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Bastion: Two Pistols and a Squirt

    Hey, everyone. I have been sitting on the porch, this late summer evening. The cattle are bellowing, over on the hillside. It is in the low 80's and very nice. I have a glass of iced tea, my I-Pad and ... a Squirt. That's right. A Squirt is a being. It looks like a big drop of dark ink, with eyeballs. On a good day, they'll just spin if you tap them. Sometimes a group of them will attack you. Then again, if you have a certain potion, they will follow you around like love-sick puppies, with little red hearts hovering around them.
    Well, you guessed it. I am playing the latest hot game on the app store called Bastion. I splurged on this $4.99 game for several reasons; chief of which is the fact that I was told that I would not get stuck on it and waste my hard-earned dinero, like many of the premium games. This seems to be true, as I have played it for several hours and made steady progress. If you are not a highly skilled gamer, do this at the beginning. Tap the upper right of the screen, then you'll see a row of icons along the bottom of the device. There is a box with a hammer and a wrench. Don't touch it!!! Just kidding, dude, tap it. On the next page scroll down with your finger until you see the box that says "Infinite Lives". Tap it. An 'X' will appear in the box.
      Now, on with the review. Wow, how shall we begin? This is an RPG, or Role Playing Game. Additionally, it is a bit of a shooter game, but just a little bit. It reminds me of the game called Bullet Time. I like it fairly well. It is worth the money, I think, but it has possibly been a wee bit over-hyped on the reviews. I really like the voice guide of your mentor, who talks you through the journey. This voice-over probably helps swell the size of the file, which is a hefty 500 MB or so.
   Your character, a youngster, lives a long way from Earth. He is a kid whose world has been destroyed. That world is now being rebuilt, presumably with your help. Worldbuilding is normally a little above my pay-grade, but I was willing to give it a try. Ha, ha.
    The character lives and moves on strange, floating platforms that sail around above an abyss. As he walks, the platform is extending outward to accommodate him.
    You have to fight. You find and use weapons and metals, potions and many other things. You build some structures, like a Forge, in which you can produce other weapons. You also build a distillery, to make different odd concoctions like Dreadnought. A fine pick-me-up after battling Squirts or Wraiths or whatever all these things are.
    As in most games of this type, there is a variety of weapons, which work better or worse than others depending on the situation. For my use, I have two dueling pistols with unlimited ammo, plus the occasional run with a Caeledonian Hammer. You travel around this ill-fated world via a Skybridge. This device teleports you to varied sites which hang in the sky. In each one, there are dangers and rewards. For instance, I just found this old dude who is a survivor of the disaster which destroyed this place to begin with. I brought him 'home' to Bastion, where I am building my stuff. Did he thank me? Not so much.
    Most of the places I go have a Core. I believe that these are chunks of the original planet which have the power to partially rebuild my world. I'd like to have a few of them to use on the world's economy, after the Oil companies got through with it. At any rate, I am collecting the cores and building stuff, drinking odd drinks and getting in the occasional scrap with odd creatures who hate me without a cause. Yet, because of my iron character, I shall persevere. Justice will prevail. Bastion will be rebuilt. And, with a little bit of luck, my trusty Squirt and I can parlay our efforts into a gilded throne from which we can rule these peons of this place called Bastion.
    I'm CE Wills, future ruler of this place.

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