By Jim Rossignol on July 19th, 2011 at 8:58 am.
Awesome-looking (and even better sounding) esoteric action-RPG Bastion has arrived on the console boxes this week, but should also making its way to PC soon. Supergiant told us that the PC version has no set release date yet and explained: “We’re still sorting out the controls and making a few other changes to make sure the PC version feels like a proper PC game.”
You can check out the trailer below, and read my hands-on impressions of the PC version of the game.
19/07/2011 at 09:10 Jams O'Donnell says:
I’ve been excited about this since Jim first mentioned it this Spring — it really does look lovely, and if the narration works anywhere near as well as it appears to in the preview videos it’ll be something special.
I’ve been eagerly awaiting consolebox reviews to see if it’s going to live up to my hopes.
19/07/2011 at 19:23 Mac says:
8/10 on Eurogamer if that helps
19/07/2011 at 09:20 Pemptus says:
It’s strange to see an anime-looking game not being narrated by someone who sounds like a teenager. I like it.
19/07/2011 at 10:30 Rii says:
Yeah, it’s very dissonant.
19/07/2011 at 11:51 poop says:
reminds me of something suda51 would do, even if the game doesnt look very suda at all
19/07/2011 at 09:33 kuran says:
The in-game sprite/model looks so dopey and buff, completely different from the same character in the 2D art besides the hair color.. how come?
Combat animations seem mostly awkward, but environments look good…
19/07/2011 at 09:39 Tom De Roeck says:
Is it a coincidence that it has the same name as The Never Ending Story main character?
Or is it more as in “fortress” ?
Also, heimdall vibe.
19/07/2011 at 10:00 Anthile says:
What? His name was Bastian.
19/07/2011 at 10:03 Tom De Roeck says:
Yeah, I remember that after I wrote it, but I didnt want to go back and edit a second time.
19/07/2011 at 10:19 Tuan says:
I think you mean you didn’t want to edit it a first time… teehee.
19/07/2011 at 11:21 Tom De Roeck says:
No.. I did edit it once. To add the heimdall comment.
19/07/2011 at 11:27 Choca says:
The “Bastion” of the title is actually a place, it seemed to me that it was pretty much the hub of the game.
19/07/2011 at 10:08 Anthile says:
Reminds me of Septerra Core, for some reason.
19/07/2011 at 10:22 JKjoker says:
nice, someone needs to slap Obsidian with that trailer, with 30 seconds of footage it shows more gameplay and enemy variation than the entire Dungeon siege 3, and im even more interesting in that simple story (with surprisingly cool voice overs and music) than that crap about the
Jediserr “Legionaries”19/07/2011 at 11:07 The Sentinel says:
Game promotion (and game development, by the sounds of it) done right? Asbolutely not, by God! I demand the continuing right to complain about my games being built and presented in ways that anger/confuse/demean me!
19/07/2011 at 11:11 The Sentinel says:
This looks fantastic. Duly added to Games Purchasing Hotlist. :)
19/07/2011 at 12:55 noodlecake says:
It looks awesome! Why not just release it with naffy controls but XBox 360 controller support then patch it later like they did with Dungeon Seige III? By the lucks of it a 360 controller would be more ideal for a game like this anyway. Sure, some people will moan but fuck ‘em! I want this game.
19/07/2011 at 16:31 HilariousCow says:
I tend to agree with this.
It’s possible to get separate PC and console controls working well for a particular game, but that particular game is in a fairly slim intersection.
As soon as an interface is at all different, you’re playing to different strengths and weaknesses. If you only play to the common strengths between interfaces, there’s often not a lot of room left to play in.
So yeah, if a game is designed with an interface in mind, I’d rather use it with that, even if it’s pseudo alien to the platform.
19/07/2011 at 13:31 Marijn says:
Fantastic (and first?) review on Kill Screen: http://killscreendaily.com/articles/reviews/review-bastion.
Because I want to play this game as soon as it comes out, I’m going to camp out in front of my own tv.
