Bastion draws heavy inspiration from McCarthy, yes, but it doesn't smother the experience with seriousness.

It's the same isometric hack-and-slash exploration game first released in the summer of 2011, when independent games were continuing to gain prominence across a number of platforms, The Calamity was world-shattering, but the Kid isn't entirely without people to appreciate his nifty bandana.Īnd that's why, if you've never played Bastion before and you have a PS4, you should take this opportunity to jump in. Nothing has changed, apart from the requisite upscaling to support the PS4's beefier resolutions You find no new monsters barring your travels across the ruins of Caledonia, and discover no new weapons to whack them with. You may not so readily notice these details, at least if you already own Bastion on one of the many systems it already graces, whether it's the Vita, the Xbox 360, or even Google Chrome. For the PlayStation 4 release of Bastion, I more often found myself appreciating the game's many nods to the novels of Cormac McCarthy, both in the easy (and a bit tired) parallels to the post-apocalyptic world of The Road, and in the main character of the Kid, who recalls a character of the same name in McCarthy's gore-drenched Blood Meridian. I confess that I look forward to re-releases of popular games because they allow me to notice aspects I might not have caught the first time around, and thereby discover whether they've managed to live up to their critical acclaim.

Bastion main gameplay