The idea behind the TouchArcade Game of the Week is that every Friday afternoon we post the one game that came out this week that we think is worth giving a special nod to. Now, before anyone goes over-thinking this, it doesn’t necessarily mean our Game of the Week pick is the highest scoring game in a review, the game with the best graphics, or really any other quantifiable “best" thing. Instead, it’s more just us picking out the single game out of the week’s releases that we think is the most noteworthy, surprising, interesting, or really any other hard to describe quality that makes it worth having if you were just going to pick up one.
These picks might be controversial, and that’s OK. If you disagree with what we’ve chosen, let’s try to use the comments of these articles to have conversations about what game is your game of the week and why.
Without further ado…
Transistor
One of the best things about the App Store is when an awesome game just pops up out of nowhere. This week brought the surprise release of Supergiant Games’ action RPG Transistor ($4.99), which released just over a year ago on Steam and PlayStation 4, and boy howdy is this game good. Not surprising, seeing as Supergiant are the creators of Bastion, one of the greatest games of all time. And Transistor very much feels like a distant cousin to Bastion in the best way possible.
You play as the protagonist Red and her trusty mega-giant talking sword Transistor. Like Bastion, there is a heavy emphasis on story, and the voice narration and music are absolutely top-notch and complement the incredible visuals. The default control scheme is a tap-to-move one, but if you prefer (and I do) you can switch over to a trusty floating joystick, which works just great. If that wasn’t enough, Transistor supports MFi controllers as well.
The really interesting part about Transistor is its combat. It’s a combination of real-time hacking and slashing and a sort of turn-based, tactical combat. It’s a bit hard to explain, but a member of our forums astutely compared it to the VATS system in Fallout 3. The turn-based portion is called Turn() and freezes the enemies on screen which allows you to queue up several attacks and then unleash them all at once. It’s wicked cool.
If you’ve never heard of Transistor but enjoyed Bastion, then this is a must-purchase. In fact it’s a must-purchase if you enjoy video games in general. It’s a premium game with no IAP, and honestly at $9.99 it feels like a total steal for how high quality the experience is. Just be sure you have some space on your device, as Transistor weighs in at a whopping 2.1 GB installed. It’s worth the space sacrifice and worth the price though, so check it out, and read up on some more impressions in our forums.
