Jeff Smith's Bone comic book epic is a fantasy story for all ages starring the Bone cousins, Phone, Fone, and Smiley, who find themselves lost after being run of out of their native Boneville. Although the Bones themselves look sort of like Snoopy from Peanuts, the stories also involve humans, insects, dragons, and "stupid, stupid, rat creatures", all of whom can talk to each other. The comic is a great read, how I would describe the comic if recommending it to others is that Bone is "cute, funny, and charming". Bone: Out from Boneville (Bone) is an adventure game that retells the events of the first compilation of the comic book series, also titled Out from Boneville.
Bone uses the normal point and click scheme found in most traditional adventure games. Control, as you would expect then, is easy to learn, though I did notice that to get a sensor that something can be interacted with, your character actually has to be close to it. Therefore, when you first enter a screen, you can't simply move your cursor around to assess what's available. This made me wonder if I was missing stuff because I didn't want to move my character to every single part of the screen and scan.
I'm fairly sure I didn't miss anything, however, which leads to another problem: there is very little actual gameplay. The game is very short - Bone should take most gamers two to three hours to complete. There aren't too many items to interact with, and while there are some puzzles and mini games (with chase action scenes standing out in particular), most of the game is spent listening to dialogue. The game does cover material from the first book accurately, however, including quoting many of its lines, but it still leaves significant chunks of the story out, and in the end it doesn't feel like you've done or seen a lot by the time you beat the game.
My feeling is that this will be okay for Bone fans, since they'll already know and understand the background behind the series, but for new fans, the game may be disappointing. While the $20 price point would usually be great for a game, in this case, it probably isn't a good value for gamers who aren't already familiar with the comic.
Graphically, Bone reflects the comic well. While Bone is by no means a technical achievement, this is probably for the better, as Bone will run well on most casual gamers' computers, and that's the kind of audience the game fits best.
Bone features solid voice acting and a good soundtrack as well. If you're familiar with the comic, whether the voice actors chosen will fit your own interpretation of them is, of course, unknown, but for me, I warmed to the selections gradually, and when I read the comics again, I'm sure the game's voices will be imprinted in my mind as the true voices of the characters.
A lot of the comic's charm holds up well in this conversion to video game, but there simply isn't enough gameplay or story depth to satisfy most gamers for $20. Hardcore Bone fans probably won't care, however, and won't be disappointed. For everyone else, I recommend waiting until the second chapter comes out, and paying closer to the full price of a normal game for perhaps, what will be overall, a more fulfilling experience.
I love video games. I just don't play too many of them. I grew up always having to learn about games through my (incredibly cheap) subscription to Video Games and Computer Entertainment (10 years later, this magazine is now known as Tips And Tricks). I'd read through each issue several times, remembering all the screenshots and details, but it was rare that I'd actually to get play any of the games featured just because I didn't have the money to do so. Now, I'm lucky enough to work in the industry, at a position that requires me to be a video game expert. Apparently I really did learn something from all that reading back then! I still don't play a lot of games though.
I enjoy virtually all game genres, except for PC war strategy, which I'm sure I just can't handle in terms of sophistication. My true calling in gaming is the PC FPS. It's the only genre where I'm willing to overlook major flaws in a particular game, finish it, and enjoy it anyway.
I also have a fascination with digitized video games (Fox Hunt, Psychic Detective, Angel Devoid), a now-defunct genre. Back when full-motion-video was all the rage, these games were supposed to be the next step in bringing Hollywood to the gamer, but most of the time, these efforts resulted in hilarious (and ridiculous) "interactive" movies that, instead of bringing innovation to the industry, only paved the way for the bad voice acting that the industry still suffers from today.
