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If you aren't playing Supergiant Games's amazing RPG adventure Bastion, you're missing out. Beyond its much-vaunted reactive narrator, amazing voice acting, and beautifully told story — with more narrative elegance than most games, films, or anything else you care to mention (and probably think too highly of) — Bastion has a sound mechanical base.
Combat — Bastion's core — works well and is highly customizable, both in how you approach its challenges (the weapons, skills, and passive abilities you equip) and how you choose to manually raise that challenge (activating idols that power up enemies and give you greater rewards). Every new stage gives you some new mechanic to play with, some interesting hurdle to overcome, some compelling something that thoughtfully builds on Bastion's solid foundation.
It's clear Supergiant took time to perfectly tweak your player character's movement, from simple walking to the careful steps taken while aiming a bow or rifle. Speaking of weapons, no two are quite alike, all have a purpose, and there's value in damn well near every combination. Every weapon can be customized, adding raw damage, secondary effects, and more. Secret Skills, the powerful but limited special abilities, are similarly varied, some tied to a specific weapon, some not. You will find at least one, and likely more, combination to suit your tastes.
Framing the gaming goodness is the aforementioned artful narrative, and it touches every aspect of the game. Walk out of the armory with a new combination of weapons and the narrator, with his husky, sexy man-voice, will have some observation about said combo. Invoke an idol, stock a spirit in the distillery, use a new weapon a bunch, kill a lot of a specific enemy, demonstrate some impressive feat — the narrator talks about it all. It's never intrusive, relays tons of information about the world and its isms, and coats the solid mechanical Bastion chicken in delicious artsy gravy.
If Bastion was a full-priced disc release, it likely would have failed, because it's hand drawn and not what either America or Japan wants out of their mainstream releases (violence for the former, mindless grinds for the latter). But I'd have paid $60+; getting it for $15 — or less depending on platform and/or deals — is a steal. There's no reason not to buy and play the hell out of Bastion. Get to it ASAP.
Carlos Alexandre is a self-described handsome fat man. He ponders his entertainment, and you can find said ponderings on both his website and the podcast he co-hosts.