Bastion (game)
Supergiant games
5 out of 5 stars.
While all of my friends were busy with Diablo 3, I decided to save $48* and buy the humble indie bundle instead. The thing is, I was kind of in the mood to play a Diablo-like game.
Enter Bastion. A quirky roleplaying adventure game that is completely and unequivocally awesome. The mechanics are straightforward. You move around with the keyboard and click to attack the random beasties that attack you. There is a small amount of customization: throughout the game, you find new weapons***, which you can upgrade in a variety**** of different ways. Along with your weapons you can choose a special attack and as many special powers as you have levels. One of the things this game did really really well is keep the amount of customization manageable. I felt like my decisions had real impact, but I didn't spent all that much time thinking about it.***** The design is, likewise, just right. It's brightly colored****** and all of the levels have a distinctive look and feel.
What really makes Bastion a fabulous game, though, is the storytelling. The story is good enough. There has been some kind of apocalypse. You appear to be the only survivor, until you meet Rucks, a mysterious old man who guides you on the path to save what's left of the world. What makes it transcendent is how it's told. Everything you do is narrated by Rucks in a gravely, old-timey, vaguely hard-boiled sort of voice. And Rucks is an amazing character, he is sweet, and funny, and interesting, and, single handed-ly******* keeps the player engaged in the story. With his narration the story becomes something you really want to hear, and makes the ending one of the more dramatic and engaging endings I've ever seen in a video game. At some point in the ending the game has you make some choices, and the way the story is told, it felt like the choice matters.********
Somewhere out there, there's probably a Myers-Briggs-lite test that tells you what your choices in bastion say about your personality. All I know is that I'm happy with my choices, so much so, that I'm not going to go back and try the other ending...
I had some minor quibbles, of course: the difficulty is, shall we say, uneven. I was playing on normal mode, which gives you a finite number of lives (two or three depending on your power-ups...) with which to finish the level. This was not at all a problem until the first interlude level where you fight 20 rounds of monsters. This fucking destroyed me until I figured out the right combination of powerups. And then the game went back to being pretty (to too) easy.********* Also, the control system is kind of crappy on the computer. You move around with WASD, but since it's a three-quarters top down view, the natural directions that you generally want to move are diagonally. Also, the mouse response left something to be desired, my mouse frequently dropped clicks, and "forgot" I was holding down the mouse button.
Bottom line? Save ${the current cost of diablo} - ${the cost of bastion}, and play Bastion. It's great!
*And better yet, my measly** $12 was well above the average, which is how I got Bastion!
** I wouldn't feel bad for them. The humble indie bundle made $5,107,675.35.
*** You find them deterministically though. Apart from picking up money and health potions there is, blessedly, no looting in this game.
**** 2^5 if you're counting.
***** Did I mention there's not looting?
****** Eat your heart out, Diablo fans.
******* Single voicedly, maybe?
******** None of this red explosion, green explosion bullshit.
********* Except for another gem of Bastion innovation: Early in the game, you unlock the ability to customize the difficulty level--in doing so you give the monsters a particular power up, and in return get increased money and XP. With all of these "idols" activated, I defy anyone to claim that the game was too easy...
