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An Animated Discussion About Movement In Video Games
Kuribo's Shoe
Kuribo's StockingNorth PoleRegistered User regular
Kuribo's StockingNorth PoleRegistered User regular
so I was playing GTA, and there's this juggler at the cabaret. and man, that is probably the best animation I've seen in a video game.
It got me to thinking about animation in games in general. It's something that most people don't take much notice in unless it's exceptional or awful. That said, what are some examples of good (or bad) animation in games that you can think of? I'll list a few to begin.
AKI Wrestling Games
This engine's been used on a ton of wrestling and rapper wrestling games, so I couldn't really just name one, but this engine's always been the definitive wrestling engine for me. The animation of the moves was a little over the top, but always very satisfying.
Mark Of The Kri
Oh man, this game. So beautiful, and nobody really played it. Everything was animated. Your character would even stop to put their sword away before they climbed a ladder. The art style helped a lot, too.
Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time
I don't think you can have this discussion without mentioning this game. The combat, the exploration, everything was beautiful.
as for bad animation, well, let's just say every Mortal Kombat game ever.
Discuss?
It got me to thinking about animation in games in general. It's something that most people don't take much notice in unless it's exceptional or awful. That said, what are some examples of good (or bad) animation in games that you can think of? I'll list a few to begin.
AKI Wrestling Games
This engine's been used on a ton of wrestling and rapper wrestling games, so I couldn't really just name one, but this engine's always been the definitive wrestling engine for me. The animation of the moves was a little over the top, but always very satisfying.
Mark Of The Kri
Oh man, this game. So beautiful, and nobody really played it. Everything was animated. Your character would even stop to put their sword away before they climbed a ladder. The art style helped a lot, too.
Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time
I don't think you can have this discussion without mentioning this game. The combat, the exploration, everything was beautiful.
as for bad animation, well, let's just say every Mortal Kombat game ever.
Discuss?
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too bad that was the only good thing about it, wakka wakka
Truth in the lies, or some such. It's really hard to explain.
all the ones with reality driven art design for characters just aint there because they still don't move like real people
the mocap games tend to be the best of those bunch, I guess. FFXII was good in that area
ICO/SOTC.
They basically make you feel exactly like the character you are supposed to be in control of, and give you a lot of feedback.
so I'll say they're good, but more procedural stuff is cooler to me, like (the other game I haven't played called) assassin's creed, and ico and SOTC.
yeah people lifting their foot up to step on a rock ot putting their hand out when near a wall gets me off.
and that is amazing to watch, not to mention hilarious
Xbox : gunst4r
And although I haven't played it, from the videos that I have seen Ratchet and Clank: Future looks to have some really amazing animation. It looks kind of like an interactive Pixar movie.
The game itself went pretty unnoticed however, likely due to the horribleness of it's predecessor.
For good animation I'll go to 3d fighting games, where that's pretty much all they do. VF5 and DOA4 are amazing, animation-wise, especially VF5. Soul Calibur 3 is pretty good, too, and 4 looks like it'll be even smoother. The one place most 3d fighters break down is in the way characters of different sizes interact. A grab animation was often the same against a small character as it was against a large, and that could look strange sometimes. VF5 has gone a long way to fix that.
I've yet to see many games that can do starting and stopping well. Always so jerky.
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I've been playing Dreamfall and the animation in that game is atrocious. Really speaks good about the storyline becuase despite the game's flaws, I kept playing, but that's another thread. Anyway, the characters are stiff when they move, they don't stand very naturally, it's all very disorienting.
But when it works, it works so that you don't really notice it. The way Wanderer runs. How he interacts with Agro. How skilled he is with his bow in contrast to how he clumsily swings the sword. It speaks volumes about the character without there being a word of dialogue referencing those things. When I first played the game I was cringing as he was being flung around trying to hold onto the first colossus. One of the flying colossus, the eagle looking one, has incredible animation for it wings. Such a magestic creature...
LoL - Renon DeSaxous
Also, Geralt's combat animations in The Witcher are pretty well-done. They're appropriately graceful and flashy and fast, but when it seems appropriate, they look kind of stilted and awkward. Not in a "this is badly animated" sort of way, but in a "that move looks difficult to perform" sort of way. I suppose it helps that all of his moves were motion captured.
It's the little things, like how Drake flinches when bullets hit his cover, or how he starts breathing heavily after running for a while, or how he starts breathing heavily while running and ducking away from the bullets coming at him and damn, i just love how it all comes together.
