Bastion from Supergiant Games is an absolutely superb start to the Summer of Arcade promotion, there's no doubt about it. The game manages to successfully combine RPG lite elements with an intuitive combat system and an interesting story. Clocking in at roughly 6 hours you're sure to get your moneys worth.
The campaign puts you in the shoes of 'The Kid' who wakes up to find that the 'Calamity' has occurred causing large amounts of damage to the world. As you move the character, the floor appears around you, allowing for some interesting dynamic environments expanding out with many nooks and crannies containing secrets on almost every level. The left analog stick moves the kid, with the right allowing precision direction blocking. A rolls, B/X attacks with specific weapons, Y drinks a healing potion, LT blocks and RT uses a special ability. The controls quickly become second nature and you'll be diving between enemies dodging blows before you know it!
The game allows you to pick a different weapon for each attack slot - 2 in total. The weapons list includes a vast variety of tools for you to dispatch your enemies with including a bow, dual pistols, mortar, hammer, machete, a rifle, and many more. All of these can be upgraded up to 5 times from the Forge, where at each upgrade stage you can choose between 2 different bonuses - such as extra damage, speed or even a new property such as damage over time. This allows the player to tailor their weapon to a style which suits them - it's great! Everyone's bound to find a couple of weapons which they enjoy using in combination, but thankfully the developers have done a great job in ensuring there's never any kind of overpowered weapon set.
The player is tasked with returning the 'Bastion' to its former glory. What is the Bastion you ask? A floating island capable of growing out to offer many different buildings which benefit the player, such as an Armory to change your weapons, a Forge to upgrade them, a Distillery to choose between various passive bonuses such as extra health, the Lost & Found store, and many more. One of the most unique buildings is the Shrine which allows players to toggle on and off various difficulty modifiers which as a result provide an XP and currency bonus. It's a unique and fantastic way to change the difficulty in a game - rather than force the player to make the choice before they've even played the game, they can instead alter different areas of the difficulty as they see fit.
You'll move between levels using an overworld style map screen which occasionally allows you to pick between multiple as opposed to forcing you down a specific series of stages. Occasionally 'Proving Grounds' will appear - tasking the player with a specific weapon based challenge. Each of these have 3 levels of reward based on your performance, such as items which you can use in the Forge to improve weapons, or even a brand new special skill for that weapon. A few of these can be a little frustrating if you're trying to earn the top prize, but they're generally pretty fun.
The art style manages to leave a lasting impression almost instantly, with some gorgeous looking levels, creature designs and characters. Bastion truly is a treat on the eyes. The music is also fantastic and suits perfectly with the rest of the world. The narrator is one of my personal favourite elements of the entire game - he tells the games story as you play, including smart remarks and some dry humour here and there. The team clearly recorded hundreds of different lines of dialogue as you'll never hear the same thing said twice; such as comments about your weapon choice, events, death, use of skills and almost every other little thing you can think of. He adds a ton of personality and constantly managed to impress me even more as the game went on. By the time you reach the end of the game many of the mysteries surrounding the world, it's inhabitants and the past are all revealed.
Overall Bastion is not only one of my favourite XBLA games of the year, but one of my favourite on the entire platform so far in 2011. The game's combat is an absolute blast to play from start to finish. It's also wonderfully paced, with a story which kept me interested throughout the entire journey and a narrator which adds a ton of style and substance to the whole package. At around 6-8 hours there's a good amount of gameplay here for your 1200msp, however the developers have even included a New Game+ mode allowing you to keep all of your experience, items and weapons for a second playthrough.
Bastion Gets An Official Game-Pad: 9.3/10
Comments
1200msp is way to much going purely on the trial I played. Maybe when/if it goes on a sale for a lot lower, I may think about it.
Although doubt it.
At 1200msp it's certainly worth it if you enjoy it, but if a pricedrop is what it takes to get you to take the plunge then I wholeheartedly recommend it!
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