Cinematic platformers

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Jnaz

Guest
I've always been fascinated by cinematic platform games from the original Prince of Persia (1989) to games like Another World (1991) and Flashback (1992). I love the attention to detail in trying to recreate realistic motion. Anyone else interested in the cinematic platform genre? Would love to hear some of your favorites in this genre.
 
J

Jnaz

Guest
I've also been doing research on the "rules" of a cinematic plat-former: human characters will have realistic proportions, unlike characters in (for example) Super Mario Bros.; the character animation is created by Rotoscoping; characters don't instantly stop moving or instantly accelerate to their maximum speed; and they cannot change direction in mid-air or falling.

I personally like the ones that emphasize level-exploration and puzzle-solving. I'd like to see this style of gaming come back; I posted in the collaboration forum if you had any interest in possibly collaborating, thanks.
 

❤️×1

Member
And what about modern ones? Beside Johan Vinet's Lunark, which is strongly reminiscent of Flashback, one could argue that Limbo, Inside or The Swapper are the direct descendants of the genre. And in between, the 2D Oddworld games, Abe's Oddyssey and Abe's Exoddus are classic representatives, so is the often forgotten Heart Of Darkness.

Same goes for your rules. Rotoscoping? Really? I doubt any technical approach could be part of a genre, but this one especially : it was only used for a brief period, when the artistic skills where unrefined and the CPU horsepower high enough to display high frame rate but too low to interpolate through states...
Rotoscoping was used in the early Disney movies, but this technique was totally forgotten once the 12 principles of animation were formulated. Same goes for rotoscoping in games : even Eric Chahi's next work after Another World, Heart Of Darkness, doesn't use it anymore.
 

RangerX

Member
And what about modern ones? Beside Johan Vinet's Lunark, which is strongly reminiscent of Flashback, one could argue that Limbo, Inside or The Swapper are the direct descendants of the genre. And in between, the 2D Oddworld games, Abe's Oddyssey and Abe's Exoddus are classic representatives, so is the often forgotten Heart Of Darkness.
I think you pretty nailed what the genre is. I agree with Limbo / Inside etc being the modern attempts.
In my parts we were calling that genre a "learn by death platformer" though.
 

Carnivius

Member
Always hated them myself as they often sacrificed control for animation and felt like every movement I was inputting was laggy as hell. Blackthorne was probably the one I liked the most out of them cos it had some decent sprite work and I liked the moving back into the shadows mechanic to avoid stuff rather than the not-so-realistic platform trope of having to jump over everything.
 
J

Jnaz

Guest
And what about modern ones? Beside Johan Vinet's Lunark, which is strongly reminiscent of Flashback, one could argue that Limbo, Inside or The Swapper are the direct descendants of the genre. And in between, the 2D Oddworld games, Abe's Oddyssey and Abe's Exoddus are classic representatives, so is the often forgotten Heart Of Darkness.

Same goes for your rules. Rotoscoping? Really? I doubt any technical approach could be part of a genre, but this one especially : it was only used for a brief period, when the artistic skills where unrefined and the CPU horsepower high enough to display high frame rate but too low to interpolate through states...
Rotoscoping was used in the early Disney movies, but this technique was totally forgotten once the 12 principles of animation were formulated. Same goes for rotoscoping in games : even Eric Chahi's next work after Another World, Heart Of Darkness, doesn't use it anymore.
Hi, I wouldn't discount rotoscoping completely, have you tried using it to create game animations? I think you bring up some good points but I beleive there is a certain "look" to the movement of rotoscoped animation that is difficult to replicate with traditional animation techniques
 
J

Jnaz

Guest
Always hated them myself as they often sacrificed control for animation and felt like every movement I was inputting was laggy as hell. Blackthorne was probably the one I liked the most out of them cos it had some decent sprite work and I liked the moving back into the shadows mechanic to avoid stuff rather than the not-so-realistic platform trope of having to jump over everything.
Blackthorne is a great example, good point too, it's important to keep a balance between the animation and game play avoiding that "lag" effect as much as possible is key, have you ever played old school Karateka? I think it had a good balance between realistic movement that did not interfere with game play
 
S

Steevo

Guest
Hi Steevo it's titled "Looking to build a team" under collaboration, thanks
Odd, I looked through all of your posts at the time and couldn't see it. I must be going blind in my old age. :D

[edit] Actually it was probably invisible in the moderator queue because of the YouTube link and your post count.

Not going crazy after all :p
 
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J

Jnaz

Guest
Odd, I looked through all of your posts at the time and couldn't see it. I must be going blind in my old age. :D

[edit] Actually it was probably invisible in the moderator queue because of the YouTube link and your post count.

Not going crazy after all :p
Glad it eventually showed up :D I didn't want to post it without the YouTube link since I think it helps a lot to see it, thanks for checking it out :)
 

flerpyderp

Member
Although they've already been mentioned, the first two Oddworld games were superb. I played through them last year and they were even better than I remembered. Great atmosphere and puzzles, and possessing sligs/other creatures never gets old. I haven't played the remake, but it looks great.
 
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