Parents' Guide to Transistor

Transistor gets off to a fast start, thrusting players into an engaging story without so much as even a title screen. Set in a beautifully rendered quasi-futuristic world complemented by a lovely score driven by soft, meandering vocals, it makes for a memorable sensory experience. And it has action to match, thanks to an innovative time-stopping mechanic that lets players occasionally pause the real-time combat and plan out their attacks in advance, adding an appealing element of strategy.

Unfortunately, this promising and original adventure is partially undone by the story's stubborn resolve to remain cryptic. Although it's captivating to start, the narrative proves obstinately vague and even confusing, relying too much on the player to search out and read long blocks of text buried within the game's menus to learn crucial plot and character details. Complicating matters is the techno-babble dappling the combat system. It forces players to wade through layers of unintuitive jargon-laden terms and descriptions. Luckily, battles are generally easy enough that most players should be able to push through without too much trouble, even if they're having difficulty understanding it all.