Transistor

[Shrinweck]

Anyone else picking this game when it launches in a few days? I've been following it since it announced and pre-ordered it on Steam when I noticed it was available. Looks pretty sweet. I like the mechanics a lot more in this game. It's kind of like Bastion if your hp was dramatically reduced and to compensate you were given a planning phase that froze the game and let you execute bitchin' attacks every ~5 seconds.

Simultaneous PS4/PC release. Nice to see PC get a little love. Bastion took several months to see a PC release.

New launch trailer:


Gameplay footage - fast forward a few minutes in to skip the non-gameplay part:

[Eric]

Of course I am! Bastion was fun as hell.

[Shrinweck]

I was a little nervous about pre-ordering, especially since there wasn't really any reason to (no freebies). Some of the naysayers were making me feel a little nervous about the mechanics but I watched a few minutes of the gameplay footage and it assured me that it'll be fun. Can't wait to see what these guys have for us after such a strong first showing with Bastion.

Since the protagonist is a singer, I'm hoping there's more of a focus on vocals in this soundtrack. The vocal songs on Bastion were my favorite but there were only three and one of those was basically just an (amazing) amalgamation of the other two.

[Shrinweck]

Game is fun. PC Gamer review (80%) said that the story doesn't pay off the same way Bastion did but I suppose that's to be expected. Bastion was an achievement in storytelling. I'm not that far enough into the story yet to draw conclusions on themes, but there's a chance that the story being shallow isn't an accident.

In any case the combat is great and experimenting with the numerous functions for each little ability is a blast. In fact, experimentation in slots rewards you with story tidbits. A neat idea.

I'm going to guess that like Bastion, the devs will release (free) little DLCs that expand on ideas and possibly give more of the story.

I got a foil Steam trading card that sold for $5.95 in, like, thirty seconds. Good deal for me. Always nice to have a little padding in the Steam wallet. Only the second foil card I've ever gotten, but since this game is brand new this foil card sold for over three times what my other one did.

[kali o.]

I don't use steam (if I can avoid it) so my option is the PS4. Haven't checked, but I heard it was $20.

...that's the only reason I am hesitating. If it was $10-15, I could do it for a 5 hour game.

Sure...$5 bucks is the cost of one of my daily 3 Americanos...but it's a principle thing, I guess.

[Shrinweck]

Yeah I get it but I liked Bastion enough to buy it twice (360, Steam) and I liked the cut of this game's jib in the previews. Plus this game and Bastion are both worth playing through 2-3 times just for the sake of properly understanding the story and noticing foreshadowing and whatnot. That said I have a dozen $20 games in my Steam wishlist right now waiting for them to fall to $5-$10 - if I didn't like Bastion as much I do, this game would have joined them. On the bright side, after selling the Foil trading card and the two normal trading cards that 'dropped', I basically got this game for $13.50.

Any way, I just beat it and I can see why PC Gamer said the story wasn't really as deep as Bastion, but if you considered Bastion to be at nine out of ten, then this is probably a strong eight out of ten. It's difficult getting into the why the story isn't as good... It's definitely moving, but the characters don't stay with you. There just aren't any deep characters like Zulf. The people in the game all have reasons for what they do, and they're fleshed out fairly well (or not at all, if you're not the top of gamer to listen to audio clips or read a couple paragraphs here and there), but even the protagonist falls fairly flat. It's a good A to B to C to D story. It's also one of the most beautiful games I've ever played. The art in the game is definitely some of the best I've ever seen and definitely borrows from Portal here and there. The soundtrack is fantastic, but unlike Bastion I don't think there are any songs that I'm going to be listening to in the years to come (maybe 1-2[edit:Revising this to 3-4]). Still, the music fits each scene and enhances the experience, you really can't ask for more. One of the better songs even brings in some of the electronic tones from Portal.

The star of the show is definitely the combat and experimenting with the Transistor's (the big sword) functions.

Also worth mentioning is this game has a very active community manager on the Steam community forum for Transistor and basically says all the things you want a representative to say for a gaming developer. While the game isn't as good as Bastion, it's still high quality. Supergiant is one of the few game companies that I will consider pre-ordering from in the future.

[Shrinweck]

Edit: Well.. I meant to make this post in another thread entirely so now that I've noticed this post I'll turn it into something on topic... I just played through this again and it was still quite fun for most of it. Once you settle with certain skills and you stop experimenting the game loses some of its sheen, which happened to me 75% of the way through my second go around. Still a good game. I take back what I said about the soundtrack. There are five songs with vocals and they're all quite good in a sense that they transcend what you'd typically find in a video game and could stand on their own. Still nothing particularly grabbing in the instrumentals though, unlike Bastion.

The ending still makes me feel like the game is missing something, but this time around I'm less inclined to blame

Spoiler: show

Red for being weak for killing herself to be with him and more inclined to say that her boyfriend/fiance/husband is a really shitty significant other. He basically cajoles her into it with the I love yous and the "I really want to see you again, face-to-face." I'm mostly kidding here... But, still, I think what makes this ending really great and really shitty is that tragic romance is basically never something that gets executed as video game protagonists go... Sure there's the revenge fantasy of killing the people who killed the person you love that's used fairly often, but it has never been dealt with like this. Also of interest is that Red never kills anyone that isn't trying to kill her, which is pretty cool as a video game concept.

[SineSwiper]

Just finished my 2nd playthrough. The game is pretty stunning, especially for a small studio like theirs. Darren Korb does another excellent soundtrack, though besides Old Friends, there weren't as many outstanding songs as the Bastion. Still, that and the game is like going from a A+ to a B+. It's still really good and worth the money. (And this is coming from somebody who always waits for the Steam sales first.)

It was also pretty groundbreaking to have an strong independent woman as the lead, as well as a gay couple as important characters. If you looked closely, they even threw in a transsexual in the story.

Responding to Shrinweck:

Spoiler: show

I sort of had that reaction at first, like I had gotten the "bad" ending. But, it was a situation where all of the other options had already been explored. Red could re-invent the town, but it was just buildings. The people were gone. She even tried to bring back Blue (or whatever his name was), but it was only an empty shell. At that point, she realized that the only way she could have any sense of normalcy, and to see him again, was to enter the Transistor.

Royce would have been satisfied creating a town without people. I wouldn't call him even a sociopath, just detached. He was a workaholic. He cared about his friend Grant, but he would be able to move on easily. Just like how the group is able to accept taking people's souls into the Process. It was part of a greater goal of saving the town from its own people. Even Blue accepted that the Camerata had the town's best interest in mind, but they got too greedy and too powerful.

Even though the ending looked bad, it wasn't as "suicidal" as it appeared. Throughout the game, people refer to The Country as their concept of heaven. Except that The Country actually exists as a construct within the Transistor. All of the people that were absorbed are probably still living in there. Heck, maybe the entire town, as we don't know exactly how the Process deals with them and how that connects to the Transistor. (When you die, the Continue screen shows Red standing in The Country.)