My exposure to Bastion was a pure example of how I typically stumble upon my favorite games. I saw early footage on this website in 2010 and I quickly forgot about the game for about two years. If it isn't on sale and a known quantity, I can wait. It went on sale on Steam in the summertime, as games do, and I bought it. After having a lot of fun playing through it a couple of times, I found the Building the Bastion series of video interviews that spawned out of a Happy Hour episode. All of that not only made me appreciate the game more, but also wish I'd paid more than $3.99 for it. Since then I've felt like I owed Supergiant at least ten bucks. $10

Hey, when Transistor was announced I should have pre-ordered it. It looked so artsy and feminine, plus I was busy playing DOTA 2 every single day. After not pre-ordering the game, like anyone else would, I ignored the game completely for a year until it was free on the PS Plus list for February 2015. At the very least I'd say that month alone justified my subscription right there. You had Rogue Legacy, Thief, Apotheon, Yakuza 4 and Transistor all in the same month. A quick look at that list initially made me think "Meh, Transistor must be pretty average because those other games aren't amazing." but that'd be crude as shit to say because after playing all of them, they're all totally worth paying for. It kinda sucks to think that the biggest issue I have with playing video games is that I can never pick what to play next and I have hundreds of games I haven't played yet. The way I saw it, in these privileged times of plentiful free video games I still owed Supergiant at least twenty five bucks. $25

I mean it might have taken me two and a half years to give Transistor a chance but I don't blame my glorious wealth of video game backlog. I blame my hilariously limited human cognition. >>Here<<.

I played Apotheon first when it came out, its a metroidvania where you're constantly smashing pots and stuff. Great game. At some point I bought a copy of Transcendence, a 2014 movie where Johnny Depp uploads his consciousness to an ever growing computer hive mind capable of uh, killing people and such. I don't think I even bothered to think about Transcendence until I'd finished Transistor this week. It was also a sort of love story the same way Transistor was, but without the Elysian fields ending for both sides. The real payload of the Transistor itself, a sword that collects the consciousness of the people it kills, as a story device is that no matter how many souls it devours it retains it's place as that soothing voice in the protagonists ear. As much as I'd like to deep dive into interpreting Red's journey, all of the persistent mercy killings and eventual suicide, but I feel like the story was simple enough to interpret in a broad way. The same way I could an artsy animated science fiction film. You're a superstar hotlady singer in a cyber neon future, your boyfriend gets impaled with a sword and his soul enters it. It tells you to go kill those that are responsible and save the world. You vanquish the leader of a terrorist group and then stab yourself to death with the sword to join the others. I don't care about a game's overall story arc as long as the moment-to-moment banter is good. The Bastion style narration goes a step further and is simply Red's significant other's voice with a script almost all to himself outside of some recorded messages.

My first three hours with the game weren't thrilling, I think the combat options aren't introduced fast enough within the story. My bloodthirst for robot souls was being slowed down by the dreamy, trip-hop soakedness of it all. The deadly computer sword's voice was so sexy, so calm. I didn't get into it because it was slow and I wanted to play Dark Souls III instead. Alright so I picked up back up last week and just decided to see it through, the average playthrough is about ten hours so it was never a big commitment to make. The combat system opens up the more you encounter enemies in the game, I almost wish they would have allowed you to grind out levels so you could create build-outs with every Function you have available. Transistor has the bones of an old CRPG crossed with something like Parasite Eve when it comes to combat scenarios. The combinations of functions as main attacks/techniques was interesting to play around with but I felt like there wasn't enough time spent in combat to explore everything. The various challenges in the challenge room/chill lounge unlock songs from the soundtrack while testing use of combat functions, it is a fun way to see variation but would have been nice to just put those challenges within story progression. I just wanted like five more hours of combat instead of having to replay the game's story again. Transistors visual style, fairly deep combat system and ultra-chill soundtrack all add up to a great game. Come to think of it I actually bought both versions of the soundtrack (Extended is far better) for free, so I owe Supergiant at least ten bucks less. $15

That's it. I owe Supergiant at least fifteen dollars. Whatever happened between loving Bastion and not buying Transistor that lead me to get the game for free admittedly had me avoiding the game. Not for guilt of not paying for it, free shit is great, but something about getting the game for free had me feeling like it was worth less compared to the games I was paying for at the time. Duh. I'm not trying to showcase what an entitled game enthusiast I am capable of being but rather suggest that a free tag on video games almost leads to great experiences being overlooked or considered less 'special' than they actually are. Transistor didn't need to be free on PS+. This isn't the first time this has come up either, I've been ignoring a free copy of Hyper Light Drifter for a full year. Shouldn't I have some sort of guilt for the perceived 'lesser' gems that slip by? or at least embarrassment for the gluttonous hoarding of digital experiences around me? I hate when I'm five years late for an awesome movie, tv show, or book and somehow it feels even worse when you miss the hype surrounding a video game. Talking about Transistor in 2017 is still worthwhile, but what shocked me even more than the ending of the game, where Red kills herself to be with everyone else, was that I experienced a sort of post-mortem fear-of-missing-out for not knowing how great Transistor was for three years. I think the game is good enough to warrant the anxiety.

Naturally the way I'll deal with the guilt and anxiety that comes from having too many video games the same way that any healthy person would: Pre-order Supergiant's Pyre. Which is obviously some kind of MOBA crossed with Basketball featuring Dogs and Goats that read Books, from what I can see in the screenshots. Not only does that make up for not paying for Transistor, but it makes sure I'll be forced to complete it out of sheer compulsion to get my money's worth. It'll also be a pretty good game judging by the other two they made. I dunno, does anyone else kind of shrug off or devalue the loads of free games they get every year on XBOX games with gold or PS Plus? $0