Bastion Starts Xbox LIVE Summer of Arcade

You wouldn’t believe it, but it’s summer. In order to celebrate the fourteen consecutive weeks of heavy rain, fog, more rain, cloudy skies, days-that-start-of-nice-but-end-up-raining, world-ending thunderstorms and, finally, more damn rain, Microsoft has started it’s Summer of Arcade Xbox LIVE Arcade Event.

The first game to be released is the much-anticipated Bastion. An isometric role-playing game, largely unheralded upon its original release in 2010, Bastion was developed by Supergiant Games and published by WB Games. This time around, after its successful showing at E3, it has built an ever-increasing buzz as the first game in Microsoft’s big summer download promotion.

Bastion was given a mini-preview by GodisaGeek back when we played it at E3 and were impressed by the game’s beautiful visuals, clever audio and relaxing, unearthly quality. The narration system, that responds to a player’s actions in real-time, is a huge selling point of the game but you will have to wait until the official GodisaGeek review of Bastion to see how it really affects the gameplay experience.

According to Supergiant, players will be able to forge customisable weapons and experiment with a range of powers that come from specially brewed spirits. Probably not the incredible “dancing” and “talking to ladies” that men get when they imbibe specially brewed spirits, but cool powers nonetheless.

Amir Rao, Supergiant’s Studio Director, is certainly excited for Bastion’s release saying it fulfils the studio’s desire to “make games that spark players’ imaginations like the ones they played as kids”. The E3 build of the game was certainly a unique experience, and it has felt like a long wait to be able to play the final game. As we said, time well tell whether the unique narration system will frustrate more than it entertains, but it should be a good time finding out.

Bastion is available now on the Xbox Live Arcade Store priced 1200 MS points (about £9 in old money). The GodisaGeek review will be published early next week.