Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Dust: An Elysian Tail


Dust almost feels like an unintentional call to arms. An Elysian Tail was developed primarily by one person with a lot of talent and a presumed love for the period of animated movies that Disney wants you to forget about. (The period of talking animals as protagonists and no princesses for which to be profiting off of at your local Disney Store.) Whether or not the source material connects with you is perhaps irrelevant when faced with the idea of this guy wanted to make his dream game, and then damn sure made that game. If this guy can almost single-handedly make a more refined action platformer than most of what’s on the market right now, what’s stopping any of us?

Right now, an installer for Unity sits on my desktop, mocking me, daring me to make something that doesn’t have zombies in it. One day...you'll see!

The dream game from developer One-Really-Talented-Man is a side-scrolling Devil May Cry-ish action game with loot, large worlds and female animal characters that have curves. Our protagonist has everything a person with a button nose can ask for; a sweet hat, convenient amnesia, a talking sword, an aviary female companion wearing nothing but the wide hips she was born with, and the ability to perform air combos for days without dirtying your feet with the ground soil. The story revolves around said hero using all of these assets for his leisure, to save the world from an evil general that seems to discriminate against anything that doesn’t have a cute button nose.

I wouldn’t say there’s anything profound about the narrative in Dust, other than that the production values are eerily slick. Watching a sword float back and forth in space, glowing as it presents calm, sage wisdom from its metallic memory allows one to quickly take for granted that this is a $15 game! There are voice actors that say lines. There is music that sounds like it could have been played on instruments. Characters alternate between advancing their serious plot forward and making a mockery of the fourth wall. There are actually animated cutscenes! I had a hard time making a game where still images of fruit teleports around the screen. The passion that One Developer Guy has for animated movies and Castlevania’s hiding of chicken within the walls is very much apparant.

Meanwhile, the action comes fast, furious and vision-obscuring once you take control of Dust. The combat in this game takes cues from Devil May Cry, The Dishwasher and anything else that is the opposite of realism. You attack enemies, knock them in the air, magnetically jump at them regardless of gravity’s opinion on their place in the air, and perform hundreds-of-hits combos. Then your semi-sexualized partner Fidget hurl spitball projectiles that can be transmogrified into flurries of explosions that are just as good at dazzling your sights as they are blocking your view of that lone goon’s next attack. So the skill part of Dust-fighting becomes a matter of knowing when to bob, weave and throw a wave of fiery Armageddon at those poor animal adversaries.

Meanwhile, you obtain loot, because every game must now have loot. (There’s also a level with zombies in them, so that checkbox gets reluctantly checked off too.) You don’t get to see Dust wear the loot; don’t be silly, he would never change out of that sweet hat. But you very much notice the effects of equipping different pieces of equipment. Your attacks get noticeably stronger, enemy attacks get noticeably softer, Fidget becomes more and more of a menace to society. Backtracking previous areas becomes a joy as you slaughter those early world enemies with relative ease, while accruing still relatively decent experience points. When you level up (because all games must also have an experience system) and invest a skill point in health, attack, defence or Fidget’s hips, you notice the improvement immediately.

And you become eager to test out your newly empowered creature as you go treasure hunting. Civilians in towns give you quests of varying degrees of absurdity. You get encouraged to explore every inch of the various, beautifully designed locales to open treasure chests containing gold, items and cameo appearances from assorted Xbox Live Arcade games. There are weird little hidden idiosyncrasies. One could be convinced that grinding towards the level cap is an obtainable and worthwhile goal. Even if you don’t reach the goal of making a virtual number bigger, you will collect plenty of supplies that you can transmogrify into loot at any given time by way of remote-control technology. Somehow this is a game that just gets so much right.

So hey, An Elysian Tail is worth overcoming any and all uncomfortable feelings you may have about animated animal characters and their relation to the subculture of furrie-sexuality. Hey, the female animal characters in Dust have human-like cleavage and curves. Some little kid is going to play Dust and develop a fetish for alternative mammals. Fetishism happens. Someone out there played Super Mario Bros and has an attraction to blondes with pink dresses and complete ditziness. The game’s vibrant style is unique in an industry riddled with generic war games and zombies games. (Even though there are zombies here too but, well, whatevs’.) Dust gets too much down right to be missed.

4 ½ stars