Have You Played... Gravity Bone?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

Super-cool micro-Hitman, getting on for a decade old but feeling as fresh as ever.

My memories of Gravity Bone [official site] turned out to have been a little scrubbed by those of its successor, the more stylish, showy and cut-up Thirty Flights Of Living. I'd forgotten that, unlike 30 Flights, Bone is a fairly involved affair - jumping puzzles and death-traps and target-hunting. It's all very active - you are the agent, not a mere witness to events.

If 30 Flights is Bond presented as a lucid dream of the emotional high points, Gravity Bone is Bond-as-trailer. Almost every moment is derring-do with none of the downtime in between (save for when you fall to your death and have to reload). It's all the context that is excised from 30 Flights, but with a view to cool rather than anything emotive.

The two games make perfect partners, in other words. I replayed Gravity Bone today and, bar some widescreen support issues, was delighted to discover that it feels as outta-nowhere strong as it did at the time. What if action games were not these long trudges through repeat actions and elongated storytelling, but instead a short, sharp burst of everything that's most thrilling about 'em? No heels dragged, no excess baggage: this and this and this and hell, yeah.