Transistor

Transistor is a tiny and colorful short gem. Its combat system is neverending, its narrative really good and credible and its universe pleasantly reminding Portal. The only thing that saddened me was its relative short length. It's indeed a short game, but the possibility for a second run with more powerful enemies kind of makes up for it. It's a good thing, as the combat strategies seem endless; the weapon combinations and levelling system are really well thought-out, and even though being a bit laborious at first, you can play the game as it was either a fast paced beat them up or a carefully planned turn-based RPG. The story in Transistor is as deep as you're ready to dig in. You can just walk through the levels and have the scenario's outline, or you can try to unlock all the character's depictions to dive deeper into Cloudbank's city and let the incredibly rich atmosphere of the game sink in. The latter being completed by the astonishing trip-hop OST makes Transistor's universe one of the most enjoyable I've played. To wrap it up, Transistor is a dense experience, for the eyes, the ears and the brain. It will take you to the beach, inside a computer, and on the highway without telling you too much about what's going on, and let you find your own style of nailing it.

Great game.

Very solid and cool game, one of several for last years that left so harmonic feel. Strong and original art-direction, strong sound and music, exciting gameplay, laconic and original story that narrates smoothly and easy. And also different enemies that needs different tactics along with many skills variations and quite hard challenge in battles make gameplay really catchy. What else do you need? Somebody says that game is too short, but as for me it lasts enough to tell all that necessary and don't lose dynamics. So it's lenght is a plus too.

Transistor is a strategic game, graphically rich, with an interesting, somewhat emotional story. I liked the fact that the protagonist is entirely silent, and all the commentary has to be provided by the Transistor itself. The ending is especially good. It's not much of an RPG ... you follow a wholly linear path, most of the battles are pre-ordained, and your "choice" is mainly about which skill to select when you go up a "level". There's no exploration or item discovery or anything like that. It's a curated experience and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm giving it 5 stars because Transistor is, independent of other games which may exist, a good game ... it wasn't awkward or frustrating or difficult, but it wasn't trivially easy or boring either. A very pleasant way to spend a bunch of hours, spread over a few weeks, gaming. The battles require a bit of thought and foresight, and a bit of preparation beforehand, and they reward exploration of the skill tree and trying out different combinations. I do wish that it was a bit easier to see the result of a combination without so much clicking around, but that was just about the only frustrating part of the game. The levels are very well designed, the enemies are interesting and varied, and progression occurs at well-defined intervals. It's an easy game to get into and the storyline will stick in your head. If you're on the fence about whether to buy this game, go and look at some YouTube videos about the battle system - that's what will keep you coming back for more! I enjoyed tinkering around with different combinations a lot. If that's not your thing, then this game isn't for you. If it is, then buy it now!

Transistor was the next game from the developers of Bastion, and as such the bar was set pretty high. In terms of presentation the bar was put even higher as the backgrounds are outsatnding, the artwork is terrific and the narration brings a new level of immersion for the game. Unfortunately in the technical part... well it goes downhill pretty fast. The only setting (of the two) that actually had an impact was resolution. No VSync, no texture details options, or at least some actual performance option. This is bad, mainly because if the game underperformes on a machine, the user can at least make the performance manageable without sacrificing too much of the experience. For me the aforemensioned problem was a show stopper as the game stuttered heavily in my laptop where I play (AMD A8 with Randeon 8550G + HD8670M dual graphics) and as I was unable to change anything without invoking the AMD profiles etc, which gave me headaches after 20 minutes of game. It is a petty, as the game is immmersive and gorgeous and I knew I would love it as I loved Bastion