Humble Indie Bundle V gets bigger

For those of you who are still on the fence about this whole Humble Indie Bundle V deal, it's worth considering that they just added Braid, Super Meat Boy, and Lone Survivor to the bunch. That brings the grand total to 8 games and you only need to spend $8 to get everything. That's $1 a game! What a deal!

If you've already bought the bundle don't worry! You can use your old purchase link to go and activate the new additions at no extra cost! It just got crazy up in here!

LIMBO?

So I finished LIMBO today and it got me to thinking about story, and how some games approach it in unique ways.

See here's LIMBO, a brilliantly artistic game with a definite sense of moody atmosphere, but the story is essentially whatever you want to make of it. Is the kid running from something? Is he trying to get somewhere? Is he trapped in some eternal death machine? Any one of these could be correct, or none of them.

There's nothing in the game that gives you a sense of what's going on, and really maybe it doesn't really matter. As a challenging, and sometimes rewarding, moody platform puzzler LIMBO succeeds. Even without dialogue, or context, it kept me playing. Maybe I just wanted to see the next new and unique way the developers had devised to kill that kid. God knows I had to have killed that kid hundreds of times. Electrocuted, stabbed by giant spiders, torn to bits by saw blades, and jumped to his death, again, again, and again. Maybe that's part of the fun in LIMBO, maybe the whole point of it is to die, get back up, and try again.

Was I satisfied? I thought the game did a great job artistically, and there were some moments where it made a wry smile creep up onto my face. LIMBO definitely pleased me, but it left me wondering.

What exactly did I just play for the last 3 hours?

Bastion: The Value of Details

Notably I'm a little late to the Bastion party. I've been hearing nothing but good things about it, and all my friends have already finished the game. So when it was available through the Humble Indie Bundle 5 I had no choice but to buy it. Given the quality of Bastion I would've gladly paid full price, but getting it for such a deal is equally spectacular.


I think the best way to describe Bastion was something my girlfriend said. I booted up the game, started my first playthrough, and from across the room it was simply:

"What is that? It looks amazing!"

She doesn't even play computer games. At most you could find her deeply involved in a round of Words With Friends, but that would be about the extent of her "gaming." So for a game to gain her interest to that degree is something worth a great deal of praise. The art direction is just that good. Vibrant colors, and crisply drawn environments are painterly. The use of colors perfectly conveys the appropriate feeling for the story at that moment, and all of the areas have their own unique flavors. You want to keep exploring it to find out what's just around the bend. Put together with simple controls and yet an extremely complex combat system makes for a unique taste of action RPG adventure.

The way the game world builds itself up around you as you walk through it is not only a plot device, but an exceptionally amazing way to grab your attention from the first moment you step into Bastion. Combined with the subtle narrator voice dictating your story to you as you perform it makes this more than just an RPG. It grabs you and says, "Hey you. Take notice. Bastion is something you'll want to discover." The story involves you in a way that few games can achieve because of all the little details. The narration makes the story more personal, there's no gigantic walls of text to read and since everything is being told to you during your adventure you gain a connection between the narrator and your actions.

He's telling you what you need to know, and he's telling you about yourself. It's all canned recordings, but the manner in which this information is presented to you makes it feel natural, fluid almost. It feels like your personal story, not some list pre-recorded plot highlights.

Bastion is the game you want to keep playing and it's the little details that make it succeed so well.

Humble Indie Bundle V!

Or in other words how to get Bastion, Amnesia, Psychonauts, Limbo, and Sword & Sorcery for $7.50

What's that? Not interested you say? Alone all those games normally would retail for $110. Get on it you gamers you. It's the best deal you can get this side of Christmas.

Did I mention you get all the soundtracks too? And that it's for charity? Why are you still reading this? You should be playing Bastion by now!