Sponsored By: Bubs
Time To Rise: 58 Minutes
Matzah Review
They told me that I could be anything in video games, so I decided to be a slice of bread.
Yes. Really. They made a game that's even more ludicrous than Goat Simulator.
Baguette Review
Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented the whole-loaf bread slicer in 1912. His machine was used to sell the first pre-sliced loaf of bread in 1928, leading to the coining of the phrase "the greatest thing since sliced bread."
I have no idea what the greatest thing before sliced bread was. Nor do I know why inventing a colloquialism is called "coining," while stamping a coin is called "minting." I suspect the latter is the result of that grand old tradition of the English language that says if enough people are too stupid or lazy to use a word right, the people who write dictionaries will simply change the language to accommodate them. It's very democratic, but it's devilishly hard on people who want to use words like "decimate" and "ironic" correctly.
No matter. I'm no linguist, cunning or otherwise; I'm just a guy who likes ridiculous video games. Along those lines, you can't get much more ridiculous than I Am Bread, a recent entry in the genre of "creatively destroy mundane environments for comic effect" games. In it you play as a slice of bread on a grand quest to become toast.
There's a problem, though. The man who purchased your loaf is having paranoid delusions and thinks someone is breaking into his home to make breakfast. This is patently ridiculous, as anyone could tell him that it's the sentient loaf of bread in his pantry that's making itself into toast.
Some people would cut themselves on Occam's Razor.
The first level is the kitchen, which is normal enough – but as the game progresses the man becomes more and more deranged. He throws away his toaster, forcing you to find more creative ways of becoming toast, and starts hiding the food in different rooms of his house.
Unfortunately, his cleaning routine is among the first things to go. His house is filthy. Swarms of ants, muddy boot prints, and half-eaten fish litter the place. Coming into contact with any of them will reduce your edibility rating – nobody wants to eat a slice of toast covered in ants, mud and fish bones, after all. If you reach 0% edibility, such as by touching enough filth or by remaining on the floor for more than five consecutive seconds, you become garbage and the level ends.
Fortunately, you have some abilities to keep yourself out of the muck. You can grab anything with your four corners. Holding on to something anchors that corner to it, so you can swing the rest of your floppy, bread body around to grab something else. This is your main mode of locomotion.
By grabbing with two adjacent corners, you can flip yourself over, change your grip to the other two corners, flip again, and so forth. Trust me when I say that it sounds more complicated than it is. Once you sit down and try to play it, you realize that – in concept, anyway – it's quite simple.
Simple, and yet somehow the hardest gosh-darn game I've played since Bloodborne. The difficulty manifests, as it does so often in puzzle games, in two ways: First you must figure out what you need to do, then you must figure out how to do it.
In I Am Bread you must first figure out how to become toast without a toaster. This may be a light bulb, or a clothes iron, or a hair dryer; you're looking for something that might conceivably generate enough heat to toast bread. The developers did a pretty good job of keeping the logic consistent (unlike some other puzzle games I could mention), so if you think it might work based on your real-life experience with home appliances, you have a better than average chance. This phase of solving the puzzle is harder than it probably should be, because the camera is tightly centered on your slice of bread, and while you can move the camera around, it gets hung up on walls and objects, so getting a decent look at your environment can be frustrating. The only thing I've figured out at this point is to pick a direction and fail a couple of times.
Once you've identified your potential toaster, you have to actually get there. I Am Bread is a physics-based game, and I know I'm on record as stating that those are uniformly terrible. This one would be too, but for one small tweak which I'll get to in a moment.
The controls are deliberately awkward, like such games as Octodad and Mirror's Edge (zing!). And like those games, the controls tend to work well with the premise. You're an ambulatory slice of bread; don't expect to be doing sweet parkour moves.
You have to make use of momentum to swing each of your four corners into the most advantageous position. Sometimes you have to grab with two corners at once, which means you'll be getting to intimately know which shoulder button is which if you're using a gamepad. On at least two occasions, my hands cramped up from trying to use the triggers, the bumpers and the analog sticks all at the same time, but I have large hands, so your mileage may vary.
Oh, and I should mention that your slice of bread has stamina issues, which only stands to reason. It is all carbs, after all. You can't grip something indefinitely. As you hold onto walls or ceilings or skateboards, you'll find your "grip" meter depletes. If it goes to zero, you'll lose your grip on what you've been holding, and probably flop to the ground where you'll lose your edibility and fail the level. The trick is to make sure that you find a place where you'll be safe lying around for a minute and wait for your grip gauge to recharge itself.
Earlier I mentioned there was a twist that saves this physics-based puzzle game from the bin where I throw all physics-based puzzle games (before I ritualistically burn them to get my strength back). If you fail a level three times, you'll get a small jar of something that makes you completely invulnerable to dirt and gives you infinite grip. It's completely optional, but after three tries that end with my slice of bread floating in a toilet, I got a tad frustrated. It's nice to have the option to flop directly across the floor to whatever heat source is available and just finish the dang level for crying out loud.
Shall I let it rise?
Yes. If nothing else, my kids find it hilarious, and I'll put up with any amount of aggravation to make them smile and laugh.
Also, there are several modes I haven't put much time into yet but could prove to be more fun than the story mode. There's a mode, aptly titled "Rampage," where you smash everything breakable for points that's quite fun. There's also a mode, where you roll a bagel, that I haven't tried yet.
The big extra, though, is the full-featured space-sim with the lawsuit-baiting name "Starch Wars." You fly your slice of bread around a solar system, dogfighting TIE Fighters made of bagels and matzah and trying to blow up massive capital loaves. It handles surprisingly well, and I'm sure I'll get some good use out of it – especially once I figure out what the actual objectives of that mode are.
Is it the Blood Pudding of ... this kind of game?
A thousand times: yes. This game is hard like month-old sourdough. The only reason I've made any progress at all is because of the jar of invulnerability sauce that shows up when you've proven you're bad enough at the game to need it.
Twelve blood vials out of seven.
Comments
It's amazing to me that on one hand, I don't have a lot of free time for games, while on the other hand I want to spend time on this game.
Is this how people on low-carb diets feel?
Words... are a big deal.
Jill Lapore wrote:Editing is one of the great inventions of civilization.
Immediately? Or is there a three-second rule?
Gravey, I'm never sure, on a scale of 1-10, just how serious you are when you post. – Minarchist
I think the game makes it five second rule, but only if you're at full edibility when you land.
Jonman Wrote:
Yes, you can cancel Darksiders, but only by using your Sony Golds. Which, while pretty good, aren't a patch on Zelda.
I'm A Steam Curator!
Ha, excellent.
Gravey, I'm never sure, on a scale of 1-10, just how serious you are when you post. – Minarchist
It is worth every carb! It is a silly and yet somehow fulfilling puzzle game that rewards thinking outside of the obvious choices. Using the environment in interesting ways is a big part of the fun.
This game is as fun as you put your self into it. Using it as a vehicle to make others happy (your kids) is awesome sauce.
Cool to see it featured, on my wishlist for a while now.
I did not know about Starch Wars though, that will up its queue priority
considerablysomewhat.Battle.net RolandGilead#11706 (Overwatch and Destiny 2)
Friend code: 0447-8302-5512