SuperGiant Games were always going to have a tough time following up one of the downright coolest games of all time in 2011's Bastion - a tale of 'a boy and his hammer' that's narrated by one Logan Cunningham, a man with a voice so cool his beads of sweat don little trilbies and blacked-out shades. Cunningham returns again in Transistor, this time as the titular blade, a talking sword of sorts that's picked up by mute singer, Red, to which the two of them set off investigating exactly what happened leading up to the night they met. It's very high concept stuff that surrounds the isometric Diablo-style combat, but one of the most genius things SuperGiant do is make the story itself unlockable, intrinsically tying it to how you wield the Transistor itself. As you travel through the lands you'll come across different programs you load into the blade, and it's through assigning them to one of three different positions - in relation to a heap of others than also sit alongside - that unlocks more passages of the story itself to read and take in. It helps that at any time you can pause combat and program in a string of attacks, the execution of which sees Red dart across the battlefield taking everything out in a blur of pixels and light-streaks - something that hasn't been done effectively since little-known PS2 fighter Alter-Echo. The only way you'll figure out what's going on in this techno sci-fi world gone awry is by ensuring you play with the most variety possible, and that in of itself is one of the best innovations seen in gaming for a long time.
