Baby Steps Review: A Charming and Heartfelt Journey
▼ Summary
– Baby Steps is a parody of open world games where you control Nate, a clumsy 35-year-old man who must learn to walk barefoot to climb a mountain and return home.
– The game features intentionally difficult physics-based movement where Nate constantly trips and falls, turning the simple act of walking into a slapstick challenge.
– It satirizes gaming difficulty and a specific type of stubborn player by having Nate reject all offers of help, including a map, forcing the player to navigate complex, frustrating terrain.
– While the game’s humorous physics and cutscenes are engaging initially, the challenge becomes draining over time, particularly in difficult zones like the sandy area.
– The ultimate reward for persevering is not a sense of triumph but more of the game’s funny, well-written cutscenes, which remain entertaining even when the core gameplay loses its novelty.
Embarking on the journey that is Baby Steps feels like a masterclass in turning frustration into comedy, a game that brilliantly parodies the very nature of open-world exploration and difficulty. You control Nate, a 35-year-old man who finds himself inexplicably transported from his couch to a vast wilderness. His only hope of returning home seems to be scaling a daunting mountain, a task for which he is hilariously unprepared. The game’s core mechanic is deceptively simple: you must literally guide Nate’s every step, one clumsy footfall at a time.
The experience begins with an immediate and humbling fall. Controlling Nate’s movement is a deliberate and often comical struggle. Using a controller, you squeeze a trigger to lift a foot and manipulate a stick to place it. Despite this precise input, Nate possesses the balance of a newborn giraffe, stumbling and tumbling with a frequency that becomes a central source of the game’s humor. He traverses the entire landscape barefoot, having rejected a pair of shoes from a cheerful Australian hiker in one of the game’s many witty cutscenes. This interaction perfectly establishes Nate’s character: a man so profoundly awkward he refuses all help, even a desperately needed map.
This refusal of assistance serves as the game’s satirical heart. Baby Steps personifies a certain type of gamer, the one who views overcoming brutal challenge as a masculine triumph. Every time Nate face-plants into mud, slides down a hill, or gets his onesie stuck on a cactus, it feels like a commentary on the often-toxic discourse surrounding video game difficulty. The game is filled with optional challenges, like collecting hats perched in precarious locations, but the act of retrieving them after a fall often leads to a fresh cascade of failures. More than once, players will find themselves utterly stumped, unsure if a particular rock face is the intended path or a fool’s errand. The game cleverly obscures the line between a difficult-but-doable climb and an impossible one, leading to moments of genuine exasperation.
The sheer physical comedy of Nate’s wobbly ascent provides hours of entertainment, but the novelty can wear thin. The opening hours are filled with laughter as Nate groans and swears his way across the landscape. However, the later sections, particularly those set in a vast, sandy area, can begin to feel like a tedious grind. Just when the constant stumbling risks becoming draining, the game’s sharp, well-written cutscenes reel you back in. The story unfolds through these brief encounters, including a particularly memorable character whose overbearing Australian personality provides a hilarious counterpoint to Nate’s misery.
Ultimately, the reward for persevering through Baby Steps isn’t just a sense of accomplishment. It’s a renewed appreciation for the simple pleasures found in other games. After spending nearly 15 hours painstakingly navigating a single mountain, the ability to effortlessly double-jump or summon a vehicle in a conventional game feels liberating. Baby Steps is a unique and brilliantly crafted experience that holds a mirror up to gaming culture, but it’s also a title that might make you profoundly grateful for quality-of-life features like fast travel and quest markers.
(Source: PC Gamer)
