It’s a bold concept, I’ll give Of Bird and Cage that: a two hour, metal-infused musical story of love, addiction, depression and dire consequences themed around Beauty and the Beast. That’s one hell of a combo to pull off, and while it doesn’t quite manage it, there’s still a charm to the game that will mean anyone even slightly interested in the concept should at least check it out.
We control the destiny and fate of Gitta, a 25 year old drug addict who is trying to make sense of her traumatic life in between getting high. A short intro sets the scene as we try to find her drug dealer for another fix, but before long we’re thrust into the tale proper and all the strange and wonderful things that brings to the table.
While the store page and press releases might focus on the drug addict aspect, I found this element was pretty quickly discarded outside of a few key moments early on. Instead, the focus is on the metal musical happening as we experience each scene. Thankfully, the music is actually pretty damn good – all growling vocals, crunching riffs, and nicely placed moments of calm in between. Gitta and the other characters converse in song when needed, though I’d highly recommend turning the subtitles on to get the most out of the story – as much as I like the music, it can be hard to make out what they’re talking about at times.
We can’t spend to long listening though as the game is broken up into multiple scenes that only last a few minutes. In this time we have to fulfil several objectives, from finding certain items to looking for clues and collectibles. As each song plays, a bar slowly drains in time with the music. Depending on what we manage to achieve within the time allowed, we can get a different outcome to each scene, in turn affecting the final result of Of Bird and Cage.
The issue for me arose in that, well, completing the objectives felt like a shot in the dark. A couple were laughably easy, while others were nonsensical at best. One had me hunting for some wire to lay a trap – hunting what looked like an average apartment, I eventually found it in the walk in closet with the shirts and trousers, just in time to complete that task, but too late to complete several of the other objectives as well. Even then, some scenes seem to have us destined to fail. Several fist fights are present throughout, with a bar at the top letting us know if we’re winning or losing. Despite being on the winning side – or worse, clearly winning but still being on the losing side – I’d find the scene that played out had me down as the loser, whereas one of the final fights was so stupidly easy that I barely did anything and still won.
The tight time limit means we have to sprint around in search of what is it we need, but without the time to really process our options. Another example had me getting six NPC’s to hand their phones over and lie down in a corner of a room. The problem was that if I got them to lie down first I could then not grab the phone. Hell, sometimes the game simply failed to either explain what I needed or flat out refused to co-operate. Some interactions just didn’t work, while others were clearly visible but didn’t respond to any actions, including not letting me punch in one fight (which then registered as me losing).
Of Bird and Cage isn’t exactly a looker either. Not usually a problem for me, but a few times the visuals actually made it had to parse what to do. A chase sequence was so muddy and confusing I ended up getting caught (and failing again) because I couldn’t tell where to go. The drug addict visual effect of things being on fire is thankfully sparingly used as it makes things even harder to see, and overall there’s just a lack of polish that even a Series S couldn’t power through.
As I say, there are several outcomes to the tale, and once completed we can see which scenes had an effect on that outcome and what we could possibly change. Second playthroughs of some scenes will make some of the issues less severe, but that doesn’t stop the first time through feeling a bit slap dash in its execution.
Conclusion
Which is a shame as the concept is interesting and the music is overall decent. The story had me pretty hooked throughout even if it was a bit confusing at times, and the seeds of a decent idea in the time limited puzzle exploration scenes are there. But every time I started to find my rhythm with Of Bird and Cage I’d get tripped up by a scene, be it bugs or simply poor design choices, and end up feeling off tempo entirely.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
