rifles to propel me across the plains for faster transport until eventually finding the game part of the video game.

Mario Kart was fun. Driving around the track was a change of pace from the previous levels. Although the controls and sensitivity of the steering wheel felt a bit off, causing my face to make a few unprompted poundings into the nearest wall or barricade a few too many times.

Slender Man Climbs a Tower is probably the one level that people will despise when replaying this game. There's many instances where my long arms get hooked around a thin pipe or something causing me to get confused and have to adjust my hand positions to free myself. The fireball enemies don't help much with this section either. Finally stabbing that floating purple fart orb felt nice by the end of it.

And then begins the last section where you put all those avatars to (sort of) good use. By doing what exactly? Golf, of course! The golf section felt a bit lackluster considering the build up to that section. There should probably have been more shooty bang bang sections where you make use of the full set of avatars.

And then there's one full shooty bang bang level that makes use of all the avatars. At this point the game starts to differ from Boneworksy-style gameplay since you now have these new avatar abilities so this level was enjoyable to me.

And then you go to Europe. The last section of the game was also quite fun, getting to loop back around to the beginning of the game but now with these transformation superpowers was very satisfying. The game also finally introduces a new enemy type! The cultist, who shoots fireballs at you and behaves similar to the omniprojectors. They only appear a couple of times so they felt pretty underutilised.

And then the ending. Honestly I was very curious what the devs would do after the response to the EPIC final boss battle of Boneworks (a ladder). Turns out the final boss is a windmill and a kid named finger. Grabbing the finger immediately made me ascend to heaven with music way too good to fit the imagery I'm seeing before me.

And then the game caps off with you struggling to fit inside a taxi. And then getting exposition with 50% of the dialogue already being used on the radios previously. The ending was an improvement over Boneworks and the story as a whole felt more easy to follow.

Oh yeah and the minigames. Some of the minigames felt like they should've been in the main campaign to break up the pace, like the one parkour minigame that isn't parkour, instead having you collect 7 keys and plug them into a sphere to complete. It's a pretty fun scavenging hunt that makes use of different avatars so it would have fit right into the main story near the end, (I'd take that any day over the tall guy climbing section).

Overall I liked Bonelab but feel like Boneworks was a better overall experience and felt more cohesive. If you want more Boneworks content then this game can satisfy that itch, but expect the classic Boneworks jank to still be there and get ready to anticipate some questionable design decisions.

The ending is 4 hours long.

It's the best canonical Half-Life installment.