Ratchet and Clank Future had some pretty good animation, for different reasons. It wasn't all super realistic and awesome, but they basically nailed "playing a pixar movie". Every character was brilliantly expressive.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
aye. not only is his in-game movement flawless and unpredictable, the motion capture is amazing. it's hard to go back to watching cutscenes where you can tell that the voice over and animation were done completely separately - which is a shame, because hardly any other games do it. there's such a cohesiveness of gesture and voice that it makes regular game animation look like a gangly puppet-show
The drunken walking in GTA is meant to be comically overdone, I'm sure. But it's still a little too over the top. I half expected Roman to say "we can't stop here, this is bat country."
I had the same reaction to the juggler scene, and almost all of the animations in GTA IV. The mo-capped stuff and the Euphoria stuff is top notch.
The Metal Gear Solid series also has some stellar mo-cap work.
I also really like the older, rotoscoped games, like the original Prince of Persia or Out of This World/Another World. They both looked fantastic then, and the animation helps them hold up even today.
PSN ID : Xander51 Steam ID : Xander51
So great, and so much character.
Twilight Princess has some of the best facial animation I've ever seen in a video game. It's stylish, detailed, expressive, and extremely well animated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_YYRVk5ur4
if the video doesn't load, click on the link above the box
Also, so friggin tough.
that's just, like, your opinion man.
PSN ID : Xander51 Steam ID : Xander51
Agreed.
Demoman, Heavy, Spy, Soldier, they all walk just like i want them to.
I love how if you're holding down the sprint button he just CHARGES through doors.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
.......
Anyway, here's my list of games with really stand-out animation (to me). In no particular order...
Sly Cooper. The way he slinks up lamp posts, the way his bushy tail twitches and he looks about with sharp alertness... it's seriously incredible - Sly is a game designed for children, and I can't wait to play the next one on my PS3. I love watching him leap into the air, do a backflip and a 360 spin before landing on a power line.
Okami. None of the characters are particularly detailed in Okami, but with little touches of wonderful animation a huge amount of personality is brought forth. Watch the little boy dressed as a warrior strut proudly about Sei-An City and tell me I'm wrong.
Hitman. The first time I saw 47 tighten his fiber wire in Silent Assassin, I was hooked. Prior to Blood Money, the Hitman series never pushed any console graphically, but the incredible attention to 47's context-sensitive actions (leaping between balconies, pulling the shotgun out of the box of flowers) and stealth kills more than made up for it. I can't wait to see what they do with the property on the new-gen systems.
God of War. This may lose me some cred, but hear me out. It never goes for realism, but only SoTC and ICO can beat Kratos for showing character through animation. Kicking doors open, the mighty heaves to lift gates, the way it slows for a half-second before he slams down with a flying Plume of Prometheus... The animation itself isn't on par with Sly, but every choice was made not with the question of 'how would someone do this?" in mind, but "how would Kratos do this, and what can I do to show his brutality, or his strength through it?"
Odin Sphere. This game gets a ton of props for its beautiful 2D sprites, but the attention to detail in the animation is seldom mentioned. Watch Alice pick up the cat or flop down on the chair in the attic and open a book, and tell me it's not wonderful animation. Little touches fill the game, from each characters' unique feeding habits (Mercedes, the young queen of the Faeries licking her fingertips after a nosh is fucking adorable!) to the way the liquid in your potions slosh about. If it had been a static image of a potion with some green liquid, it would have been perfectly acceptable - but they weren't satisfied with good enough.
Metal Gear Solid (the first one). There's no denying the phenomenal production values of this series, but upon playing the Essential Collection a few months ago I found myself remembering the first time I played it, and just being blown away by how lifelike the guards were. It wasn't that the graphics were mindblowing - but it was the first time I'd seen a 3d enemy move like a human being - and it was incredible.
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All the other ones I can think of have already been mentioned earlier in the thread. Ico & SoTC, absolutely. Ratchet & Clank is excellent, GTA IV and of course Prince of Persia (and Assassin's Creed). I've been playing through The Orange Box lately and it can't be overstated that you should look at Alyx when she's talking to you - you suddenly care about what she's saying. "They're like... Combies. ...get it?"
All through Half Life 2 (prior to getting to the episodes) I couldn't get why people were so attached to Alyx - then I got to the end and realized I cared about her way, way more than I thought I did. Smooth, Valve! Very smooth!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSzDVMfWYxY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUIIktUuf0Y
I've never played it, and I hear it sucked, but god damn is that nice animation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKc0qGR1yZI
So true. I loved it but for the awesome acrobatics and platforming (which is why I assume most people love it), certainly not for the incredibly tedious and uninspired combat.
All of the cabaret and comedy club stuff in GTA4 is motion capture. It's not animation at all.
So is nearly everything in skate, Gears of War, Uncharted and Assassin's Creed.
Motion capture is just easier and looks better to do these days.