Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet and game animation
Aug 4, 2011 19:30:00 GMT -5
Post by kitten on Aug 4, 2011 19:30:00 GMT -5
So, I nearly completely avoided this one on account of it's insanely stupid name (a rule that has served me well for never buying NIS games, among other crap aimed at mongoloid man-children), but after Matt said in the IRC that a review made it look fun and that it was "like Metroid," I went ahead and gave the demo a shot. I honestly had nothing better to do, and if it was horrible, I'd at least have something to complain about.
The demo really struck me just right (although the percentage of completion I had gone through in just the demo did make me nervous about the final product), and I went ahead and plunged the points on it and jumped immediately into playing for quite a few hours last night, finishing it up this morning. I was in the mood for an easy game where you just screw around in a giant environment, and this easily tickled the spot.
While initial screenshots and short video clips I had seen from the game led me to believe it was another "Limbo" (i.e. incredibly lazily in aesthetics, but praised because of them, anyway), it ended up certainly not being the case. While a few tricks were used to compensate for obviously not being able to do everything by hand and frame for frame, the game comes off as very aesthetically pleasing and has quite a bit of genuinely talented animation rather than constantly relying on silly "I just learned how to animated in flash" maneuvers.
Watch this trailer for the upcoming Ray-Man game -
Notice how many cheap tricks are used in the animation. The fairy narrating at the beginning hardly has any separately drawn frames, she merely undulates. Her hair doesn't ever animate naturally, despite being blown in the wind, the already created image is just dragged and stretched as a lazy solution to an alternative that would require actually doing something. When Ray-Man grabs the mushrooms, they just bend and wobble. When he and his partner smack the giant made of rock, the giant in no way moves, segments on him just vibrate. The fly at around 1:30 only has one frame, and its movement is just through the picture being unnaturally stretched about.
This is lazy and ugly. The worst example is when you get to what is supposed to be the most impressive moment in the trailer, the giant pink boss. Again, it's just a single frame that wobbles about. The tentacles on it animate in the laziest way, they just jiggle on the segments they're attached to. This is cheap, trash animation. It is worse than a flash cartoon made for no profit seven years ago. Seriously, watch the original Bitey of Brackenwood short. Even when the little thing makes the fart noise, at least the animator puts in the effort to draw an additional frame for the snout vibrating rather than just have it waggle unnaturally.
Compare the rock giant in the Ray-Man trailer to the rock giant in this one. Notice how this one genuinely moves, rather than just having segments vibrate around. When it opens its mouth, it doesn't just have a mouth segment fall down, there's real animation and effort put into the animation of that sprite. This game is 18 years old. Watch to the end of the video and see the detail put into him falling apart, it's almost decadent. Then watch the stone giant again in the Ray-Man trailer. It's extremely embarrassing, by comparison, and watching animation deteriorate so far in recent years has been awful. Watch how several frames of animation go into just having a submarine turn around in the level, too. The fact art like this has died out while lazy bullshit like Ray-Man gets praise all around from slack-jawed imbeciles is maddening.
If you're going to use cheap animation, at least do something with it. My Little Ponies: Friendship, a runaway hit cartoon for girls that was placed on a fairly small budget manages to do far more in a single episode than Ray-Man will have done in its entire game.
Now, take a look at Limbo -
This is meant to be one of the more impressive moments in the game and an intimidating opening, but it just reeks of incredibly lazy animation. The protagonist - and anything in the game with more than one segment - animates like an ugly marionette. Split up into a bunch of segments that don't change, but rather just bend, curve or pivot in unnatural ways. This game was praised for its unique visuals, but there's nothing more than a stark black and white contrast with incredibly lazy, amateur-level marionette animation (oh and I guess some rudimentary background art with a bunch of filters).
Putting segments on top of each other like that isn't impressive, and neither is animating them. This is why South Park is able to create an episode so quickly and why it's able to create so many. It's because the animation is fucking cheap. You spend a small amount of time creating the segments, then you just move them around. In the same time it takes to create these segments for one creature, you would have one static frame in another more genuinely well-animated work. Perhaps not even that, given the segments in Limbo are entirely black and require very little attention to detail.
Why people attribute such stellar compliments to Ray-Man and especially Limbo is nearly beyond my imagination given how lazy they are (I'll admit Ray-Man at least has some inspired designs and backgrounds, but the animation is about as good as Plants Vs. Zombies, which was made on a shoestring budget). Anyway, I've derailed from Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet quite a bit, so I'll get back to that, I just wanted to touch on that other subject for a bit.
