Transistor (by the creators of Bastion)

[KallDrexx]

The creators behind Bastion just announced their new game, Transistor.

While I found Bastion repetitive towards the end, I thoroughly enjoyed the storytelling and the gameplay up until about half way through.  

They definitely did a great job with the trailer for Transistor too.

Edit by Trippy: direct video link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTik6sYT_BE

[Lakov_Sanite]

Someone recently said that original games aren't being made anymore.

Shut up.

[Goreschach]

So by RPG do they mean actually RPG? Bastion was one of my favorites of the year, but it did feel a bit flat. Getting some more depth this time would be great.

[schild]

Looks like a VanillaWare game made by an indie team.

Which I guess is what Bastion was also. (I should clarify, this doesn't speak to the audio. Obviously Bastion's narration was some of the best in gaming whereas Vanillaware stuff is just shy of Engrish).

[UnSub]

Supergiant use music / audio very well.

I liked Bastion so I'll look at this when it is closer to release.

[Fordel]

I'm throwing money at my monitor and nothing is happening. 


I'll likely buy this as soon as it shows up on steam. I almost never do that!

[K9]

I really like the art direction

[Ingmar]

So this has been out for a bit, and it is excellent, much like Bastion was. Play it.

[Mosesandstick]

I feel like this is going to be a stupid question - is there ever a difference between getting a soundtrack on steam or bandcamp?

[Setanta]

So this has been out for a bit, and it is excellent, much like Bastion was. Play it.

Can't emphasise this enough - phas to be one of my better purchases this year.

[Samwise]

Finished this last night.

I think it's not QUITE as good as Bastion in terms of gameplay and story. 

They tried to do something different and more tactical with the combat and while it was interesting I don't think it entirely worked -- the tactical planning part sometimes didn't correctly account for how the enemies would move in real time (and you had no way to correct for it), and being defenseless afterward with all your abilities on cooldown at once and no way to block/dodge enemies just felt frustrating.  Bastion's combat wasn't fancy but it "worked".  I did really like the Transistor upgrade system, though -- each "function" having three different uses was neat, even if some of the combinations were useless, because there were so many to play with.  Protip: Ping( Jaunt(), Crash() ) == FuckYou().

The story felt a lot less tight than Bastion -- it's very similar in some ways, where sort-of-well-meaning people caused a disaster and you're trying to put it back together, but I think what it's missing is fleshed-out characters.  In Bastion I felt like I "knew" Rucks, Zia, and Zulf; they got fleshed out through the levels where we met them, and their "dream" levels where important events of their lives were narrated while you fought things.  In Transistor there was a lot of flavor text about dead people who I never met and didn't care about, so I skipped it so I could get back to the game.  I feel like there was a missed opportunity there; they could have had us hear the voices of the other characters as they got absorbed (omg spoilers), maybe they'd start interjecting and conversing amongst themselves and dropping tidbits of information that they were privy to.  That woulda been cool.

Music and art top-notch.  It took me a while for the art deco TRON aesthetic to grow on me, but by the end I was really digging it.  And I could listen to Ashley Barrett's voice all day.

Overall I'd say if you liked Bastion (and you should have), give this a whirl, but if you didn't play Bastion I'd play that first, and if you didn't like Bastion you should give this a pass.

[Ingmar]

If you prepare the little teleport power, that's still usable when you're on cooldown with everything else, so there's definitely a way to dodge.

[Samwise]

That has its own cooldown though IIRC, so you get one short hop out of it and then the homing missiles or dogs or whatever whatever catch up with you while it's recharging.  Plus it's really awkward to "aim" in realtime.

I think what you're SUPPOSED to do (at least this was the only way I could figure out to beat all the dudes with the homing missiles) is use your Turn() to kill all the fast things on the screen and then get far enough away that the next wave won't catch up with you before you can Turn() again.  Once I started thinking like that I "got" what they were going for, i.e. more tactical and less beat-em-up.  I just feel like the tactical and the realtime parts don't fit together very well and they shoulda picked one or the other.

[Ingmar]

It's 3/4 of a second or something like that. I think you can slot it with Bounce() to make it faster, but I liked using Switch() so when I would jaunt guys would change sides briefly.

[Fordel]

If you want to play it as an action game, all you need to do is just not use the pause button. Then nothing has a cooldown and you just build the functions with that in mind. Some of the combo's just make you immortal in the real time space.

[Falconeer]

I am sorry to necro this post just because I finally decided to launch this... and finish it overnight. What a fucking game. Amazing. It might not be your cup of tea but this is another fantastic game, indie or not.

