Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: Bastion: Pretty, Sub-Braid-level Story

[quote name="mark"]Apparently if you have sort of a faux-oil paint look to a game, you must also have a ridiculous, nonsensical plot involving time-travel, ethnic cleansing, and something resembling a nuclear holocaust. Actually, I can't remember if Braid featured ethnic cleansing or not, but Jonathan Blow does have a shaved head, so I'll call it even. The narration mechanism and art direction are cool and revelatory, but the words uttered by the narrator are usually just embarrassing tough-guy/folksy cliches. Apparently it was written by a Videogame Journalist, so this is easily explained. The actual gameplay is mostly okay. All the variation is in the different weapons that you can acquire. In true action RPG tradition, about four are actually useful. The enemies are samey (various kinds of turrets and melee-oriented heavies) and extremely easy by default. The game allows you, with great granularity, to increase their difficulty for greater rewards. This is clever, but I didn't fiddle with it enough to see how well it works, or if it adds real re-playability. A decent, pretend-indie game that is trading itself on a few artistic novelties. That's something, at least.[/quote]