Check out the original trailer for ITSP:
Unfortunately, almost none of this actually made it into the game for some reason. A few things in it stayed somewhat the same, but zero percent of the level design is in the final product and many elements shown here were removed entirely. This trailer is still very impressive, though. The next trailer, however -
actually demonstrates a great deal of the game's content. While you still see some cheap animation techniques - such as the giant spider-thing having the marionette-esque animation with a bunch of segmented limbs and there being a several things that "stretch," rather than having new frames drawn for them - those tricks are used in a much more appropriate way to fit in the game's environment rather than contrast against it to the point of it looking ugly. The planet really feels alive, and the game's use of Dimmu Borgir and ambient sounds really compliments that (Limbo's audio relied far too heavily on just having noises go on without anything really reaching to player's emotions or sense of wonder).
There's also a good deal of genuinely detailed animation with multiple frames, and the stark contrasts the game uses are much more impressive than the boring black and white of Limbo. I'd borderline call ITSP an "art genre" game. It's really beautiful, at times, and always has you eager to get to the next area just to look at it. Rather than use modern, "shortcut" animation techniques as a crutch, it uses them to realistically do as much one could do when creating a game like this. They bring out the rest of the beauty in the game, rather than flatly being all that there is.
As far as actually playing the game goes, it's a little bit "like Metroid" (notice how that phrase will immediately inspire interest in so many gamers, myself easily included) in that you are exploring one gigantic, inter-connected area. You control a space ship with one stick on the controller, then control whatever tool you have selected with the other stick. However, I wouldn't place this game within the genre of "twinstick shooter" for a variety reasons, one of the biggest of which being I found myself using the other tools far more than shooting, both in and outside of combat.
The game's play design shines best in its clever puzzles and the variety of tools (I believe there are 8 or so) you have your disposal to solve them. Extremely few boss fights involve simply just "shooting the core," and many require a fair bit of wit for you to come out on top of things, as well as a familiarity for how your tools work. While the solution to what you're supposed to do usually becomes apparently fairly quickly (they're not very difficult puzzles), it's really impressive how cleverly implemented the tools are into the boss fights and how each boss plays very differently from the last.
ITSP is never difficult, but mostly because it doesn't need to be. Each time you figure something out or find a new item, you feel rewarded enough to want to continue through to the end. The challenges mostly amount to minor mental hurdles, but it keeps your mind awake and the new scenery is something you're constantly anticipating. You don't play this game for a challenge, you play this game because of the narrative it has, told through its inspired visuals, atmospheric audio and inventive puzzles.
The game's opening starts with you on your recently invaded home planet, and with confused allies reacting to a disaster suddenly sprung upon them. There are a lot of subtle, context-sensitive moments that make you feel more isolated as you press on, and by the time you land on the Shadow Planet, you truly feel both alone and as though you are your people's last hope. It does this all in a very "video game" way, which is sure to resonate with all the gamers out there that remember their first journey into SR-388.
Rather than conveying its story through text, ITSP is like Metroid in that the story is meant to be told through the game's ambience. If you enjoyed Limbo at all, there's a much richer experience to be had, here, and fans of the classic Metroid games will probably find a lot to enjoy. Comparing it to the Metroid series, I would most closely compare it to the second installment, largely because both games' planets give you a deep sense of isolation as you travel deeper and deeper within them.
Although there are scattered upgrades to collect, they're mostly useless (armor can come in handy, but doesn't upgrade that highly, and you barely use the blaster enough for its upgrades to matter at all), and the game has more of an emphasis on the sense of accomplishment from finishing a puzzle than it does from collecting power-ups and scaling your way up into something indestructible. Sure, the trinkets are nice, and there is a small bit of occasional backtracking (which is rarely forced), but you're always wanting to press forward.
All-in-all, if I didn't think ITSD was a good game, I still believe I'd consider it an important one. It's clever use of an ambience-driven narrative combined with its strong artistic value make you wonder why more games aren't doing this, and why so many independent games are so... bad. Rather than setting art in games back like Limbo did (check out its wave of copycats, sometime, and how budget titles have been looking worse since its release), it raises the bar and pushes things forward. It sets a new sort of standard for games like these, and I hope it gathers the popularity necessary for people to actually start caring, rather than just falling for lazy shortcuts.
