OK. Let’s start with the obvious. Bastion is gorgeous! Seriously, if you have not seen the trailer stop reading this and watch it (then come back and finish). However, the amazon atmosphere in the game goes well beyond just looking great. The music is soft most of the time but fits this mystical world nicely. The game is fully narrated and the way that plays out is great. It mixes a play-by-play style with pieces of the background story. There are also some side missions/quests that you can to get even more of the background story. However, these come with a hard fought battle if you want to hear the whole thing. Frankly, it is worth the fight even if it takes a few times to complete them.
When the game starts you’re thrown strait into the world with little background on what is going on. As you work through the first area of the world you learn how to fight, and a little about what is happening in the game world. Both the current story as well as the back story to the game gets told piece by piece as you play with some hints gives if you pay attention. You absolutely need to play Bastion with the volume up so you can hear everything. The way the story comes together towards the end with all the pieces fitting together is some of the best story telling I’ve experienced in a very long time.
The controls and combat are pretty strait forward, but have a lot of options available. You have 2 weapons assigned at any time as well as a special attack. Other than this you have a dodge and block ability. I generally do not like combat systems that require a lot of blocking, but in Bastion it works well and I actually found myself blocking and enjoying trying to time it for a combo each time. There is a wide range of weapons and special attacks to choose from in your arsenal. Once you unlock a weapon by finding it in the game world you can equip it for any mission you choose. Each weapon has five upgrades to apply. However, instead of locking you in to a specific upgrade when you pick it you can go back and change out the upgrades on a weapon to try different upgrade combinations.
In addition to all the weapon options you also have the choice each time you level up as to what passive upgrade you want to apply to your character. Even the difficulty of the game can be customized between each level by invoking different modifiers at the shrine. If the game is too easy you can just add a couple tweaks and make it tougher.
I could probably go on raving about how much fun Bastion is for a couple more paragraphs, but instead I’m going to cut it off here and go start it up again on New Game Plus! When Bastion releases on Xbox Live Arcade tomorrow you owe it to yourself to check it out. It has more polish than a lot of $60 retail titles and a really well told story.
