My Random Thoughts on Bastion
So after last week’s foray into somewhat serious territory, I’m in the mood to do another gaming post this week. Last month I played through Bastion on Xbox Live Arcade, and I enjoyed my time with the game quite a bit. It’s always nice to have a new IP that leaves you feeling good about this industry that has become increasingly obsessed with sequels, prequels, and reboots. Here’s a more detailed rundown of what I liked and didn’t like about the game:
Positives
Interesting weapons: Bastion is an action RPG, and as it turns out, the game does a pretty good job of paying attention to both the action and RPG elements of its weapon system. I can’t quite remember how many weapons are available in Bastion (I want to say twelve, but that could be off), but there were very few of them that left me with a bitter taste. The team at Supergiant did a pretty good job of making each weapon feel unique, despite having a relatively high number of them. You have your typical ranged weapons (pistol, shotgun, rifle, flamethrower) and your typical melee weapons (sword, hammer, spear), but they have all been adapted to the top-down perspective quite well. The upgrade system for the weapons was also implemented nicely, and the game did a pretty good job of making you feel increasingly powerful as you upgraded your favourite weapons to their maximum capability (granting you such abilities as being able to ignore armour, which came in pretty handy).
Looks beautiful: Don’t take my word for it - just go look at some screenshots. The hand-drawn visuals look fantastic by all but the most jaded standards. The Kid in particular is really well designed, and the little touches (such as the red handkerchief hanging around his neck) give him a very distinct appearance within the game world. I played the game on the Xbox 360, but from what I’ve heard, it looks even better on the PC once you get your resolution nice and high. Oh, and did I mention how colourful the game is? We really need more of that in this console generation. A lot more.
Excellent score: Between this game and ilomilo, I’m really impressed by how these smaller, more indie games have managed to get a hold of some really fantastic musicians for their scores. Not only is the soundtrack great (in fact, just talking about the soundtrack is tempting me to buy it), but the developers did a good job of putting music in at the right places, and the game does a good job building the intensity of the music as the intensity of the action builds. The music and the narrator also end up complimenting themselves nicely, and speaking of which…
The Narrator: When I first heard that the game was going to have a narrator, I immediately began anticipating the worst case scenario. I imagined becoming frustrated as an increasingly annoying in-game voice commentated on every little misstep I took. Perhaps that has something to do with the large amount of time I spent with NHL 11 over the past year. In any event, my predictions could not have been more wrong. The narrator is fantastic, and he really does a good job of adding some life to a world that is very much devoid of human life. Looking back on the time I spent with Bastion, I can honestly say that the game’s fun factor was enhanced greatly by the narrator, and I’m glad that Supergiant decided to take a leap of faith with the narration, because it paid off.
New Game Plus: We really need this feature in more games! I played through Bastion again as soon as I finished it the first time, and it was a blast both times. The game world has a series of idols that you can worship to in order to increase the difficulty in various ways (one idol makes enemies faster, another prevents them from ever dropping recovery items, and so forth), and so your experience with New Game Plus can be as easy or as difficult as you want it to be. Being able to continue with your already upgraded weapons was awesome, and the second play through encourages you to experiment with some different weapons once you get little bored with your fully-upgraded gear. New Game Plus is fantastic in almost all of its manifestations, and I want to see it done more often (I’m looking at you, Deus Ex: Human Revolution!).
Negatives
Aiming system: For some reason, Supergiant decided to abandon conventional wisdom, and they mapped the “fire” action to one of the controller’s face buttons. The problem with this is that aiming while shooting and moving becomes a frustrating exercise in finger contortion. The game has an auto aim system that works well most of the time, but every once in a while you’re going to want to manually aim at something, and doing so pretty much requires you to stop moving, take your left hand, and use that hand to manipulate the right analog stick while firing with your right hand. Just map that button to a trigger next time, yeah? They’re called “triggers” for a reason.
Some annoying challenges: The game has some pretty cool levels that basically test your skill with various weapons. Scoring high in these challenges grants you additional items that you can use to upgrade your gear. For the most part, these challenges are implemented well, but some of them are annoying beyond belief. One of them in particular has you trying to kill a bunch of really small flying creatures (and by “a bunch”, I mean about one-hundred) while they fly off the ledge where you can’t reach them. Oh, and you only have a melee weapon. You can throw that melee weapon, but you’ll hit about two or three of the creatures at best. And did I mention that you’re being timed?
Can’t move the camera: This one isn’t the end of the world, but it’s a pretty odd omission for a top-down action RPG. Considering that the environments are all hand-drawn, there’s a chance that they just couldn’t rotate the camera because the set-pieces were only drawn from one perspective, in which case I forgive them completely. It just seemed a little weird to me at first glance.
Automatically equipping new weapons: Some of the levels have you discovering new weapons. This would normally be fun and exciting, except for the fact that the weapons are always equipped automatically, taking up one of the slots that you had previously allocated for something else. It gets frustrating when you take your time carefully deciding which weapons you want to bring along (certain combinations compliment themselves more nicely than others), only to have your decision making thrown in the trash because the developers decided that you just had to experience that cool new weapon first hand.
It’s pretty rare for me to play through a game again as soon as I finish it the first time. In fact, the last time I did that was with Mass Effect 2, so Bastion is in some good company indeed. Oh, and this is also the first time that I’ve ever collected every single achievement for an Xbox 360 game, which I was pretty proud of myself for ;). The game is available for the Xbox 360 and the PC, so if you’re in the mood for a beautiful action RPG with a whole lot of personality, I suggest giving it a look.
