Bastion is beautiful

If you haven’t played Bastion yet, stop what you’re doing right now. Seriously. Drop it, and go play this beautiful downloadable game.

It is beautiful to look at, yes, certainly. The art style is a fusion of hand-painted watercolor and 16-bit styling, without looking dated or self-consciously retro. The world, which has been ripped apart by a mysterious disaster called only “the Calamity,” forms itself at your feet as you progress through each level; your home base (the titular Bastion) builds itself into a small town as you collect resources to build structures and rescue survivors. You are literally putting a shattered world back together piece by tiny piece.

But it is a beautiful story as well. The only dialogue comes in the form of a gravel-voiced narrator, who both tells the story and dynamically describes your actions as you play. The deceptively simply tale is told so elegantly, and carries such an emotional weight that most larger games couldn’t hope to achieve.

And the design of this game is incredibly tight. Every weapon, every upgrade you pick up feels important. This is not Call of Duty or Mass Effect, where there are 50 different flavors of SMG and finding a new weapon feels about as important as a plastic spork. No level, no enemy feels like superfluous fluff; everything is in service to the central design.

This is the first game I’ve ever played where I immediately began the “New Game +” mode immediately after finishing my first run. In fact, I rarely touch New Game + modes at all, let alone finish them, but this one I completed in a couple days. Bastion was clearly made with a great deal of love, and is a testament to what can be accomplished by a talented design team with a clear vision. You truly owe it to yourself to play this game; this is one of the gems of this generation, as important as Arkham City or BioShock. It goes on sale on Deal of the Week fairly often, but it’s more than worth the full 1200 MS points. It would be worth it at twice that price.

Seriously. Drop what you’re doing, and go play this right now.