Gettin' a little Dust-y

In theory, I should have been cleaning my kitchen yesterday, but I had a little virus infestation decide otherwise for me (the biological sort, not the technological sort).  Still, for all I wasn't moving from my couch, I wanted to do something more "active" than watch golf on TV, so I fired up one of the XBox360 games I picked up on sale recently, a little title called Dust:  An Elysian Tale.

Dust is... well, I think the term I've heard most often for this sort of game is a "Metroid-vania" game, which involves platforming and beat-em-up elements, as well as the acquisition of new tools/powers throughout the game that allows you to access areas of the map that were previously inaccessible.  These features support the telling of a story, often of the "save the kingdom/world from a menacing, evil power" sort.  In the case of Dust, it starts out with the title character, Dust, waking up in a forest with amnesia, where he is shortly joined by a floating, talking sword and the sword's supposed guardian, a small flying creature.  In short order, the trio runs into monsters attacking a village, and the "save the village, before going on to save the world" story is set.  Except... you find out, in dealing with the first "boss" in the game, that everything isn't so black-and-white.

What I've seen of the story so far is surprisingly good, if you allow for a little heavy-handedness in the foreshadowing (I'm about a third of the way in, and I'm pretty sure the "big reveal" towards the end will involve Dust being a revenant of one sort or another).  The voice acting is pretty good, the graphics and animation are top-notch 2D (assuming you don't have any issues with anthropomorphic animal-people), and the controls are, mostly, decent.  As far as how I like it overall, so far... well, in spite of feeling poorly when I started in the early afternoon, it wasn't until nearly midnight that I managed to finally put the controller down.  I'd say it's easily worth the $15 they want for it regularly, and even more so if you can catch it on sale again.