Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

Renzatic on 19/7/2009 at 18:45

One of the things I've always thought tragic about modern videogames is that more time is spent making things shiny than on animation. With all the horsepower we have available nowdays, we should be seeing high res 2D games with enough frames of animation to make even the highest budget cartoons blush. Other than the rare title here and there, we haven't seen much done in this regard. Even the beautiful high res 2D indie games we get still don't do much more with their characters than what we've been seeing since the SNES.

Then I saw (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclusive-extended-insanely-twisted/52779) Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.

The art is nice. More of that late 90's Nickelodeon cartoon slash silhouette style we've been seeing alot of recently. Reminds me a bit of Invader Zim for some odd reason. But what really caught my attention was how fluid and smooth everything moves onscreen. Even if the game were to suck completely and utterly (which doesn't look like it will, if you like shooters), I'd still enjoy it just for the amount of TLC put into the animation.

I have no idea when it's coming out. From the looks of it, it'll be sooner rather than later. But no matter when, I'll be there to grab a copy the day it arrives.

EvaUnit02 on 19/7/2009 at 18:50

BWAHAHAHA DIMMU BORGNIR. One of the most hilarious Black Metal bands around (they also suck).

Renzatic on 19/7/2009 at 18:51

I know about all of jack and shit about death metal, but I thought the music fit the trailer pretty well. As long as they keep the duurr hurr grrr rarr vocals out, it might make for an alright soundtrack.

EvaUnit02 on 19/7/2009 at 18:55

Quote Posted by Renzatic

Not Death Metal, Black Metal. It's like the latter except taken to even sadder (read: more hilarious) extremes. Like what Creed and Nickelback are to Nirvana and Soundgarden.

Renzatic on 19/7/2009 at 19:05

Yeah, I've heard a bit before. Dunno by who or what. All I know is it sounded like some guy hocking up escargot after smoking 5 packs of filterless the night before in front of chuggachuggachugga drums and a halfassed string orchestra.

Ain't exactly my thing, but I'll give the guys who did the music for the trailer some benefit of the doubt since it went so well with what was happening onscreen.

Koki on 19/7/2009 at 19:12

Quote Posted by Renzatic

With all the horsepower we have available nowdays, we should be seeing high res 2D games with enough frames of animation to make even the highest budget cartoons blush.

a) The horsepower is focused on 3D, not 2D
b) With 2D you're forced to draw each and every single animation yourself, as opposed to coding dead simple 'move this from x to y in t'

P.S. The music is okay.

Sulphur on 19/7/2009 at 19:19

Well, hell. It's been a long time since I could say this, but I'd get this just because it has some of the most delicious eye candy I've seen in a game.

Renzatic on 19/7/2009 at 19:24

a) The two are interchangeable. If you've got enough power under the hood to do decent 3D art, you've got more than enough to do something even more grand for 2D. Basically, just a shit ton of ram and a graphics card capable of displaying large high res images. Stuff that's been standard in even the cheapest computer for years now.

b) You can use a good 3D package like Max or Maya to do 2D animation. Specially so with simple silhouette art like we're seeing in the trailer above. All you have to do is make an appropriately high res model, make it wiggle and move much like you'd do with any 3D model, and render the end result out as an image.

I could imagine a few bits and pieces were done the old fashioned hand drawn way, but I'd be greatly surprised if most of the work wasn't done with some help from a modeler.

Muzman on 19/7/2009 at 20:17

I don't know why games couldn't be built in some real-time Flash-esque vector system fairly regularly. It's that what World of Goo does? (maybe it gets a bit heavy when you zoom in and out like in that video. I don't know)

Anyway, it's a cool clip. And Dimmu Borgir are OK in small doses, where the small doses are the Wagnerian breaks around the song. It's cool OTT stuff that'd make a great movie soundtrack ((http://www.trailerfan.com/movie/hellboy/trailer) to wit. I do tend to skip through them when the song part starts though).

june gloom on 19/7/2009 at 20:55

Quote Posted by EvaUnit02

BWAHAHAHA DIMMU BORGNIR. One of the most hilarious Black Metal bands around (they also suck).

God, they suck so bad. I enjoy black metal, don't get me wrong- from OGs like Darkthrone (and they're turning into a punk band) to newer, conservatively-dressed bands like Anaal Nathrakh, but holy fuck Dummy Burger suck.

The music in the trailer was okay- fitting, even- but did they really need Dimmu Borgir to achieve that? Did they really need ANY black metal band to achieve that?

Personally if we're going to have metal bands doing music in a game like this, I'd want to see somebody like (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoJjzpH3Ylc) Earth, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUAhfyMf59s) Isis, or (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0i7hRUoD_c) Devin Townsend. Someone who understands the value of understatement.