It's a really good game, if a bit short (I probably finished it around 5-6 hours, and I really take my time in doing everything when I play games like these), and I'd have to recommend it to fans of exploratory games, or fans of art like this, in general. Its price is a bit steep at $15, though, especially given its gigantic warning sign link to "downloadable content" on the start screen, so I'd say to give it a fair bit of consideration before you plunge in. It's definitely worth $10, though, so if you see it on sale, don't pass it up.
The demo really struck me just right (although the percentage of completion I had gone through in just the demo did make me nervous about the final product), and I went ahead and plunged the points on it and jumped immediately into playing for quite a few hours last night, finishing it up this morning. I was in the mood for an easy game where you just screw around in a giant environment, and this easily tickled the spot.
While initial screenshots and short video clips I had seen from the game led me to believe it was another "Limbo" (i.e. incredibly lazily in aesthetics, but praised because of them, anyway), it ended up certainly not being the case. While a few tricks were used to compensate for obviously not being able to do everything by hand and frame for frame, the game comes off as very aesthetically pleasing and has quite a bit of genuinely talented animation rather than constantly relying on silly "I just learned how to animated in flash" maneuvers.
Watch this trailer for the upcoming Ray-Man game -
Notice how many cheap tricks are used in the animation. The fairy narrating at the beginning hardly has any separately drawn frames, she merely undulates. Her hair doesn't ever animate naturally, despite being blown in the wind, the already created image is just dragged and stretched as a lazy solution to an alternative that would require actually doing something. When Ray-Man grabs the mushrooms, they just bend and wobble. When he and his partner smack the giant made of rock, the giant in no way moves, segments on him just vibrate. The fly at around 1:30 only has one frame, and its movement is just through the picture being unnaturally stretched about.
This is lazy and ugly. The worst example is when you get to what is supposed to be the most impressive moment in the trailer, the giant pink boss. Again, it's just a single frame that wobbles about. The tentacles on it animate in the laziest way, they just jiggle on the segments they're attached to. This is cheap, trash animation. It is worse than a flash cartoon made for no profit seven years ago. Seriously, watch the original Bitey of Brackenwood short. Even when the little thing makes the fart noise, at least the animator puts in the effort to draw an additional frame for the snout vibrating rather than just have it waggle unnaturally.
Compare the rock giant in the Ray-Man trailer to the rock giant in this one. Notice how this one genuinely moves, rather than just having segments vibrate around. When it opens its mouth, it doesn't just have a mouth segment fall down, there's real animation and effort put into the animation of that sprite. This game is 18 years old. Watch to the end of the video and see the detail put into him falling apart, it's almost decadent. Then watch the stone giant again in the Ray-Man trailer. It's extremely embarrassing, by comparison, and watching animation deteriorate so far in recent years has been awful. Watch how several frames of animation go into just having a submarine turn around in the level, too. The fact art like this has died out while lazy bullshit like Ray-Man gets praise all around from slack-jawed imbeciles is maddening.
If you're going to use cheap animation, at least do something with it. My Little Ponies: Friendship, a runaway hit cartoon for girls that was placed on a fairly small budget manages to do far more in a single episode than Ray-Man will have done in its entire game.
Now, take a look at Limbo -
This is meant to be one of the more impressive moments in the game and an intimidating opening, but it just reeks of incredibly lazy animation. The protagonist - and anything in the game with more than one segment - animates like an ugly marionette. Split up into a bunch of segments that don't change, but rather just bend, curve or pivot in unnatural ways. This game was praised for its unique visuals, but there's nothing more than a stark black and white contrast with incredibly lazy, amateur-level marionette animation (oh and I guess some rudimentary background art with a bunch of filters).
Putting segments on top of each other like that isn't impressive, and neither is animating them. This is why South Park is able to create an episode so quickly and why it's able to create so many. It's because the animation is fucking cheap. You spend a small amount of time creating the segments, then you just move them around. In the same time it takes to create these segments for one creature, you would have one static frame in another more genuinely well-animated work. Perhaps not even that, given the segments in Limbo are entirely black and require very little attention to detail.
Why people attribute such stellar compliments to Ray-Man and especially Limbo is nearly beyond my imagination given how lazy they are (I'll admit Ray-Man at least has some inspired designs and backgrounds, but the animation is about as good as Plants Vs. Zombies, which was made on a shoestring budget). Anyway, I've derailed from Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet quite a bit, so I'll get back to that, I just wanted to touch on that other subject for a bit.
