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Bastion is a hack in slash RPG developed by Supergiant Games and published by Warner Bros. Interactive.  It is available on Xbox live and PC.

You awaken as “the kid” on a floating rock in the sky, a great “calamity” has happened and left everything in ruins.  The journey starts as you make your way to the Bastion, the safe haven where all survivors must go in the event of a calamity.  This path will lead you through

multiple dungeons and levels to find cores and shard to help power up the bastion in an effort to save the ruined world.

And with your trusty hammer in hand you will have a fighting chance to deal thor-ean justice!

Functionality:

The controls for this game very easy and natural.  You have your standard movements with the left thumb stick and direct aiming with the right stick.  Your attacks are done with the (X), (B), and (RT).  Each attack is separated to the specific weapon you have placed there.  So you arrange your chosen weapons to the X, B, and RT slots, allowing for a unique fighting method that fits your particular style.

As far as combat, this game operates extremely well. The overall movements of “the kid” are extremely fluid and responsive to your button smashing.

Now the interface to this game is a very simple set up, with your health at the top left and weapons on bottom right.  The design for these displays is very elegant and matches with the games overall art direction.  Along with the overall design the screen darkens and goes red when “the kid” is damaged, but it never gets to the point where you can’t see anything at all.  Something that a lot of games get wrong, so its nice to play one that managed to understand how to do it right.

Presentation:

This game has one of the best artistic styles in the video game marketplace!  It uses a water color based art style that gives it a very elegant artistic look.  Along with that the environments are constructed so well that you are able to clearly, well for the most part, all holes that can cause you to fall from the flying areas.  The reason I said “well for the most part” is that there are a few areas where it is just a bit difficult to see where you are walking and what is the end of a bush and the start of a long fall.  This game does remedy this situation with disabling falls as death traps.

An interesting area in this game is the Bastion.  Whenever you find a shard or core you return back to the Bastion, an bright green land that shows a piece of what the world used to look like.  And with each shard placed it expands, adding more areas to place buildings to help “the Kid” on his quest.

I will say one thing that kind of bothered me was that the only real place you can change out potions and weapons is on the bastion.  So if you are on a mission and pick up a random new weapon you lose your upgraded one until return home.  It would have been nice to incorporate and inventory that would allow you to just swap these out no matter where you are.  That would have also added a nice boss element that would force you to use different weapons to master different situations.  Now it is true that there are usually weapon swap points after the new weapon pick-ups but it would just have made more sense to allow you to it via character inventory at any time.

Now for voice acting, this game only really provides the narrative voice of Ruck who basically tells Zia what your character does.  Overall this is a good way to include the story without stopping gameplay but there are definitely moments where this narration gets a bit much and begins to annoy.

The main example is a level where “the Kid” runs into a bunch of statues of people who died during the “Calamity” and Ruck keeps saying “they didn’t make it”.  Well after about the 5^th statue it became a bit old.  One thing that might have been nice is the ability to deactivate the voice unless it has something to say that is part of the story.  Like during cut scenes or when talking about a new area.

Atmosphere:

The soundtrack for Bastion is great!  It provides and interesting western meets future sound, which brings Firefly to mind a lot.  But it has a way of keeping the worlds beauty as well as tragedy present in the game.

Along with the soundtrack this game did rather well with their sound effects, I mean they are basically the same as any hack in slash but they don’t seem to be a loud huge point of sound which is nice.  So everything seems to blend well together and keep you immersed in the game.

Plot:

The overall plot for this arcade game is simple and straight to the point.  Since the calamity your character is charged with activating the bastion and helping restore the broken world.  Along with all that you uncover certain secrets to the calamity and other characters you meet on your quest.

The game also offers an interesting choose your path scenario at the end of the game.  While this was a good element to add to the game I kind of felt that they should have either had more of those options earlier in the game or just don’t do it.  Bringing the ability to choose at the end of the game just makes it seem like a random situation.

I mean anytime earlier in the game you are stuck doing what ruck says, but to all of a sudden be able to make a choice? It just doesn’t match the rest of the game, and it is not helped by the fact that the choices don’t really change anything by that point.  The only real change is the last choice in the game, which I won’t spoil for you.

I guess for me, it would have been way more intriguing to provide the choices early on and allow that shape and define the Bastion throughout the story.  But for an arcade game this will do nicely.

Legacy Rating:

Will this game last through time?  Sadly arcade games never really seem to make their mark in the gaming world.  This game provided a lot of entertainment and had some great concepts with it, but at the end of the day it is just an arcade game.  And with that being a factor it is hard to really see it hold its rightful place in the gaming world. I would also note that a big issue with this game and its ability to succeed is that it is not available on the PS3.  I mean it could have done great with that community, but it is only on Xbox and PC.

How does it compare with other games? It is hard to really compare this game to other games, especially with its unique world and game style.  But if we were to look at what had been released in conjunction with it then I would say it has some tough competition.  At the time of Bastion’s release you also had “Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet” and “Dust” now out of these three it gets complicated on what to play.  Shadow planet is an incredibly fun Metroidvania experience, while Dust has a very “Black & White” feel to it.  My serious recommendation is that you download all demos and try them out and decide what you want to play.  All three are rather impressive games, but me personally its Shadow Planet, Bastion, Dust (in that order!).

Buy or not? Now the final question, do I buy or not?  For me this game is a purchase, it offers an extremely unique gaming experience and is very fun and engaging!  It is never over the top ridiculous which ends up making the game a more pleasant gaming experience that you can enjoy till the early morning.  Or play while you zone out, with no real concern about pushing your character progression.  It is just nice to have those sometimes.