Transistor Review

-Justin Moore

Transistor is the next game to come out of Supergiant games, and it has big shoes to fill coming off of Bastion. Transistor is a much different game from Bastion though it does share some elements with Bastion. It is an isometric action game set in a brilliantly realized world just like Bastion. The combat and setting make Transistor stand out though. Transistor’s combat is deep and complex and it’s what made love this game.

In Transistor I played as Red a popular musician living in the futuristic cyberpunk city of Cloudbank. The game begins as I pulled a sword ( the transistor) from a man on a rooftop. As soon as I pulled the sword out I realized that this sword isn’t your everyday stab a guy sword. This sword was talking to me and it was to become my ally and friend throughout the game.

The games story telling is strange, it never overtly told me anything straight up. I was always picking up little bits of stuff from either the transistor telling me something or I was finding terminals that had news reports about what is happening to Cloudbank. Cloudbank even tells its own story from the posters of Red hung up on the walls, to things I could find just by searching around the amazing city. I found Cloudbank a mystery that I couldn’t wait to solve. This cyberpunk jazz infused wonderland was a world I wanted to explore and live in. I was sad that I didn’t get to experience the city while it was full of people, but then again maybe that is the point.

The combat in Transistor is what made me absolutely fall in love with this game. I could attack enemies in real time or in turn mode, which was essentially a turn based mode. This let me  move Red around in real time and then when my turn bar is full I would activate it to go into turn mode. In turn mode time essentially froze allowing me to  maneuver the battle field and cue up many attacks. After I had used turn, it would go on cooldown not allowing me to use any of my abilities for a short duration. So I could essentially stop time, run over hit the guy shielding one of the bigger ones. I would kill him move over to the bigger guy, knock him into the air and then run away and then unpause. Everything I had input would happen while the enemies moved very slowly. Turn would then go on cooldown and I would have to wait until it was up again.  

It created such cool and unique encounters that I had never really seen in any other game that I wanted to always be switching my abilities around to see which combinations worked best. I  started the game with only two of the abilities but I gained more rather quickly. I had a total of four slots for my abilities to go in and then those slots have sub slots that I could add modifiers to, this gave me an endless number of combinations. I ended up using one ability that knocked enemies into the air, one ability that was a straight line long range shot, an area of effect ball and invisibility which allowed me to escape when my turn bar was on cooldown.

The game has so many abilities and encouraged me to use them in very cool ways. From incentivising me to learn about the characters that had entered the transistor to taking away powers when I was low on life the game was always switching things up on me. I felt that Transistor built a very interesting and cool universe, but the combat and the atmosphere itself overshadowed the story. I was always unsure if I truly understood what was happening but then another battle would happen and I would lose myself in the action. Then another story moment would happen and then I would lose myself staring at the beautiful scenery or listening to the amazing soundtrack that this game had.

Transistor to me is a beautiful game that gets lost in its own head sometimes, but the combat and Red herself make up for the fact that I felt the story to be a bit confusing at times. This game stands out to me as a game everyone should experience or at least buy the soundtrack because god damn that shit is beautiful.

A