Bastion
Developer Supergiant Games Publisher Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment Format 360, iOS, PC, PS4, PS Vita, Switch, Xbox One Release 2011
As the Kid takes his first steps in the shattered world of Bastion, tiles rising out of the sky and ether to meet his feet, ragged curtains and broken columns lining the uncertain path ahead, there’s a meeting of sorts. Amid the confusion, clutter and brokenness of what’s before him, he finds “his lifelong friend just lying in the road. Well, it’s a touching reunion.”
The friend in this case is the Cael Hammer: a hefty weapon able to knock aside and flatten enemies. It’s a blunt instrument by definition, its haft about the length of the Kid himself, the weight of it ploughing into stone walls, wooden barrels and floating spectres alike. But it gets the job done.
That’s essentially the feeling we get upon picking up again, a full decade from its initial release. It’s an, and – but occasionally awkward in the hands, inevitably faltering when compared with the studio’s later, slicker output.
