The fat kid sat at his computer, the pale glow of the monitor reflecting off of his glasses. He had to write a review for Bastion, but he wasn’t quite sure where to start. It was a unique game to talk about, but at the same time there wasn’t much special at all. It was just some good old fashioned fun, the sort long forgotten in this bitter world of profit margins and sales numbers and cheap imitations. A modern relic of a time lost to memory.

The fat kid’s fingers started to fly across the keyboard, clicking and clacking as he mashed the keys. The cursor danced across the screen, dropping letters like a trail of bread crumbs behind it. The kid suddenly knew where to start.

See, the fat kid grew up before all these fancy 3D graphics and online competition. Back when he played games, it was about fun first. No one was trying to imitate Hollywood or turning video games into some kind of sport. It was about making something fun, something you wanted to come back to again and again. Your parents bought you a game on your birthday and on Christmas, so it had to last.

Now imagine a world, an alternate universe where the Playstation, N64 or Sega Saturn never came out. Where there was no such thing as 3D graphics, polygons or bump maps. This world where 2D gaming reigns supreme, this is the world where Bastion exists. The next step beyond the Super Nintendo, that’s where it would have found its home.

Leaning back in his chair, the old thing creaking under his shifting weight, the fat kid stared at his computer screen. Yeah, Bastion is fun alright, but why? His finger tapped against the five o’ clock shadow growing on his chin, his teeth biting into his lower lip as he stared at the monitor in thought. That’s the problem with something that’s fun. You never really think about why you’re having fun. You’re lost in the moment, your heart, mind and soul in unison as you just go with the flow of time. It’s why the ignorance of childhood is bliss.

Enough of this digression. The fat kid leans back to the keyboard and his fingers get back to work. Bastion is a fun game, certainly, but it isn’t great. He needs to note how simple the combat is, the main draw and focus. Yeah, lots of people talk about the narrator, but that’s hardly what brings you back to the game time and again. It’s flavor, the chocolate syrup on top of ice cream. But those scoops gotta be better than just plain vanilla themselves.

It’s the enemies that make Bastion what it is. Hacking and thwacking a bunch of monsters is a tale as old as Gauntlet. There’s nothing special about that. Throw in a whole bunch of monsters with their own distinct patterns, though, and suddenly you got a recipe for some interesting times. Dodging, blocking, hacking, it’s all a part of what makes Bastion work. Anyone that tries to brute force their way through is in for a Hell of a time, but the smart player, the clever player that observes the enemy movements, learns when to jump outta the way, or the precise moment to block and counter, they’re the ones that are going to live long enough to see the next level.

That’s the magic of Bastion. It’s a challenge, and it never really tells you how to play. It just drops you in, gives you the basics and expects you to figure it out. The closest thing to a tutorial are the many areas that test your skills with a weapon, rewarding you for excellent performance. That’s how the player really learns the master techniques. The game doesn’t hold your hand. It gives you the tools and trusts you to figure it out. A form of trust that’s long been missing in games.

Of course there’s more to it than that. The fat kid considers discussing the story, how you begin to realize that the narrator might be hiding something the further in that you play. How it all leads up to a most interesting set of choices towards the very end. How a simple story about a crumbling world becomes one of the most interesting tales of loss and betrayal of the last year.

Yet why let anyone know what to expect? All the better for them to find out for themselves.

He drops the wall of text into his website, grabbing a couple images off of Google to accompany his review as usual. He doesn’t know who will read it, or if it’ll encourage anyone to drop a couple bucks on an interesting old-fashioned sort of game. He’s just another mouth breather on the Internet, after all, shouting his thoughts to all of no one that’ll listen. But if anyone sees it, decides to give it a whirl, well, it was worth taking the time to type it out.