Transistor (2014)

I love Supergiant Games' games. They have a lot of style (especially in world-building) and are very well made. The same is true for Transistor, but I found that although Cloudbank was very stylish, I was too weird and lacking detail for me to relate to it, to understand it and to lie it very much. Same for the characters, or the character-and-a-half that have some depth and appearance the game beyond text blocks.

Technically, the game is superbly done and wrings a lot options and possibilities from a relatively small number of skills. The enemies are varied in how they behave, although, again, they're not very interesting and tend to repeat.

While the ending does succeed in having some emotional impact, the strangeness of it all makes it a very small one and now when I'm done with the game I care nothing about spending more time with the characters or in the places.

Neat game. The way you upgrade your abilities and 'flavor' them using your inactive abilities was clever and overall pretty well balanced for what this is, a small time indie game.

The music was really good. It seems that these soundtracks are above average. It's also kind of cool how the silent protagonist is actually a singer who is in the soundtrack (supposedly anyway, you hear yourself singing.) Like bastion I found myself not too fond of the narrator, however in this game it starts to get on one's nerves because it's essentially a disembodied, confused soul who cannot make sense of what is happening because they are blip of consciousness locked away inside a digital media (in classic phildickian manner) The game seemed way too short and too easy. Good but did not really love it enough to do new game plus since it's a game you play for the experience and 'the idea' more than the actual gameplay. Also, that cheap cop-out of an ending didn't really make sense. The less you think about it, the better, lol.

Overall I think Bastion was better even if the game design wasn't as fleshed out as this.

Supergiant Games best known as the creators of Bastion are at it again. In Transistor you play a female protagonist and her giant transistor weapon.

Throughout the short campaign you delve in to a strange future world. The ascetics of the game are top notch. Every environment is richly detailed and the music is stellar. We don't see the simplistic genius of games like Breath of the Wild in terms of design. Instead, the approach is far more detail oriented. However, this doesn't distract you from the enemies who appropriately pop away from the background. The story itself is mainly told by the transistor weapon that the protagonist uses throughout the campaign. It's a mystery that you solve piece by piece as you take out each boss.

Combat utilizes a mixture of real time ARPG and turn based tactical segments. If you are serious about perfecting your combat you will use less and less real time combat as you progress as the advantages to freezing time are too big to ignore. Combat can be rewarding when you utilize interesting combos or customize your attacks in interesting ways. I found the attack customization options to be one of the best features of the game. Everything you can unlock can be equipped in different ways giving you different benefits. This equipment you can change frequently to mix up your play style or to complete challenges in the game.

Overall, Transistor offers a short campaign with an interesting story and setting. Combat can be interesting and character customization is one of the games real strengths. Depth is what transistor is really lacking. Just as the story starts to get good it's over and even though customization for combat mixes things up controlling only one character prevents it from having any tactical depth. You won't see the the level of strategy or story telling of similar titles like Divinity Original Sin, but what is here is enjoyable. Supergiant games has created another great setting - I just wish there was a bit more there to go with it.

Finished Transistor, another gem from Supergiant games and a more than worthy successor to the phenomenon that was Bastion. The game is a masterpiece, a sensory menagerie of meticulously concocted elements, which all intricately fuse together to forge a style very comparable to impressionism.

From the minimalist dialogue, which is eerily fulfilling, to the swathes of expressive, yet broad, details, to the highly customizable combat system, which is beautifully coupled with the lore, to the overwhelming emotions evoked through practically still images, the game manages to transcend the line separating playing and experiencing.

In hindsight, in my mind, Transistor also serves to further illustrate how bland many mainstream game developers have become with their work, where graphical masturbation and realism take precedence over artistic satisfaction, where the thirst for more 'apparent' value for money and commercial success result in needlessly long tediousness and atrocities like day-one paid DLCs. From a logical point of view, it is understandable and pragmatic. However, as a gamer, I find it disappointing.

Transistor is short, and it's as long as it needs to be. I probably wouldn't have said this a few years back and maybe this preference for shorter, more compact games is a result of my recent lack of free time. But it is clear that Transistor doesn't feel rushed and it doesn't drag on. It gets it right; an amalgamation of well-thought-out components, which manage to exceed the sum of its parts and leave a lasting impression on any 'player'.

Actual Score: 4/5

In a world where Indie games are everywhere, it's hard to find one that really stands out as both different and full of fun. That's exactly what Transistor is though. After getting told repeatedly to play this game from people I finally decided to give it a shot, and as I was playing I wondered why haven't I done this sooner. The art style is what really stands out and adds to the unique game play quite well. The city landscape is painted beautifully with bright colors that also paint a gloom picture for this town.

I understand the game play won't be for everyone and that you will either love it or hate it. The combat varies from fast paced to a slower pace depending on how you approach each fight. The developers do a nice job of letting you decide on how to play and give a wide variety of upgrades to use. Whether you stick with the same line up of moves or switch out each battle can impact your enjoy-ability of this game. It took me awhile to understand what all the upgrades do and how I can be effective with each one.

My only draw back is on the story and that's not to say it's a bad story by any means. I assume they were going for a less is more situation, but it's hard to really get behind a character if I don't fully understand the situation they are in. I might have just missed it on my first play through and here's hoping that during my second run through I understand a little more of Red and her story. That being said the time to completion is perfect, not too long and not too short, and my time with Red and the Transistor was worth it.

