Find out what games of 2011 best represented the current consoles on the market.
Video games don't get much better than Bastion, PixlBit's downloadable game of the year. A desolate, lonely world sets a scene where a powerful narrative driven by the player's actions allows a complete story to unfold. Bastion isn't just a game. It's an experience that could only be expressed through a video game, one artfully constructed by SuperGiant Games.
Set in the world of Caelondia, The Kid embarks on a quest to revive his town, his friends, and even his enemies from disaster. Along the way, Rucks (voiced by Logan Cunningham) tells The Kid's tale as we make it happen, a story-telling method which offers an unrivaled impression of immersion.
In Bastion's favor, the game has a unique difficulty system to ramp up challenge in later plays, while not growing cheap and unfair. With several weapons and branching upgrades, outfitting The Kid to take on the wilderness and its enemies feels like a fresh undertaking each and every time. Bastion has earned its place as the best downloadable title this year, and easily stands among the best titles of any platform of the generation.
Though not a genre Housemarque is typically known for, the team managed to pull together an absolutely enthralling and unique action platformer title in Outland. Forcing players to utilize a wide variety of skills, including platforming and sword fighting, Outland is challenging even without its signature mechanic. Work in the color shift mechanics and you're presented with a game that is so much more than a simple 2D action platformer.
In order to successfully work through the world, players will need to constantly shift between red and blue to both avoid projectiles and attack enemies. On a frequent basis the game forces precision platforming, enemy avoidance, and color shifting all at the same time. It's a challenge to say the least, but one that is so often rewarding, it easily propels Outland to the runner up position for Downloadable Game of the Year.
Wow. I completely agree with this one. That never happens with these things. Great job.
Also, and I think I've mentioned this before, I want to play Bastion on the 3DS very, very badly. I might take Jason up on his suggestion and email the devs about that.
Nice to see Outland mentioned. I loved that game. I need to play more handheld games. Only played Okamiden so far from this year on handhelds. I am still working on finishing it too.
Comments