Bastion Preview

G4 has slapped up a quick enthusiastic preview of Bastion, the colorful action RPG currently in development at Supergiant Games for the Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and PC. The usual snip:

You’ll encounter a number of enemies as you traverse toward the Bastion, the game’s mysterious epicenter where you’ll return between missions. You’ll battle carnivorous, inky globules, cannonball turrets and other evil forces as you leap between levels, collecting the protected (core) of each arena to bring back to the Bastion and build up the world around you. As you do so, you’ll be able to construct distilleries and forges that’ll offer additional armor and potions, and not only are the individual items upgradable, but the actual structures themselves can be leveled to create even more powerful items.

The combat is actually some of the strongest RPG action we’ve experienced in awhile, almost perfectly balanced even at this early stage. Seldom did we find ourselves sticking to one kind of weapon, switching constantly between our melee, ranged, shield and potion items, each mapped to one of the four buttons.And each weapon we discovered felt individually capable in a way that too often makes little difference in other titles. The slow, heavy axe or the quicker, less damaging katana; the quick-shot pistol or the more powerful, but difficult-to-aim rifle.Additionally, items and ammo drop at such a rate that that fast pace of the combat is never adversely affected, keeping players rooted in the game during combat.