I liked Bastion a lot; there were some flaws but overall a great experience. Transistor took this, ran with in, and ran and ran and ran and ran.

For some reason, I didn't realize that the two were made by the same company, but Transistor continually reminded me of Bastion throughout playing it, up until the end credits when I saw that the music was again by Darren Korb when I "duhhed" into revelation. But my point is, the comparison continually stuck in my mind because of all the good similarities between the two.

The music, obviously, is amazing. The visuals were also great. The ability to mix-and-match abilities for different fighting styles made the gameplay always interesting. And the way the voice acting told the narrative was....well, almost eerily similar in style. So all of those things are what I loved about Bastion, and then Transistor went above and beyond that by -in my opinion- surpassing at both the gameplay and the lore.

I absolutely adored the concept of executing turn-by-turn gameplay with cooldown in between; halfway between strategy and action. I loved being able to mix-and-match powers to use them different, especially how the powers had different effects depending on whether they were being used as Active, Passive, or Upgrade. And I loved how, if you run out of health, you don't die, you just lose an Active action. That made things really interesting and far more entertaining because instead of just restarting at the checkpoint, it completely changed the way you had to handle the enemies and added some desperation each time an action was lost.

Maybe this is because I'm a computer programmer, but I loved all of the lore and world of the Transistor universe. Simple things like giving things names like functions like "Turn()" to the more advanced, technically accurate references, down to the last screen which prompts the user between "Start Recursion" and "Exit to Shell". None of it seemed like it was in your face, like the devs wanted you to know how clever they were; it was just everywhere because it's part of the world they painstakingly constructed. And while I'm not exactly a huge fan of Supergiant's monologue style of exposition (particularly the tone of the speaker sounding something like a P.I. investigator), I did love how much they were able to express things about the mute main character with just images instead of cutscenes. (Also, I really like that they had a good reason for her being mute. Small, I know, but nice.)

There were, of course, some small grievances I had. As I said, I'm not a super fan of how Supergiant does their monologue and thus how it exposes the plot; in Transistor in particular, you're thrown in knowing literally nothing and for the first 30 minutes or so, I wondered if I had accidentally skipped a cutscene. After that time passed, I found myself able to get into the world much more, even up to reading the bios of the people that filled it.

My biggest legit grievance is that sometimes the way you mapped out your turn just did not go the way it said it would. Some of this is understandable and something you need to adapt to, like how Cull() hits your targets up, out of reach of some of your other attacks. However, in much simpler cases when an attack just plain misses or doesn't do as much damage as it said....I mean honestly, it can be frustrating, especially if it leads to losing an Action slot. This happened enough for me to be annoyed, but not enough that it ruined the experience of the game.

And lastly, the only technical problem I had is that several times over my playthrough, the screen would get stuck and not follow Red during my Turn(), making planning difficult or sometimes just requiring me to try to start my Turn() again.

All this said, there's nothing that I found that I felt really needed changing with the game. It was fun, it was engaging, it had a cool story and world and even, dare I say it, characters, and even the plot -while nothing to earn a standing ovation- was solid, especially the very end. It's a great game. It's better than that, it's an amazing game. It's not terribly long, about 7 hours for me, but every minute is enjoyable, you don't feel jipped, and it doesn't drag out. While I do feel that Bastion was a great game, I'd say Supergiant has nearly perfected their craft with Transistor and I'm honored to have it as a part of my "Played" list.

A great game with a lot of visual style. You go into the city of Transistor only to find that a political group called Camerata have taken what looks like a sword called the Transistor and tried to bring the robots that run the city under their control. Things go wrong and a stranger jumps in the way to save you [Red] from getting killed by the Transistor while you are singing at a concert of yours. Somehow (unexplained) they have stolen your voice, and the stranger who has saved you from harm is dead, but his mind still lives on inside the Transistor. The two of you go off to try to restore yourselves to your former glory from the Camerata.

A beautiful game if there ever was one. The music takes center stage as you have optional missions to unlock the tracks on a music player. The battle system is fun with very many possibilities. The only downside to the game I find is the story, which didn't make enough sense for my liking.

Spoiler Alert

The Transistor User's voice gets annoying after awhile and your main character while seemingly wounded by having her voice taken away doesn't seem to really care. Things don't really get explained, especially at the very end, where you are thrust into battle with the last Camerata after going along with what he says for a good while. He explains "We're here now... and so... only one of us can go back"... I dunno if they were in the Transistor or what. And then at the end when Red kills herself with the Transistor to be with the guy inside. It was, in this player's opinion, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. It left a bad taste, and I was almost kinda shocked and offended at how badly they executed their 'ideas', and that I was expected to feel anything but disgust.

It is still a nice looking game. But why build a world so beautiful and tell a story not worth telling?

One of my favorite games of 2014. The art style is beautiful. The soundtrack is stellar. The gameplay is fun and strategic, yet simple enough to not be intimidating.

Some of the gameplay elements do get redundant and some of the skills that you get make the game quite easy.

If you are a gamer who likes a good, artistic, beautiful gameplay experience. Pick up this game.