I got nothing to show for it. Going into that last mission I feared something like this would happen. "Proper story's supposed to start at the beginning."

I bought Bastion just three days ago. I actually wanted to buy it on release but I'm a little short on cash since our wedding. Reading all the good stuff about it I decided to fuck that and just do it. It didn't grip me at first but it grew on me more and more and I even cried a little at the end there. Well, yeah ok, actually I cried a lot. Whatever! My first playthrough ended with 3 Idols turned on. I looked at the leaderboards and there wasn't really anything worth mentioning happening there. Rank 4000something on all the Who Knows Wheres and maybe 10.000 on the Story Leaderboard. Didn't bother me. I don't play games for competition. Mostly, because I'm not good at them. Does it even mean anything for a game like Bastion?

But I'm a completionist. I have this horrible gaming OCD. I had to do a New Game+ to get the last two Achievements. And get to level 10. And upgrade all the weapons. And at least try to do the Who Knows Wheres with all Idols on.

My second playthrough started simple. I just played the game with whatever was there. For my first upgrade I built a forge followed by an arsenal and a distillery. Then I hit Pyth Orchard where you first encounter a shrine. Actually, on a New Game+ you could decide to build it as one of your first buildings but pssshhh why would I want to do that? So, the shrine...

I read through all of the Idols' descriptions carefully just to see what I would be up against during the challenges. The sloth and the invincibility ones really turned me off. So I turned them on for no reason. "Think the gods are gonna help?" That's a weird thing to say when praying to them makes the game harder. I managed to finish the level on the new difficulty I had set and left it that way. Half-way through the game I forgot they were even there. This was the game now. I enjoyed it. I took the other option on both choices at the end and looked at the leaderboards after the credits. July 27th, 4:00 am CET, rank 42 with a score of 868. I can do better.

My third playthrough started simple. It was too easy now. I built a shrine as my first upgrade, turned all idols on, cleared the bow challenge to make sure that it saved and turned the game off. I didn't want to rush it. Later that day I saw that I got bumped to 47th place. I needed to get it done to secure a better ranking. There was nothing I hadn't done before. Just a few of those earlier levels with all dem idols and then whatever I did on that second time. And there I was doing the exact same thing I had done 24 hours before albeit with more pauses to not kill my enjoyment.

On my second run I noticed that the game updates your score while you play, not at the end. So before going into the last mission on my 10 Idol run I checked the leaderboard to bask in the glory of my beautiful, shiny new rank 50, score 868. Hm, maybe you get a whole bunch of them at the end. I even did the Who Knows Wheres again just to be sure. I picked the story choices from my first playthrough because I like that ending better. Maybe that had something to do with it...

And here I am. Struggling for an hour now to write just one page in the English language about nothing. Hopefully, I'm still rank 50 as I'm typing this. It's about to change soon enough. I don't know what counts toward the score but I wasn't doing it. I still love the game. Wouldn't have done this otherwise. I enjoyed every second of it and actually think it's funny. I just wish I had more to show for my third run. In the words of the narrator: "Third time's a charm, right? Wrong!"

As you can probably guess I'm not a native speaker of the English language. I figured the site I spend the most time on would be the best place to get a little practice in. So please critique away. I start a lot of sentences with "I" and I hate that. I need a lot of help with tenses and punctuation. I always wanted to write a series about old adventure games, especially those running on ScummVM. But there are already so many retro reviews out there. Anyway, I'd appreciate if someone wrote something producitve. Or not. I shouldn't even post this to the forums.

As you can probably guess I'm not a native speaker of the English language. I figured the site I spend the most time on would be the best place to get a little practice in. So please critique away. I start a lot of sentences with "I" and I hate that. I need a lot of help with tenses and punctuation. I always wanted to write a series about old adventure games, especially those running on ScummVM. But there are already so many retro reviews out there. Anyway, I'd appreciate if someone wrote something productive. Or not. I shouldn't even post this to the forums.

Your English is certainly more eloquent than a lot of native English speakers on the site.

@SpaceInsomniac: Still, I have a feeling I could have done a better job with the "I"s. Ever since I started giving this writing thing more thought I have this other problem. When I read articles on the internet now it sticks out to me when the author goes out of his way to change around subjects to get some variety into his sentences.

