I just played... Transistor

 A sword that is not a sword, with an awesome voice.

                I seem to be following my trend of existential sci-fi even when I don’t go around looking to do so. I am an existential person but I do like to go about occasionally experiencing something rather life-affirming, though a whole lot of the life affirming works plaguing me these days makes me want to do a root canal on myself using a buzz saw, but I suppose I can’t help the world. As the world buckles and heaves out yet another vampire-teenager-supernatural oestrogen centric work, I do turn around and enjoy showing these sci-fi works a fair bit more love, though I’d probably withhold on showing them such love considering that it is not love they are looking for.
So I suppose my existential despair could be considered to be an expression of my admiration for these works, though the pickle for me is that this despair is independent of these works, which makes things a bit paradoxical and difficult to follow; which is another way of expressing admiration for these works, I suppose.

                Want to know how to get your indie game on everyone’s radar? Morgan Freeman’s voice! But if you can’t get him then you can get someone who sounds like a cowboy variant of him named Logan Cunningham, whose name is now synonymous with Freeman’s in my list of ‘people I’d like to have narrate my life’. Bastion was quite something, which made people conclude that SuperGiantGames is quite something and to expect their next game to be quite something. Well, now their next game, Transistor, is here and it is quite something. If I managed quite something quite a few more times in this passage then it would have been quite something. Quite something really.

                Transistor is cut from the same cloth as Bastion, in the fact that it is a top-down isometric action game, but there quite a few other cloths involved in the mix. While Bastion was cut from the fantasy cloth, Transistor is cut from the Sci-fi cloth (cyberpunk, specifically) and also has some bits from cloths such as turn-based tactics among other things. It’s really similar to Bastion on several fronts, yet different enough to take a life of its own, with the similarities just being enough to make the games ‘similar’ but not the ‘same’, and perhaps similar enough to package them into an unconnected series (such as ‘The End’ series, or the Logan Cunningham series).

Red is quite the singer. 

                In Transistor you play as Red, a singer who just lost her voice to an attack and now wields the titular Transistor as she tries to simultaneously deliver vengeance, weed out conspiracies and survive attacks from ‘the Process’, all of which is accompanied by Logan Cunningham who is now less of a narrator, more of a commentator and is the voice of the titular weapon, or rather a voice. Which is perhaps an interesting way of looking at the narrative: Cunningham’s character is actively present in the scene, narrating events as they happen as opposed to Rucks, who narrated from an omniscient distance (this causes me to believe, following Logan’s evolutionary trends that he is going to be the main character in their next game). `

A whole lot of customisation.

                Instead of having a variety of weapons to choose from, or any weapon for that matter, Transistor has a long list of abilities to choose from (called Functions) and a highly limited skill bar. Additionally, you can augment skills with other skills as well as use some skills to passively augment yourself, which leads to a truck-load of customisation and thus, play style options to an almost dizzying degree. The ‘almost’ exists despite the dizzying numbers because some skills and combinations are just flat-out ridiculously better than others, and some are flat-out broken. Though a smart integration of story and gameplay exists in the fact that you can unlock a great deal of lore and backstory to the characters and the world by using different combinations, which promotes changing things up rather often, just to learn more about the world.

Each ability is a person with his/her story. 

News terminals sprinkled about help add to the world's lore.

                And a pretty pretty world it is, one that could perhaps be described almost like a cross between a Final Fantasy and Deus Ex, and that doesn’t truly to it justice. It is its own beast, its own confusing beast considering the existential nature of the city, Cloudbank, itself. An ever-changing canvas for the people where fashion, politics, the media and innocently malevolent system co-exist and intersect.

                As with Bastion, the story is one of the most important elements of the game and thus the less I talk about it, the better it is for you.

Turn( ) lets you pause the game and plan out some near-instant actions. 

                The game can be played as hack-and-slash similar to Bastion, with each ability being akin to a weapon, but you have the ability to pause time and plan out your actions (called Turn), which are then performed at hyper-speed while your enemies continue about slowly. The two systems work well, though being reliant on Turn generally involves using it and then running away from enemies while it is on cooldown. Additionally, you don’t die when you run out of health, but overload and lose one ability… though it’s game over once you overload your last ability which leads to some interesting ways to customise, where you could sacrifice ‘lives’ in order to load a great deal of power into only one or two abilities.

Sometimes, when you're being overwhelmed Turn ( ) is your best friend. 

                Enemies generally have their gimmicks for you to deal with, which adds a bit of another layer to the interaction between your enemies and your skill set. In one set you might have the ability to pull enemies from afar and till critical damage to them quickly, thus you can use it to quickly dispatch enemies who shield other enemies, or in another set you could temporarily turn those enemies to your side and be shielded by them. Unfortunately, while the game has plenty of steam it does taper off a bit near the end, where you end up having to fight several gauntlets of the same enemy type, which is a tad disappointing.

                The pacing of the story can feel rather off too, since the scale of things and overall grimness of the situation racks up rather quickly, to the extent that I felt a bit perplexed at how, well… quickly things escalated. Some might wish that the story gave you more matter to chew on, which is understandable since a truck-load of details and elements are left thoroughly ambiguous, and how much this aggravates you will likely be directly related to how much of ambiguousness you can stand. Personally, I tend to be rather fond of things that are left ambiguous, like the gender of a puppy or whether the world will end in fire or ice, and I did rather like the fact that the overall ambiguousness goes beyond the obviously ambiguous elements and seems to enter this meta frame of existence, which is rather interesting. The ambiguity of the game is ambiguous.

                Much like Bastion, Transistor isn’t very long and both fall into that length category where they leave you wanting more, but gave you just enough to keep you satisfied. Much like a fine meal that has you, napkin in hand, dabbing at your mouth, thoroughly enthralled by what you just ate, but wishing there was some more to indulge yourself into… but you’ve had your fill.

Limiters replace Bastion's Shrines as the game's difficulty selection. 

                Also much like Bastion is the fact that the soundtrack is thoroughly, horrifyingly phenomenal, with Darren Korb really showing that Bastion wasn’t a one-off lucky run, as his fusions and medleys continue to be incredibly unique and worthy of awards, many of them.

                All in all, with Transistor SuperGiantGames is now one more game away from entering the echelons of ‘could do no wrong’ which is quite the barren place, unfortunately.