Unreal Game Review: Bastion

In the time I’m spending twiddling my thumbs, waiting for Mass Effect 3 to make its glorious debut, I figured I had a few options gaming-wise. I could throw another hundred hours into Skyrim with  my third character (stealth cat bitches!). I could beat my  head against a wall (ie. play Modern Warfare 3 for more than twenty minutes). Or I could catch up on a few of the better, overlooked titles from the year.

I dabbled in the first two, but am starting to try the latter. One of the alleged best games of the year I missed wasn’t actually a triple A title (as really, I didn’t miss many of those this fall). Rather, it was an indie game available on PC and Xbox Live called Bastion.

I hadn’t heard much about it, but it was landing on many people’s top ten games of the year list. I don’t often check out that many indie titles, but when I’ve taken the plunge for games like Torchlight and Braid, I haven’t regretted it.

BREAK EVERYTHING!

Nor do I regret my time with Bastion, which I found to be an extremely well crafted, very accessible RPG in the style of titles that came out close to two decades ago.

Though it’s largely two dimensional with graphics that are more artwork than polygons, it’s a gorgeous game with colorful environments and a distinct art style.

But there’s one thing that sets Bastion apart from all other games, in any genre, and it’s the only bit of it I’d heard much about before I played the game. The world sports an epically voiced narrator who will comment on your every moment, and will fill any gaps of silence with information about the larger story.

It’s an interesting story device, though I must admit that even spending a few hours beating the game with him explaining every action and bit of history he could, I still had some trouble following the story of Bastion, and felt the need to read about it on forums later. There were no earth shattering discoveries like that the entire game was a metaphor for the creation of the atomic bomb (Braid), but it was still an interesting world nonetheless.

How can I murder something so sad?

The game is so engaging however due to its exceptionally diverse array of weapons, and a host of challenging enemies to use them against. You have two weapon slots, usually some combination of melee and ranged, and a “super move” activated by pulling the right trigger.

It’s unusual to have a collection of this many weapons that feel and play so different from one another. Melee weapons range from thundering hammers to quick slashing swords to flamethrowers to battering rams. Ranged can be bows, shotguns, pistols, sniper rifles or energy cannons. With each new weapon you get, it feels even cooler than the last, and with five upgrades for each, you’ll be switching back and forth trying to unlock everything for all of them. Realizing that its weapons are the game’s strong suit, there is a challenge map for each weapon with a special bonus prize for (the usually very hard to get) first place.

The enemies start out easy, but eventually get progressively harder. The game is generally something of a cakewalk for any somewhat seasoned gamer, but it can be made more difficult by the activation of “idol” that make enemies tougher in various ways, but give bonus XP and money. It’s a bit like Halo’s skulls system, and it serves the game well here.

Almost everything in the environments is destructible.

I do grow a bit tired of games that have an interesting story throughout then out of nowhere force some binary moral choice at the very end. It’s not good storytelling, and is only a cheap trick to try and get people to play through another time. And when the option selected yields not even a cutscene, but a still picture and a few lines of dialogue, it’s definitely not going to be worth it to see the other option.

Though Bastion has a few story quirks, its unique narrated presentation is well done, and gameplay shines above all else with its thoroughly excellent assortment of weapons. Now, throw in a local co-op mode for the sequel, and you’ve earn yourself another gold star from me.