In the years after "Bastion" was released, fans were left to wonder: What if Bastion was a girl? With the new sequel "Transistor," Super Giantgames answers this question with a resounding "yes!"

In it, you play as an unnamed red-haired girl known only as "R," a professional singer who is forced to turn to professional humming after her voice is stolen by the Yakuza. The object of the game is to thwart the evil robot gang that is trying to take over the city.

Bastion's dad, who has been uploaded into a USB drive, helps her fight crime with powerful magic spells. "Dungeons and Dragons" players will be delighted to see familiar faces such as Lightning Bolt and Charm Monster. His USB enclosure leaves a trail of circuitry behind as you walk, reminiscent of the Disney cyberpunk film "Tran" (hence the title, a portmanteau of "Tran" and "sister").

Veteran Bastion players will notice two things right away: First, that the loading times have improved a great deal. Gone are the days of waiting for the ground to load at the last second as you're walking toward it; it is now all preloaded when you enter the level. Second, that the difficulty curve picks up where Bastion let off and ramps sharply upward from the get-go, offering a great deal of additional challenge, and requiring almost inhuman reflexes and quick-thinking strategy to survive even the earlier encounters.

There is, however, an unfortunate glitch where pressing [RT] causes the world textures to glitch out and the whole game to lock up. I presume this is because it was the "special move" button in Bastion's engine, but this game doesn't have any special moves to assign to it. This can be a frustrating experience when it happens in the heat of combat. Hopefully this can be fixed in an update patch.

In the end, we are left with many new questions: What if Transistor could talk? What if Transistor was a guy (a ”Tranbrothor," if you will)? Perhaps these will be left open to interpretation, but maybe we will be lucky enough to see the developer round out the trilogy and tie up all the loose ends.

★★★★★