{"id":23756,"date":"2021-10-04T23:19:25","date_gmt":"2021-10-04T13:19:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=23756"},"modified":"2021-12-04T23:41:36","modified_gmt":"2021-12-04T13:41:36","slug":"kena-bridge-of-spirits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=23756","title":{"rendered":"Kena: Bridge of Spirits"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"kena-poster\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Developer:\u00a0 <\/strong>Ember Lab
\n<\/strong>Publisher:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Ember Lab
\n<\/strong>Platform:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Playstation 5<\/p>\n

E<\/span>mber Labs debut video game\u00a0Kena: Bridge of Spirits<\/em> is one of the quiet success stories of 2021.\u00a0 A first time effort from a video production company turned game dev studio,\u00a0Kena<\/em> generally flew under the radar pre-release as a budget-priced unknown quantity from an unproven studio.\u00a0 Yet it rightfully won plenty of plaudits from critics and fans alike when it launched in September.\u00a0 Ember Lab’s experience in video production clearly put them in good stead as the game has ended up being one of the most visually spectacular games of the year.\u00a0\u00a0The game draws inspiration from Balinese culture and Eastern mysticism and incorporates it with character and animation design that is reminiscent of\u00a0Avatar: The Last Airbender<\/em> or\u00a0The Legend of Korra<\/em>.\u00a0 The result is an eye-catching and immersive world filled with both adorable companions (the sickeningly cute Rot) and fearsome monsters that look like the PG-rated kindred spirits of Soulsborne enemies.<\/p>\n

Bridge of Spirits<\/em> is set in an unnamed fantasy world where traumatized souls are unable to cross over from the world of the living to the spirit realm.\u00a0 Spirit guides such as Kena help resolve the source of the trauma to let the spirits cross over.<\/p>\n

In the beginning of the game, Kena arrives at a village that is abandoned by all but a handful of survivors.\u00a0 As she starts to piece together what happened, she is tasked with collecting masks and confronting the tormented souls that need to find their peace, so that she can save the village.<\/p>\n

I think Ember Lab have really struck gold with the character of Kena and the world she inhabits.\u00a0 I found Kena to be an immediately likeable and well developed character.\u00a0 It’s rare to play a youthful character who has such a peaceful and spiritual temperament.\u00a0 It’s not just window-dressing either.\u00a0 Players can actually meditate as Kena or simply sit down in the forest and chill out with your adorable spirit creature companions, patting them on the head or playing a game with them.<\/p>\n

Once the combat gets going, Kena has a basic, but well rounded moveset including light and heavy attacks, a dodge and a parry.\u00a0 As the game progresses she incorporates further weapons and abilities into her arsenal and this is complimented by the Rot also providing further assistance.<\/p>\n

\"kena-scene\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For a first time effort, the game mechanics are impressively fully-featured, if not heavily inspired by other action-adventure games of recent years.\u00a0 Where I give Ember Lab credit is that they do a fantastic job accentuating their positives and they seem very aware of their limitations and they don’t push themselves beyond their scope when it comes to the scale of the world, the length of the game or the complexity of the gameplay and combat.\u00a0 I think the game has precisely as much depth as it needs to for the length of the journey.\u00a0 I think its one of the those games that comes out in the first year of a new console when the release calendar isn’t too crowded, that\u00a0goes on to become a cult classic and fondly remembered years later.\u00a0 It’s even more impressive when you consider the core staff that created this game is just fifteen staff.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see what Ember Lab do next after this\u00a0enormously positive first effort.\u00a0 With a bigger team, more time and potentially a bigger budget, its easy to imagination their next game being a headline act for the PS5.\u00a0 Or perhaps they’re happy to stay small and nimble, and their next project could be something similar to\u00a0Kena<\/em>, a gorgeous, pint-sized adventure that charms your socks off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kora is a guide that helps wounded souls navigate between the world of the living and the spirit realm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":23759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2990,2991,1200,2936],"class_list":["post-23756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaming","tag-ember-lab","tag-kora","tag-playstation","tag-playstation-5"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23756"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23785,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23756\/revisions\/23785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}