I'll be the first to extol the virtues of SuperGiant Games' Bastion. The isometric action/RPG is available for just about everything ever at this point (except PSN... ouch), but I can still vividly remember booting the game up the morning it launched for XBLA and being immediately blown away by the visual and audio presentation. Needless to say, the game's earnest story, wonderous music and endlessly flexible combat variations have stuck with me to this day. So when I finally went in for a demo of SuperGiant's next game, Transistor, on the final evening of PAX East, I had a pretty clear image of the game already beginning to form in my head.

In some ways, Transistor fills in the lines of that image perfectly. The art style is highly reminiscent of Bastion, with lots of nontraditional geometry contributing to giving the game a foreign, ever-so-slightly unfamiliar look. Then there's the music, which while decidedly more "sci-fi" than before remains eclectic and entrancing. But perhaps the largest similarity between the two games is the presence of a narrator, this time in the form of the titular Transistor, a sentient weapon of great power that falls into the heroine's hands towards the beginning of the demo.

So while Transistor and Bastion are definitely related in some key ways, I was surprised to find a very different style of gameplay at work under the hood. I've come away from Transistor thinking of it as a sibling to Bastion; they look and sound similar, and it's clear that they were both brought up from the same group of parents, so to speak. But under all the superficial similarities, there are complex differences that make each of them a wholly unique experience. Whether or not Transistor will stick with me as much as Bastion did remains to be seen, but after getting over my initial shock at the new mechanics, I think it's fairly likely.

In play, Transistor has as much in common with a strategy game as it does its action-based predecessor. Players can move the heroine, who is simply referred to as Red, around the battlefield in real time. When enemies spawn into the world, it's totally viable to take them on in real time as well. But unlike The Kid's moveset, Red's attacks are decidedly deliberate in nature. They operate on cooldowns that take a few seconds to recharge, and as far as I could tell she doesn't have a slick dodge move to get out of the way when the going gets tough.

For these reasons, it's best to utilize the game's new pause functionality when you encounter a group of enemies. By hitting the right trigger, players can pause the world around Red, giving her a limited time to move unhindered and line up attacks. When the game is paused like this, the world will appear on a grid and Red's attacks will project across the grid, showing players where her strikes will hit. I found that success in combat relied primarily on getting enemies to line up in real time before pausing the game and hitting them all at the same time. When the action unpauses, Red will enact all of the various actions you've cued up for her in devestatingly quick succession.

It's this unique mechanic that will clearly set Transistor apart from its predecessor. While it may be easy to lump the two games into the same category based on their presentation, the gameplay at the heart of this sci-fi adventure couldn't be much farther from the hack 'n slash action of Bastion. With all of Red's abilities, including the time slowing power, operating on cooldowns, I had to put a lot of thought and timing into when and where I used each power.

Over the course of my demo, Red began with naught but a basic slash move but quickly earned three new moves. Whether or not this quick succession of powers is reflective of the rate at which Red gains them in the final game, and whether or not there will be more than these base four, is still unknown. But for the purposes of my demo, I was handed the slash move on the A button, a dashing attack on the B button, and AoE bomb attack on the X button, and a power hit on the Y button.

Killing enemies in Transistor's sleek futurescape isn't as simple as just hacking them apart with a sword, though. After an enemy falls in battle, it will drop what appears to be a power core of some sort. If Red doesn't run over to collect the core quickly, the enemy will reform itself and begin battle anew. These cores appeared to be some sort of collectible or currency, as the game kept count the more I accrued.

Red's time-stopping powers seem like they could be pretty useful in solving puzzles, too. A light door puzzle I encountered towards the middle of the demo presented me with two energy pads, each of which connected to the door through a series of wires. The problem? Each pad had to be pressured wihtin just a second of the other or else the door wouldn't open. Stopping time proved handy in this case, as I was able to maneuver Red quickly from one panel to the other and trigger the door.

What little in the way of story I encountered was incredibly vague, but it seems as if the game has the potential for the same kind of quietly emotional beats as Bastion had. The base story as presented in the demo was that there have been a series of disappearances occuring all around the game's city, and that Red was supposed to be next. A sinister group using robots to attack you wants the Transistor, and now that it's in Red's hands she is charged with keeping it safe. It's workable enough, but I was more interested by the game's smaller stories. Upon finding a poster with Red's face all over it, the Transistor reveals to the player that Red was at one point a singer, and that her enemies have somehow stolen her voice. 

The demo itself was fun enough, but it was the ending that really got me excited to play more of Transistor. I was still wrapping my head around the game's unique mechanics by the time I reached the demo's conclusion, but as it closed out the game transitioned to a 2D view. In what I assumed was a cutscene, Red was riding a motorcycle, and the Transistor was giving her directions for how to escape the city and hide out from her enemies. Instead of following along, Red made plans of her own, and I was suddenly presented with a button prompt: "Hold A to accelerate." 

As the music swelled, I urged the motorcycle forward. Red and I weren't going to listen to the Transistor, weren't going to run away. We passed the exit, turned towards the heart of the city, and, motorcycle engine and synth chords churning, plunged headfirst into the game's volatile city. It was a powerful moment that brought music, gameplay and narrative together in a way that displayed a true understanding of the elements and mechanics that make video games what they are. 

So yes, I have come out of PAX East incredibly excited for Transistor. Whether or not the whole experience will match the positive vibes that the PAX demo put out is still up in the air, but I for one can say with certainty that I can't wait to find out.