RE-Review: Paperbound


Title	Paperbound
Developer	Dissident Logic
Publisher	Dissident Logic
Release Date	March 2015
Genre	Fighting Co-op
Platform	PC, PlayStation 4
Age Rating	ESRB – E10+
Official Website

A while back, Angela Hinck took a look at a very classic styled beat ’em up Paperbound on the PC. I thought the game looked pretty interesting, so, when the opportunity came around to check out the PS4 version with some newly added bots, I thought I would give it a whirl.

Just to quickly touch on the graphics and sound they are basically the same as the PC version. Everything still runs at a silky smooth frame rate, and still look great. The sound effects are the same and still great, nothing quite like the sound of paper ripping as you tear through an opponent. There haven’t been any other changes to music so far as I can tell. The controls are still very tight and responsive and work very well with the DualShock 4 or Vita console during remote play.

There is no online multiplayer here, but you can play the game via the PS4 Share Play, though my Internet was not good enough to play the game without some serious lag. The game does feature two to four-player local multiplayer, though. You can now also play with bots. This feature has since been added to the PC version, as well. So, even if you don’t have any IRL friends to play with, you can have some fun. The bots are very unique, as different characters will fight a bit differently. While some bots will be very aggressive, others will take a more technical approach to fighting. For example, some bots will use mostly melee attacks while others will make use of the weapons. It’s pretty fun to play around with them just to who does what. They also have adjustable difficulty levels, so you can set that at whatever level you are comfortable with.

As with most PS4 titles, you can remote play this one to your PlayStation Vita console. Although the characters may appear a bit small, the controls are as tight as ever, but my OLED model Vita made the colorful characters and backgrounds really shine. The latest firmware update gave the PlayStation Vita Remote Play 60 FPS support, so that frame rate is just as silky smooth on the Vita as the PS4.

This is still a very good retro-styled fighting game. While it is a blast to play with IRL friends in the same room, the addition of bots makes this a much better game for people like me that don’t have a ton of friends close by to play with. I had a lot of fun playing around with all of the different storybook stages and crazy characters. For the price of $9.99, if you’re a fan of this type of brawler, you’ll get your money’s worth of fun.