Bastion

Bastion – Review

Published By: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Developed By: Supergiant Games, Genre: Action Role-Playing, Release Date: Jul 20 (Xbox 360), Aug 15, 2011 (PC), Rating: E10+, Systems: PC, Xbox 360.

Presentation: Led by narrator Logan Cunningham Bastion’s presentation oozes with style and substance. For this Gamer Blog article i played Bastion on PC via Steam. The only modifications i did to the game was raise the resolution up to 1680 x 1050 and anti aliasing to 4x. The game ran great. I played Bastion on normal difficulty for the review with a gamepad. The Xbox 360 gamepad worked wonderfully for this game. Bastion’s quality is throughout. You can pick any aspect of it whether its visuals, sound design, story, gameplay and content, Bastion is solid from top to bottom. My entire experience was flawless. No bugs, no glitches no freezes. The game ran great throughout its entirety. The atmosphere of Bastion is cool. Its a extremely cool game to play. I actually felt cool  playing it.

Story: Bastion stars “The Kid” as the narrator calls him. The Kid has white hair and swings a Cael Hammer and shoots with a Fang Repeater. The world was recently rocked by a science experiment gone horribly wrong. That experiement was called the Calamity and it wiped out practically all man kind. The Kid with the help of Rucks (the narrator) must hunt down Cores and Shards to build Bastion. Bastion is a special land that holds special powers along with many secrets including a way to reverse and prevent the Calamity from ever happening. Along the way The Kid rescues survivors in Zulf and Zia. Zulf ends up betraying The Kid and Rucks and kidnaps Zia. Zulf learns the truth of the treachery behind the Calamity after reading a rare diary. Zulf unites his people against The Kid which is another story angle in Bastion.

Visuals: The graphics in Bastion’s three quarters top down gameplay view setting popped out of my screen. The use of colors and imaginative art design was diverse and impressive. The cutscenes and character designs told a story within themselves. When you visit the Skyway and venture out into the many stages you witness great as well diverse artwork on each stage. The texture work and anti aliasing really shined on my PC. Bastion truly is a goodlooking little arcade game.

Sound: The proactive/reactive narrating done by Logan Cunningham was superb and added a cool vibe to Bastion’s already cool presentation. The music throughout was supurb. There was not a single moment during my plathrough where i wanted to turn the volume down. The music coupled with the reactive voice narrating gave Bastion a great atmosphere while fighting Gasfellas and Scumbags.

Gameplay: Bastion’s gameplay is standard action-RPG fare. You hack’ n slash, roll to evade, use range weapons and melee weapons to get the job done. You collect XP for defeating enemies and level bosses. Much of Bastion’s gameplay  is centered around rebuilding specialty shops within Bastion. As you build the Bastion you can unlock the Forge where you can upgrade weapons. The Distillery lets you assign a special ability to a slot. You unlock slots as you level up. You can move and switch special abilities anytime when your in the Distillery. The Arsenal lets you choose a long range and melee weapon. It also lets you assign special attacks in one slot that consumes Black Tonics. Special attacks come in the form of Hand Grenades, Whirl Wind and Mirror Shield.

You can build a Shrine in Bastion which pays respect to the Gods. But what is cool about the Shrine is that as you collect idols of Gods while out hunting for Cores and Shards. You can bring those back and set them in the Shrine to activate gameplay modifiers. Think of Halo Skulls. You can activate a God Idol and the entire gameplay of Bastion will slightly change in some aspect making it more difficult. The first idol i collected was the Pyth bull. When you build the Lost and Found in Bastion its  basically a general store. Here you can buy materials to modify all of your weapons.

You can also purchase Mementos and Spirits at the Lost and Found. The currency in Bastion are fragments. They are little blue shards that appear when you defeat enemies. You can also destroy objects and parts of the environment to get fragments as well. The Bastion is the main hub in this game clearly. Over time as you rebuild it and ask Rucks, Zulf and Zia questions about items, you add them to Bastion. Not only as decorations but as potential gameplay sequences like Zulf’s pipe for example. You can add a baby Squirt a baby Ankle Gator, a mailbox and Pyth statues.

Combat in Bastion is great. Countering, blocking and evading just adds the iceing on Bastion’s gameplay cake. Weapons i collected in Bastion: Cael Hammer, Fang Repeater, Breaker’s Bow, War Machete, Rusty Musket, Duel Pistols, Army Carbine, Galleon Mortar and Fire Bellows. But wait! The most powerful and my favorite weapons come at or near the end of the game in the Calamity Cannon and Battering Ram. The Battering Ram is such a powerful weapon that you have to choose to help Zulf and leave the weopon or keep the weapon and leave Zulf behind. I left Zulf behind. On a side note there are a few times near the end of Bastion where you have to make gameplay decisions. What’s most important is that the gameplay in Bastion felt visceral. Its fun and addicting. The enemies are diverse and bosses like Queen Ann provided challenge.

