Bastion is a beautiful, outstanding piece of audiovisual artwork whose stylistic and thematic influences offer a bold, slickly appealing approach to an aesthetic that has rarely been utilised so effectively. It’s an outstanding debut from a team that’s clearly full of spectacularly talented people whose creative visions have coalesced into something truly memorable that just happens to have the unfortunate downside of not being a very fun or interesting game.
It’s about a civilisation in the sky, one which is wracked by a nebulous ‘calamity’ that kills the bulk of the population and destroys most of the city, leaving shifting, unreliable platforms comprised of the remnants of streets, gardens, and shops. As ‘the kid’ we’re instructed by the ever-present narrator, Rucks, to collect various crystals which, when plugged into a magical monument, can create stretches of land and restore the city. To this end, we walk around on platforms that create themselves as we go, swapping back and forth between a surprisingly large variety of typically mediocre weapons that do little to shake up the stagnant, repetitive gameplay. A fair chunk of my issues with Bastion come down to what it is: a twin-stick shooter where you can only use one stick and the game automatically targets the closest enemy when you fire. As such, it’s a game about walking away from enemies while the game shoots them for you. There’s little reason to time your shots or reloads, and most of the challenge comes from waiting for an opening in the storm of enemy fire for an opportunity to quickly hop out behind your shield and blindly fire, hoping that the game targets one of the enemies shooting you and not a passing seagull that’s minding its own business.
Playing the game is a frustrating and generally shitty experience that I wish I could recommend purely on the basis of the fantastic visuals and soundtrack. It oozes creativity in every area except the gameplay. The voice acting is crisp, quick, and snappy. The story strikes a perfect balance between poignant, emotion-driven moments and quirky, understated world-building. The soundtrack would make any video game composer who ever lived curl up in a ball and cry. Everything’s here except the fun, which is, unfortunately for Bastion, the defining element of whether or not a video game is actually worth playing.
Dylan's Morsels 