Friday 15 June 2012

Completed: Bastion


Bastion is an action RPG by Supergiant Games with a unique twist. Narration. Bastion completely and utterly nails narration, the entire game is narrated by a character called The Stranger. From the very opening of the game he narrates what is happening and provides background information about the world and what has happened.

The narration is not just these background details though, as you can see from the video it includes comments on your actions, any time you change your weapons selection or skill selection the narrator talks about the combination, he gives details on weapons, challenges and just helps you feel like you are a part of the world.

The game does interesting things with weapons as well. The loot is pretty much fixed, there are no random weapons or weapon modifiers, so they put a fair amount of effort into making each of the weapons feel and work differently. The mortar and musket are completely different weapons and are useful in entirely different circumstances. All weapons are upgradable up to 5 times during the course of the game with each upgrade being a choice allowing you to further tailer a weapon to its weapon to your play style. I spent a lot of time using the breaker bow because it lets you shoot through things, but towards the end of the game I started using a pair of pistols and the cannon as my primary gear load out.

Otherwise I don't think anything particularly shines about the actual gameplay of Bastion, it is a competent ARPG and that is all it needs to be, because with the amazing narration and the story I think that Bastion will pull most people in and leave them wanting to finish the game at least once.


Games list at time of post: 396 unfinished titles
Changes since previous post: Finished 5 titles, added 6   

1 comment:

  1. Heavily agreed, the voiceover is extremely well done and is the thing driving me through the game. The actual gameplay is fairly middle-of-the-road, but atmosphere counts for a lot and Bastion has it in spades :).

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