Transistor (PC)
Categories:
[blog]
Tags:
[review],
[video games],
[pc]
Release Date: May '14 Time to complete: ~7 hours
Transistor feels like an amazingly configurable combat skillset trapped in a not-quite-convincing game wrapper. You gain abilities which can be used in three ways - passive buffs, active skills, or modifiers to the active skills. The combinations you can come up with are interesting and wildly different, and you are encouraged to try them all out in different ways to unlock further background story - which is far less cohesive; it's somehow simple and yet baffling at the same time. Feels a bit of style over substance in that regard. The game is also disappointingly linear, lots of walking down corridors to the next encounter. The actual battles generally involve entering a turn-based kind of planning mode, deciding how to best do your damage, and then running away from enemies for a while until the turn-based mode has recharged and you can use that again. It doesn't quite feel like the best way of utilising the skill options at your disposal.
Overall it's definitely not bad, but just feels like it could have put together in a different way, with a more pleasing gameplay outcome.