-Nick Walker
Bastion
I have always
been a fan of action role-playing games (ARPG) because I love the
sense of flying around the screen, killing endless hoards of enemies
with little regard to what is going on in the game universe aside
from what loot is dropping. Funnily enough, I love Bastion
because it is the exact opposite of that. Bastion is a smart,
beautifully crafted game both visually and narratively. It's controls
are very responsive and sharp which is key to an ARPG. With the the
beautiful world that Supergiant Games has created in combination with
the stellar, top-down hack n' slash game play makes it a game that I
can easily recommend for anyone. If that does not convince you
however, read on, I'll elaborate.
Bastion
takes place in a strange world, a world that has been utterly
destroyed by a cataclysmic event called the Calamity. You play as The
Kid, one of only a handful of survivors of the Calamity, and you have
quite a knack for cracking skulls and causing mayhem. Your mission is
to restore the Bastion, a strange machine that needs to be
reassembled after the events of the Calamity that is promised by the
games narrator, Rucks, to restore the world to a time before the
Calamity happened.
As The Kid, you
need to go into this new, untamed land, and you grow an arsenal of
weaponry as you do so. You are able to have two weapons at a time and
are able to swap them out at the Bastion. That is not all that the
bastion is there for however. The Bastion also allows you to upgrade
weapons, buy various items, give yourself nifty power ups, pick up
challenges, and even alter the difficulty of the game itself through
giving yourself penalties or the enemies advantages for bonus
rewards. So with all that the Bastion gives you, you go out into the
world and go through the levels in whatever style fits you best, be
it with a lofty hammer and a swift machete, or a pointy spear and a
booming shotgun, or any of the other weapons that are in the game for
you to choose from. Any of the combinations are a blast to use, it's
just a matter of find the one that fits you best.
Hold on a
second, didn't I say that the world was destroyed a minute ago? Well
it is destroyed, shattered into tiny pieces in fact. That is one of
many interesting visual design decisions Bastion does in order
to immerse you into the world and give you a sense of the land you
have been thrust into. The ground pieces itself around you as you
move from area to area, pathways make themselves before you, and fall
apart behind you just as easily. This shifting environment blends
very will with the visual style of the game. The world has a very
colorful, almost painted aesthetic so the ground forming and
reforming almost resemble pieces of a puzzle being put together and
torn apart around you.
And what is the
glue that holds this game play experience together you may ask?
Rucks. The narrator of the game is phenomenal, every detail of the
world and your actions do not go unnoticed by Rucks. With a
spectacularly casted voice actor and amazing writing, Rucks carries
you from action sequence, to plot point, and right back into the
action seamlessly. Rucks is assisted by the game's beautiful
soundtrack which features many different genre's of music that all
fit the word you are in and what you are doing in the game. I highly
recommend picking up the sound track when you get the game, it is
that good. Never before have I played a game where narration and
soundtrack were so core to my experience. The game would stand well
by itself as a fun ARPG without the narrator, but the narrator is
what give Bastion it's soul and what carries the game's story
so well, simply through your surroundings and the voice of a grizzled
old man.
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