I felt like I had to write a piece on this new Xbox Live Arcade game, Outland. I just played the demo, and it was such an incredibly fresh experience. See this video:
Crazy art style, everything is so colorful and crisp that the game is like my eyeballs are eating rainbow sorbet ice cream. The story is very mystical and definitely fits with that tribal theme, and lets your eyes feast on the art design. The art is generally a tribal style, but it's prettied up with a bright color scheme and the tribal symbols are outlined with color and filled in with shadow in an almost Tron-like fashion, a very cool visual effect. The use of shadow and dark/light contrast is just aesthetically beautiful to look at...almost like I would love to dream in this color scheme.
I just played the demo for this, and the controls are extremely tight and responsive, making the platforming elements very intuitive to pull off. The camera work helps quite a bit too, I noticed the camera is always right there on you and really conveys the sense of movement so you know if you're running too fast, just short of a long platform jump, or if you're pulling off a wall jump correctly. I'm not even a huge fan of platformers, but the way the controls make you feel in this game, it just makes it fun and easy to pick up. Since I only played through about 40 minutes or so of the demo, I didn't really run into any gameplay mechanics that I thought were off the wall from a standard platformer, but I'll most likely update this a bit when I play some more.
I've noticed a lot of XBLA and downloadable console games in general are coming up with crazier and crazier art design to stand out, if, when it comes to videogames, all you're looking at is Mario, Sonic, and the like, you're really missing out. Braid, Limbo, and now Outland are some recent examples of ridiculous off-the-wall art design in their games.
Whoever thought up the visual concepts for Outland, please keep on making videogames! I think we're seriously entering into what might be the Golden Age of the small development studio. I might be able to understand why these games have limited commercial appeal, but these kinds of XBLA games that are off-the-wall are like those indie bands that nobody knows about that just have some ridiculously good ideas. These are the gems that are so different in a good way. We have indie movies that can provide a feast for the eyes or some crazy mind-bending plot twists, we have indie music that stimulates the ears, and now we have indie games that stimulate...all of the above, plus your imagination and intuition. It's a great time to be a gamer, and I'm pretty sure things will only get better from here.
Crazy art style, everything is so colorful and crisp that the game is like my eyeballs are eating rainbow sorbet ice cream. The story is very mystical and definitely fits with that tribal theme, and lets your eyes feast on the art design. The art is generally a tribal style, but it's prettied up with a bright color scheme and the tribal symbols are outlined with color and filled in with shadow in an almost Tron-like fashion, a very cool visual effect. The use of shadow and dark/light contrast is just aesthetically beautiful to look at...almost like I would love to dream in this color scheme.
I just played the demo for this, and the controls are extremely tight and responsive, making the platforming elements very intuitive to pull off. The camera work helps quite a bit too, I noticed the camera is always right there on you and really conveys the sense of movement so you know if you're running too fast, just short of a long platform jump, or if you're pulling off a wall jump correctly. I'm not even a huge fan of platformers, but the way the controls make you feel in this game, it just makes it fun and easy to pick up. Since I only played through about 40 minutes or so of the demo, I didn't really run into any gameplay mechanics that I thought were off the wall from a standard platformer, but I'll most likely update this a bit when I play some more.
I've noticed a lot of XBLA and downloadable console games in general are coming up with crazier and crazier art design to stand out, if, when it comes to videogames, all you're looking at is Mario, Sonic, and the like, you're really missing out. Braid, Limbo, and now Outland are some recent examples of ridiculous off-the-wall art design in their games.
Whoever thought up the visual concepts for Outland, please keep on making videogames! I think we're seriously entering into what might be the Golden Age of the small development studio. I might be able to understand why these games have limited commercial appeal, but these kinds of XBLA games that are off-the-wall are like those indie bands that nobody knows about that just have some ridiculously good ideas. These are the gems that are so different in a good way. We have indie movies that can provide a feast for the eyes or some crazy mind-bending plot twists, we have indie music that stimulates the ears, and now we have indie games that stimulate...all of the above, plus your imagination and intuition. It's a great time to be a gamer, and I'm pretty sure things will only get better from here.
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