When comparing Super Meat Boy vs Bastion, the Slant community recommends Bastion for most people. In the question“What are the best singleplayer games on Steam?” Bastion is ranked 40th while Super Meat Boy is ranked 79th. The most important reason people chose Bastion is:
Bastion is a game about exploring floating islands while destroying monsters along the way. The combat is simple, fast, and it's a lot of fun to destroy monsters with a variety of weapons. This includes a machete, pistols, a pike, a carabine, and even grenades. You can also equip two weapons at the same time, allowing you to use cool combinations like hammer and a machete or a cannon and a mortar. Each weapon also has upgrades and unlockable skills, giving you new methods for destroying monsters. All of this makes Bastion stay exciting for a long time.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Play through iteration is fast
When you die, you spawn quickly to try again. Many games draw out the death, and have to reload. Super Meat Boy immediately re-spawns you so you waste no time.
Pro Forgivingly tight controls
The addition of a "run" button adds a lot of depth to levels, keeping the run-jump-repeat loop more interesting. The characters have acceleration as well, which demands finesse.
Pro Large number of levels
This is not a game you are going to complete in an afternoon. With 240 levels scattered across 7 worlds there is a lot to play in the game.
Pro Unique visual style
As is typical of Ed McMillen's games, it looks like nothing else out there. The art style is 2D based but heavily unique with a vector graphics cartoony look.
Pro Fun varied gameplay
Bastion is a game about exploring floating islands while destroying monsters along the way. The combat is simple, fast, and it's a lot of fun to destroy monsters with a variety of weapons. This includes a machete, pistols, a pike, a carabine, and even grenades. You can also equip two weapons at the same time, allowing you to use cool combinations like hammer and a machete or a cannon and a mortar. Each weapon also has upgrades and unlockable skills, giving you new methods for destroying monsters. All of this makes Bastion stay exciting for a long time.
Pro A unique way of storytelling
While the central plot is pretty simple, Bastion has a narrator that comments on everything that you do. This includes things like falling of a ledge, obtaining a weapon, or even destroying a massive monster. Because of this, it feels as if you're playing through a story book, where your journey and actions is the central story.
Pro Beautiful art style
Bastion uses a hand-painted art style for its characters, monsters, environments, and even backgrounds. There's so much color, detail, and variation in everything, it feels like you're skimming through a picture book. It's always exciting to see what this game will show you next.
Pro Incredible soundtrack
Bastion's soundtrack expertly sets the atmosphere with its soundtrack. From somber blues songs during touching story moments to exciting trip-pop mixes during combat. It's just so nice to listen to, making the experience of playing Bastion better as a whole.
Cons
Con Cut-scenes lack polish
Between the games gameplay are cut-scenes that fill the player in on the evolving story, sadly the artwork and polish for these cut-scenes shows quite a bit that this is an indie game made by two people as they are a bit unrefined.
Con Combat can feel repetitive
Like most hack and slash titles, Bastion's combat is very simple, having you mash buttons in every monster encounter. This probably won't bother you as much during short play sessions, but the longer you play in one sitting, the more tiresome it becomes, especially if you already have all the upgrades and don't have anything else to do between levels.