Replayability: Bastion’s stellar campaign lasts a good five hours. After you beat the game you can play New Game Plus and Score Attack Mode. You can also activate idols in the Shrine for more variety. If you’re an achievement hunter you can clean up on those as well. Bastion has no co-op or multiplayer which it doesn’t need since the game is primo as is.

Final Verdict: Bastion is a great action-RPG thats big but is wrapped up in a small arcade package. I tried to nitpick this game to see if it had many glaring faults, it doesn’t. Its as quality as quality gets in regards to videogames. Thanks for reading.

8.5/10

Bastion – Early Impressions

Bastion is a action role-playing game that took the gaming industry by surprise last year. Gorgeous visual artstyle along with its real-time voiced narrating just oozed of coolness. After putting in a few hours into a Steam copy of Bastion one thing is for certain and that is, Bastion is one slick game! Supergiant Games are the publishers to this stylish RPG while Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment the publishers. Bastion originally released on the Xbox 360 first (Jul 20, 2011) and then on PC (Aug 16, 2011). Like i alluded to above, i am playing through Bastion on my PC via Steam.

The main menu screen shows Story, Help & Options, Leaderboards, About Us and Exit Game. i immediately went into the options and changed some graphical settings. I also plugged in my Xbox 360 gamepad: A-evade, B-attack 1, X-attack 2, RT-secret skill, LT-defend, Y-heal, X-use/interact, RS-reload, Back-open pack, LB-Next target and RB-prev target. The Xbox 360 gamepad works flawlessly with Bastion on the PC. It didn’t take me long before i was  evading, shooting arrows and activating my special skill seamlessly. The controls are responsive and gameplay rewarding for this indie arcade RPG.

I changed my PC settings around to fit my hardware (4870, Quad Core and 6 gigs DDR3 RAM). I cranked up the resolution to 1680 x 1050, Anti Aliasing 4x. The game performed and looked great. The art in Bastion pops out of the screen as you traverse the three quarter top down view world. I choose Normal Mode for my difficulty. I could have went the easier route of No Sweat Mode but why do that? As far as the story goes its sketchy early on. However “The Kid” is the protagonist while “The Stranger” who sounds like a dead ringer for Shaft is famous for his in-game voice narrating and is useful when asking questions.

The Kid is on a quest to rebuild Bastion piece by piece. He does that by collecting Cores found in the Skyway. The Skyway is a overmap and shows all of the areas to collect Cores and complete Proving Grounds missions. You will unlock more areas as you collect Cores.  Where you already collected a Core the Skyway will show a dark island. Proving Grounds are also on the Skyway world map. Here you can win special items when you complete specific weapon challenges. I completed the Breaker Bow challenge and won some string to upgrade my Bow with. Bastion is a RPG albeit it a mild one. You gain XP that can be used to upgrade and add to The Kid’s special skills via the Distillery.

The Armory is the place where The Kid can either store his weapons or choose which weapons he wants to carry. At the Forge you can upgrade your weapons by collecting or winning items found while hunting down Cores or completing Proving Ground missions. There seems to be a good selection of weapons and magic to use in Bastion. Every weapon has its own unique upgrade abilities and all of the special skills are unique and effective in combat. I’m currently using the upgraded Cael Hammer, upgraded Breaker Bow and the Mirror Shield special skill.

When you choose which Core to pursue you find that the missions are varied. Some require you to fight waves of enemies like Gershel and his Scumbags, Gasfellas and Squirts. Other times you have to fight a boss to retrieve the Core. As you find Cores and put them into the Monument Bastion grows stronger at which time you can contruct your own Forge, Distillery and Armory stations. You will gain XP and on occasion run into interesting NPCs to talk to. You will always gain XP and find unique artifacts and upgrade materials when out Core searching. Bastion is a solid game all around and it really has no glaring weaknesses early on.

The gameplay is solid hack n slash where using range weapons and your shield are important. The special skills use up Black Tonics so i used them only when i needed to. Bastion is fun and engaging as far as gameplay goes. Bastion’s greatest strength is its presentation. Its a cool game. The music, visuals and in-game voice narration reaks of coolness. I really enjoy this game’s atmosphere. I could type all day about Bastion but i am purposely gonna cut it off here so i can beat the game and review it soon. So expect my full review of Bastion in the near future. Thanks for reading.