Check out the original trailer for ITSP:
Unfortunately, almost none of this actually made it into the game for some reason. A few things in it stayed somewhat the same, but zero percent of the level design is in the final product and many elements shown here were removed entirely. This trailer is still very impressive, though. The next trailer, however -
actually demonstrates a great deal of the game's content. While you still see some cheap animation techniques - such as the giant spider-thing having the marionette-esque animation with a bunch of segmented limbs and there being a several things that "stretch," rather than having new frames drawn for them - those tricks are used in a much more appropriate way to fit in the game's environment rather than contrast against it to the point of it looking ugly. The planet really feels alive, and the game's use of Dimmu Borgir and ambient sounds really compliments that (Limbo's audio relied far too heavily on just having noises go on without anything really reaching to player's emotions or sense of wonder).
There's also a good deal of genuinely detailed animation with multiple frames, and the stark contrasts the game uses are much more impressive than the boring black and white of Limbo. I'd borderline call ITSP an "art genre" game. It's really beautiful, at times, and always has you eager to get to the next area just to look at it. Rather than use modern, "shortcut" animation techniques as a crutch, it uses them to realistically do as much one could do when creating a game like this. They bring out the rest of the beauty in the game, rather than flatly being all that there is.
As far as actually playing the game goes, it's a little bit "like Metroid" (notice how that phrase will immediately inspire interest in so many gamers, myself easily included) in that you are exploring one gigantic, inter-connected area. You control a space ship with one stick on the controller, then control whatever tool you have selected with the other stick. However, I wouldn't place this game within the genre of "twinstick shooter" for a variety reasons, one of the biggest of which being I found myself using the other tools far more than shooting, both in and outside of combat.
The game's play design shines best in its clever puzzles and the variety of tools (I believe there are 8 or so) you have your disposal to solve them. Extremely few boss fights involve simply just "shooting the core," and many require a fair bit of wit for you to come out on top of things, as well as a familiarity for how your tools work. While the solution to what you're supposed to do usually becomes apparently fairly quickly (they're not very difficult puzzles), it's really impressive how cleverly implemented the tools are into the boss fights and how each boss plays very differently from the last.
ITSP is never difficult, but mostly because it doesn't need to be. Each time you figure something out or find a new item, you feel rewarded enough to want to continue through to the end. The challenges mostly amount to minor mental hurdles, but it keeps your mind awake and the new scenery is something you're constantly anticipating. You don't play this game for a challenge, you play this game because of the narrative it has, told through its inspired visuals, atmospheric audio and inventive puzzles.
The game's opening starts with you on your recently invaded home planet, and with confused allies reacting to a disaster suddenly sprung upon them. There are a lot of subtle, context-sensitive moments that make you feel more isolated as you press on, and by the time you land on the Shadow Planet, you truly feel both alone and as though you are your people's last hope. It does this all in a very "video game" way, which is sure to resonate with all the gamers out there that remember their first journey into SR-388.
Rather than conveying its story through text, ITSP is like Metroid in that the story is meant to be told through the game's ambience. If you enjoyed Limbo at all, there's a much richer experience to be had, here, and fans of the classic Metroid games will probably find a lot to enjoy. Comparing it to the Metroid series, I would most closely compare it to the second installment, largely because both games' planets give you a deep sense of isolation as you travel deeper and deeper within them.
Although there are scattered upgrades to collect, they're mostly useless (armor can come in handy, but doesn't upgrade that highly, and you barely use the blaster enough for its upgrades to matter at all), and the game has more of an emphasis on the sense of accomplishment from finishing a puzzle than it does from collecting power-ups and scaling your way up into something indestructible. Sure, the trinkets are nice, and there is a small bit of occasional backtracking (which is rarely forced), but you're always wanting to press forward.
All-in-all, if I didn't think ITSD was a good game, I still believe I'd consider it an important one. It's clever use of an ambience-driven narrative combined with its strong artistic value make you wonder why more games aren't doing this, and why so many independent games are so... bad. Rather than setting art in games back like Limbo did (check out its wave of copycats, sometime, and how budget titles have been looking worse since its release), it raises the bar and pushes things forward. It sets a new sort of standard for games like these, and I hope it gathers the popularity necessary for people to actually start caring, rather than just falling for lazy shortcuts.
It's a really good game, if a bit short (I probably finished it around 5-6 hours, and I really take my time in doing everything when I play games like these), and I'd have to recommend it to fans of exploratory games, or fans of art like this, in general. Its price is a bit steep at $15, though, especially given its gigantic warning sign link to "downloadable content" on the start screen, so I'd say to give it a fair bit of consideration before you plunge in. It's definitely worth $10, though, so if you see it on sale, don't pass it up.
