The darkness is coming. Over the celestial horizon you can see it growing closer, shattering planets as it approaches. The Shadow Planet spews a thoughtless thorny globule towards a star, and it engulfs it. The resulting nova showers the terra around you with darkness. Your only option is to defend yourself and your planet using your small, but highly upgradable UFO.
These are the first few beautiful scenes of Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. The first thing that stands out is the visuals. All of the art is provided by Michel Gagné, acclaimed for his role as the lead artist for the movie The Iron Giant. His contribution shows; the visuals flow like there’s a current to them, highly contrasted between the dark foregrounds and the brighter, yet muted backgrounds. The introductory cinematic is made all the more poignant through the complete lack of dialogue or narration. This is an approach that continues through the remainder of the demo, and likely the retail version as well. The soundtrack, though there was a limited representation in the demo, showed itself well.
The transition between the opening cinematic and the first moments of the demo are quick, but not seamless, though I was told by Gagné that by the time the finished product is shipped, there will be no stoppages between gameplay and cinematics. At the beginning of the demo only two tools were at my disposal: the scanner and the claw. Pressing the right bumper brought up a radial interface where different gadgets could be selected, with nine slots in total available.
Once I took control of the UFO, I was put to the test to use the first two tools at my disposal: the scanner and the claw. Scanning objects does what you might imagine, giving you a better idea of what you can do with those objects. More specifically, it tells you which of your handy gadgets will best interact with what you’ve scanned. The claw, a grabbing mechanism positioned on a flexible arm, was mostly used for altering the environment: grabbing and moving boulders or enemies. More often than not, this was to solve puzzles using the environment, whether it be clearing a passage sealed by rocks or weighing down half of a fallen tree in order to expose an otherwise blocked path. The only part of either of these tools was the fact that the claw was not bound by physics, while much of the environment was. I was again told by Gagné that this was something that would be corrected. Poor physics or not, the claw was quickly used to expose a passage to retrieve the first new weapon, the blaster. A basic attack weapon, the blaster was used to clear paths as well as in defense.
Only one other weapon was available in the demo, a saw blade which was on a hinged arm, similar to the claw. It easily made minced meat of rocks and smaller enemies in my path, but, as far as the demo was concerned, it served no other purpose.
After gathering all my power-ups, it was time to face the boss. By now I had forgotten where I was and where I needed to go from there. Pressing the back button brought up the game’s map and I was immediately struck by its similarity to that of a pause screen from a Metroid game. Individual squares marked sections of the map I had explored as well as my overall goal for the area. It’s unclear how this will appear in the final game, though. One interesting thing that was mentioned to me is the fact that you will be able to make “notes” on the map. Remember those old Metroid playthroughs: sitting with the GameFAQs walkthrough already printed out so you knew all those sections you needed to come back too? That will be made much easier using the map in Shadow Planet, where you will be able to mark areas of hindrance for later. This function wasn’t available at the time, so I continued on with the original task at hand.
With my bearings returned, I began and, rather quickly after that, completed the boss encounter. Overall, it was simplistic, though artful, akin to the rest of the demo. However, it did reinforce my hopes for the game. As a 10-minute demo, it did just about everything right. Keep Shadow Planet on your radar until its release this summer.
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