And sure, I am vulnerable to certain settings, themes and moods, and all the poetic stuff that is very well rendered here, but the gameplay is awesome too. You can play it as an action game where you resort to the turn based mechanics when in trouble, or you can play it as a futuristic turn-based game. As a Disgaea veteran I must say that I felt at home whenever I hit the turn-based switch and started to plan how to squeeze as much damage as possible over a single turn.

The skill system is so fucking cool. You pick up lots of skills but you can only equip four at a time. The unused ones can be slotted into the four equipped skills for different effects. And there are three different slots for every skill (or passive). The amount of possible combinations is huge, and that part alone is so rewarding when you feel you nailed a setup that makes you invincible (like when I passed at first try the room with the 6 "young girls" that was meant to be skipped).

I really don't care about Ubi, Activision, Sony, Blizzard, or whoever is still makin AAA games these days, when stuff like this keeps coming out. I keep buying stupid expensive games and then I just don't play them. And then you check out this almost by accident and it kidnaps you for wo days straight. 2014 wasn't as bad for gaming as you pictured it.

[Ruvaldt]

This is also one of the instant game collection games this month for the PS4 if you have Playstation Plus.  I haven't checked it out yet, but once I finish Apotheon it's the next on my list.

[Falconeer]

That's how I got it! I meant to buy it when it came out, but then I opted for something else and then forgot about it. Friday I noticed this was "for free" on the PS4 and decided to finally give it a try. WHOA. Already going for the NG+

[schild]

I tried it when I got it for free. The combat system is just ugh, the worst. The movement in general made me angry.

[Falconeer]

That's weird, it feels so natural to me. I am pretty sure I would have hated it with a keyboard, but with the Dual Shock 4 it just plays right to me.

[Jeff Kelly]

Transistor had some neat ideas but Bastion is by comparison the much better and more compelling game. Bastion is also mechanically superior.

As a programmer myself, the constant gimmicky callbacks and meta references to "hey, you're playing a computer program, set in a world that is a computer program and all the mechanics are references to computer programming" were instantly grating and kind of cringeworthy to me. It also didn't add anything except some superficial flavor to the game because you still need the paragraphs of descriptive text to at least half understand what each function is doing. Also my pet peeve with the game, an oversized USB stick with hilt and handle is not a Transistor.

What it really boils down to though is that turn() and the function combination mechanics are half thought out and almost always don't work entirely like they should. Also that the game can never decide if it wants to be turn based or real time combat and so does neither really well.

Combining functions for different effects would be neat if the game actually makes it necessary to use that. Unfortunately you don't really need to. Also some of the combos are so broken that they trivialize the entire game even on hardcore difficulty, which makes it even less of an issue. You basically only use the system until you get to a broken combo and then stick with it. Especially since the game is so bad at telling you what a new combination of functions actually does in terms you can understand without testing it on a combat dummy.

Turn() is probably the most problematic thing about Transistor for me. You can't really do what the mechanic suggests - namely to plan out your combat moves - because time restarts once you leave planning mode. Enemies move, the combat landscape changes and your entire plan will be moot the second you re-enter real time. Additionally the game penalises you for wasting action points on an elaborate setup since turn-based mode is on cool down after you leave it. So it's a waste of time to plan more than maybe two steps ahead. Even if you can execute your plan flawlessly you'll end up in a situation where you simply run around waiting for the cooldown on turn() to expire.

Combat in real time mode is so gimped though (except if you use one of the broken combos) that you can't really compensate for a bad plan or a changing combat landscape once you re-enter real time. So for me the game was essentially comprised of entering turn() and plotting out a set of moves that won't work most of the time once time restarted and then kiting enemies and running around until the turn() cooldown ended because the limited moveset in real time combined with the enemies' speed and capabilities meant that facing them outside turn() was just not fun.

The game is basically punishing you for using the mechanics it gives you. They don't compliment each other and screwing up in one mode will lead to you having even less options in the other one. This culminates in one of the most pointless and frustrating boss fights I've ever played. Pointless because it's ridiculously easy yet frustrating because the boss's special gimps your core game mechanic even more.

[Falconeer]

You are overthinking it. The game never punishes you at all. As you said it is incredibly easy (finished it without dying a single time and only losing it a couple of skills over the whole game, I still have no idea what happens if you die), finished every fight at first try and only had to redo some of the backdoor time challenges, and I am not an awesome gamer because I am too easily distracted. I have no idea if the real time mode is viable or not, but the turn based mode is perfectly tuned and gives very good tools to execute whatever you want WHERE you want it without pages of menus.

