Eventually I grew tired of the frustration of Braid. Frustrated enough 
to actually give up on trying to finish it. Whatever lays at the end - 
if anything - isn't worth the cost of buying a new monitor because I've 
put my fist through the current one.

That being the case, I bought Bastion. (Working through the alphabet here.)



just under 1GB. (Again peanuts compared to the triple-A titles.)

Unlike Braid, I just can't stop playing this. It's really entertaining. 
It's difficult to explain... OK, start by watching this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TptJHeWngJs

Now you know what the art style is like. Which is good, because I have 
no idea what kind of adjectives you'd use to describe it. The game 
describes itself as "100% hand-painted, scanned in 1080i HD". To be 
sure, on my monitor it looks very crisp indeed. The lines are sharp, the 
colours are rich, and the main character animation is very, very fluid.

There's one small issue with this game. It doesn't make sense. It's a 
bit like if you picked up a copy of The Hobbit and opened it on chapter 
15. You wouldn't be able to make any sense out of it. Bits and pieces 
would make sense, but you'd still be mighty confused. That's what this 
game is like.

Basically, you wake up lying in a bed, in a room floating in empty 
space. As you walk to the door, rocks appear out of thin air and fly up 
to form a walkway in front of you. For reasons unknown, THE ENTIRE GAME 
plays like this. Everywhere you go, you're walking on floating platforms 
in space, which materialise as you walk towards them.

So basically, this is your standard isometric platformer. You beat up 
bad guys, collect powerups, earn "XP" (whatever that is), find money, 
buy stuff at shops, customise your loadout, etc. The usual deal.

The unusual thing is the vibrant graphics and fluid animation. Also, if 
you've watched the trailer above, you've heard The Narrator. He talks to 
you during the entire course of the game. Almost everything you do, he 
says lines of dialogue for.

Usually when games do this, that just means that the narration states 
the obvious, or states something which doesn't /quite/ match what you 
just did. (E.g., the narrator says "he waits patently for the lift" when 
actually you're walking around getting bored.) This game somehow manages 
to utter /correct/ lines of dialogue for EVERY SINGLE ACTION. It's 
really quite amazing. Sure, it doesn't "really" change the actual 
gameplay in any way. And some people might find the Old West accent 
cheesy. But personally I really like it.

Also, this is one of those games that has a story deeper than a teacup. 
Which makes it all the more frustrating that it doesn't make sense yet. 
I don't know if it ever will start making sense, or whether I'd have to 
go a bazillion side-quests for that.

Also, one or two aspects of the gameplay aren't explained real well. 
Like, it took me 15 minutes to realise that you can use the mouse to do 
things, it's not just keyboard-controlled. (Unfortunately, various 
messages about how you can use controls flash past far too fast to 
read.) It took me about 30 minutes to get used to using keyboard /and/ 
mouse at the same time. But I think I'm good with it now.

I don't know how big the game actually is, but I spent about 7 hours 
playing it yesterday and I don't /think/ I'm anywhere near the end yet 
(though I can't really tell).

In summary:
- Appears to be quite large. Certainly 7 hours of intense playtime 
didn't exhaust it.
- Holds out the promise (as yet unrealised) of an interesting story 
that's going to start making sense any time soon now.
- Lush visuals.
- Effective and varied music.
- Impressive (though arguably unnecessary) narration.
- Wide range of locations and enemies.
- More powerups, collectables, items, configurations, etc. than you 
could possibly get bored with.

It's not the most amazing game I've ever played in my life, but if you 

get home tonight and play more of it.

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