19/07/2011 at 21:41 Urthman says:
Another extremely positive article from Tom Chick if you’d like to feel even more hyped about this game:
http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2011/07/19/15-things-videogames-can-learn-from-bastion/
19/07/2011 at 23:09 Marijn says:
Thanks Urthman! I keep forgetting to add Chick to my bookmarks, an oversight I will immediately rectify.
19/07/2011 at 13:41 yurusei says:
So when not blasting the Zerg to bits, Tychus Findlay does narrative voice overs.
19/07/2011 at 15:23 Sidorovich says:
Voiceover man sounds like he wants to be in a Western, not this cutsie anime world.
19/07/2011 at 16:48 TsunamiWombat says:
Voiceover man sounds like Afro Samurai to me.
Honestly though, his voice is pure sex.
19/07/2011 at 13:47 Teddy Leach says:
Animated blood is so mainstream. I want inanimate blood.
19/07/2011 at 14:21 cosmicolor says:
It looks very pretty indeed. From that KS review I do like the sound of raising the stakes, so it says, to get more experience. Is there any form of character development in this though, or is it a Zelda-alike where it’s all equipment?
19/07/2011 at 15:40 Frapple says:
Always annoys me when an action RPG comes out & I can’t play it in co-op.
Usually just play it once for a couple of hours & never load it up again.
19/07/2011 at 16:05 Zaxwerks says:
“We’re still sorting out the controls and making a few other changes to make sure the PC version feels like a proper PC game.” – Tish and pish I say to such things, these people need to learn from the big software behemoths who don’t bother with such piddling little things when performing a console port. Oh how I am filled with warm and fuzzy feelings of having to dislocate 3 fingers, use 2 toes, my nose and my left testicle in order to move and fire whilst playing “Lara Croft and The Guardian of Light” with a mouse and keyboard.
19/07/2011 at 18:05 Dominic White says:
Don’t blame the developers. Mouse and keyboard is a pretty crappy control setup for a lot of things. Gamepads are designed for gaming. The mouse is a two-axis pointer device and the keyboard is scarcely evolved over the typewriter.
19/07/2011 at 23:33 Thants says:
Then why does almost every game control better with a mouse and keyboard? Except for when developers specifically screw it up, anyway.
19/07/2011 at 18:01 Urthman says:
That’s disappointing. The writing in that trailer, while still not bad, is about three giant steps down from the writing in their first trailer:
http://youtu.be/mX48y24t9iU
The music in the earlier trailer is a lot better too. I really, really hope the game sounds more like the older trailer than this new one.
19/07/2011 at 18:10 Dominic White says:
Here’s hoping they don’t go too far in PC’izing the game. Ever notice that Valve stripped out split-screen support from Portal 2 and both Left 4 Dead games on PC? You can bodge it via console commands and ini files, but there’s no reason why you should have to.
Bioshock 2 on PC has no gamepad support, for fucks sake! Apparently they can’t figure out how to support both mouse and gamepad at the same time, because PCs are sooooooo hard.
19/07/2011 at 19:33 Veracity says:
Is the “repairing” like Dark Cloud/Chronicle, at all? I like games that do that, whatever exactly that is. Town planning to give you advantages when you go off to kill/collect/photograph/crazy golf more. Recettear’s very vaguely similar, come to think of it.
20/07/2011 at 16:33 johnpeat says:
Gave the demo of this a whirl on 360 today and whilst it’s a fairly stock/solid action rpg (you have shield, melee, ranged and a special ability) the presentation – ESPECIALLY the voice work – is astonishing…
Having someone narrate what you’re doing as you’re doing it is really cool – the writing is solid too – at least as far as the demo goes.
I’m swamped with stuff I need to play so it won’t get my cash just yet – it’s quite a detailed world and I think it might work better on PC anyway – but it really is a thing of utter beauty
It does kinda feel ‘right with a controller tho – it’s a shoot/dodge/shoot/hit/dodge/repeat sort of game and they don’t, generally, work as well with keys/mouse IMO
20/07/2011 at 20:46 Krayy says:
I hope the heck Shawn Mullins got some cash out of them for their homage to ‘Lullaby’ on the voiceover…Everythings going to be alright, Bas-ti-on, Bas-ti-on.