Not sure if they patched something that didn't work back when you played it but I literally have no idea what you mean when you say that things you plan in turn mode doesn't work the way you planned. You probably planned poorly or don't know what your skills do or how some enemies react to your skills. Or maybe you played it on a PC and things were crappy with mouse and keyboard, I honestly can't say about that.

The "cooldown" after turns is NOT a cooldown, it's actually the computer taking its turn after you played yours. Under the hood this is still a turn based game. The difference is that, unlike turn based games, you can at least move during the AI's turn while usually you are just supposed to stand and watch while they pummel you. That's the balancing act for you being one against a horde, unlike most turn based games which are party based.

In Transistor you take your turn in planning mode, while the AI plays its in real time to make things quicker and give you chances to dodge. They act, but instead of doing that in a slower turn based fashion, you are still free to move around and observe THEIR turn in real time, while dodging. The game is only unfair to the AI. Would you have preferred a traditional turn-based game where every turn gets played in planning mode, indluing the AI ones? Good for you. I love those games and played tons of them. Here they thought to speed up the AI part and it clearly worked out great.

With all that said, difficulty is tuned to very easy in the first playthrough in order to enjoy the world and the story and not blocking out bad gamers. In my opinion a smart move considering how mich of the game (and its success) is about the setting, the art, the music, the feelings, etc. NG+ is where challenges get more interesting, if you care about the challenge.

[Samwise]

I'm with Jeff here on the mechanics being a pain in the ass, especially compared to Bastion which was simple but worked really well.  Pretty much for all the reasons he said.

I was willing to put up with it for all the pretty art, and especially the soundtrack.  Still a game worth playing.

(edit) also I would like some of Falconeer's drugs.

[Sophismata]

I agree with Falconerr on this. I played the game at the highest difficulty, and while I was disappointed by how lopsided the combat became I did not have any issues with the base mechanics, at all. Fluff or mechanics -wise.

[Phildo]

Sophismata, did you use a controller or mouse and keyboard?

[Falconeer]

(edit) also I would like some of Falconeer's drugs.

I don't like to pull the "popularity" card, especially because I am known for my unpopular opinions here too, but in this case it seems like 7055 out of 7322 other Steam users agree with me. That does not make me right, but it certainly -alas- doesn't make me weird either.

[Rendakor]

Sam still said the game was worth playing, which is all a positive review on Steam means. It doesn't necessarily mean they're in love with any specific mechanic.

[Falconeer]

Fair enough, but how does liking this particular game make me on drugs?

[Rendakor]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Samwise]

I liked the game too, like I said, but your description of it sounds like you played a completely different game from me, and one that was much better.  

Either you have drugs that make games better, or Steam delivered us two entirely different games.  The drugs seem more plausible (especially since Jeff is also in Europe and he played the same game I did), and I want some.

[Ingmar]

I liked the game too, like I said, but your description of it sounds like you played a completely different game from me, and one that was much better.  

Either you have drugs that make games better, or Steam delivered us two entirely different games.  The drugs seem more plausible (especially since Jeff is also in Europe and he played the same game I did), and I want some.

I think if you find yourself nodding along with a Jeff Kelly post you might in fact be need of some drugs.

[Samwise]

If Falc will share his prescription with me I promise to try it and report back.     I did really want to like that game more.

[Falconeer]

My only prescription at this point would be the PS4 and the Dual Shock controller instead of PC. But really, I guess we were just looking forward to two different games. So while we got the same one, our expectations made it or broke it.

More seriously, I wish I could understand what exactly was a pain about the movement or the turn taking. I found it incredibly smooth, precise and accessible. Again, maybe miracle patches happened by the time I played it.

[Samwise]

I'm tempted to try re-downloading it and see if they radically changed the combat (although that would be unprecedented -- we're talking complete replacement of their core game mechanic).  It wasn't the control scheme; the combat simply was not turn-based in the way you described.  What you describe actually sounds like a cool game, but it's not the game I played.  It's not that we played the same game and you liked it more; based on the conflicts between your description and my memory (and I played through the whole game twice, it's not like I only fiddled with it for five minutes so my recollection is untrustworthy) we literally played different games.

[Jeff Kelly]

You probably planned poorly or don't know what your skills do

Please don't. I get that you like it a lot but please don't.

I think if you find yourself nodding along with a Jeff Kelly post you might in fact be need of some drugs.

Seriously? My replies are long winded most of the time I grant you that but not that unreasonable. I don't see where you're coming from really.