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.
No comments:
Post a Comment