Tenses are still my biggest problem. Most of the time I feel like I'm just shooting in the dark. And fucking commas, how do they work?

So, any thoughts on that ScummVM series idea?

@LethalKi11ler: Glad you liked it. I was a bit worried that people would read it and think that I'm a self-important douchebag who's just out for some backhand bragging about his Bastion rank. Which might or might not be true. Also, I gut bumped to rank 51 :(

@AlisterCat: I think the eloquentedness is a bi-product of learning a second language. Somewhere between school-taught English and reading books, I can't really get a feeling for what's casual and what's not. I noticed that non-natives make less your/you're, there/they're/their mistakes because they view it less as a sound and more like a sequence of letters. I have been thinking a lot about this stuff. Maybe my OCD is not just gaming related.

You cried? I stopped reading after that...

Yeah, to be honest I didn't realize you were a non-native English speaker until you pointed it out. I think your writing is fine and definitely wouldn't mind reading a series on some good old SCUMM games.

Bastion is on my docket of games to S-rank. Just have to get that last damn achievement in Limbo and then I can dedicate some more time to Bastion.

@SpaceInsomniac said:

@CoinMatze:

If you want an example of horrible writing, and some awful video game journalism in general, read this: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=438687 I'd say you're already better than that guy, and he's apparently written for Electronic Gaming Monthly.

And holy shit is that some horrible writing. I couldn't get past the fourth paragraph.

@CoinMatze said:

@SpaceInsomniac: And fucking commas, how do they work?

My English professor used to say "If in doubt leave it out" :)

What I learned in my recent translation class is that Americans supposedly use more commas than the British. Personally, I hate commas. I'm German and our sentences all but drown in them (also as Ryan once pointed out: too many syllables^^)

On topic: I did a 10 idol run as well. Built the shrine at the start of NG+ 'cause I was unsure if I would get enough XP for Lv10 by just playing without them. Eventually, I disabled them for the final part because I kept dying and thought to myself "why am I making this hard?".

While it might seem a little discouraging to have no reward after you beat the game that way (except maybe a good leaderboard rank), I wouldn't have liked it if there had been some sort of achievement "forcing" me to finish the game with 10 idols turned an the whole time. The way it is now, the difficulty is completely of your own choosing and I like that.

You cried? I stopped reading after that...

I beat all of it with all 10 except for the last level. I wanted to finish up the weapon challenges I had, so I took off the idols, then forgot to put them back on.

@Redbullet685: I'm not sure that the idols are on during the challenges. The peckers don't drop grenades during the bellows challenge, the windbags don't move faster during the cannon one, pincushions die in one hit... What's your rank and score?

@DeF said:

My English professor used to say "If in doubt leave it out" :)

What I learned in my recent translation class is that Americans supposedly use more commas than the British. Personally, I hate commas. I'm German and our sentences all but drown in them (also as Ryan once pointed out: too many syllables^^)

That's how I operate at the moment. Still, I have to fight that urge to comma off every part of the sentence that as new verb. Now guess where I am from. I don't think our senctences drown in them. I think it's all very logical. But I also think s/ss/ß-rules are logical.

If you ever feel like giving those 10 Idols another shot try using the mortar (damage) and pike (knockback, ignore armor) combo. Worst enemies on the last levels are the stinkeye spawners. But you can just let them spawn the max number then bunch up the small ones, line up the spawner and stinkeyes so that the former is right in front of you. Then poke it til it dies. Ura with lots of health can just be pushed off the platforms with the pike. Mortar hits rattletails even if they are underground. Oh and if you walk around with your shield up it will lock onto targets before most enemies can even spot you. The last few levels ended up being some of the easiest for me. But peckers, man. Those damn peckers.

@SpaceInsomniac said:

@CoinMatze:

If you want an example of horrible writing, and some awful video game journalism in general, read this: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=438687 I'd say you're already better than that guy, and he's apparently written for Electronic Gaming Monthly.

Well, that was pretty dumb. Wikipedia's Skyrim entry has all that information in one paragraph. To his credit though, he has a bigger vocabulary than me and uses more elaborate sentence structures even if it all sounds very forced. Maybe I'm missing something here.

@Redbullet685: I'm not sure that the idols are on during the challenges. The peckers don't drop grenades during the bellows challenge, the windbags don't move faster during the cannon one, pincushions die in one hit... What's your rank and score?