Review: Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

Price: 1200 Points

Castrum - Two reviews in one day? I know, I can't believe it either. Here goes:

PRESENTATION

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet's (ITSP) story is pretty simple: some parasitic lifeform takes over its parent world, infects other nearby planets, and then, at the start of ITSP, fires off a colony of parasites to infect and devour the star of our protagonist's home planet. The infection spreads from there to said planet, and so begins our journey. It is up to Nameless Protagonist In A Ship to save his planet and its star from the same fate as the other consumed worlds. This is all told wordlessly in cutscenes that are expertly drawn and animated, something I particularly enjoyed.

There are a series of bosses you must fight in ITSP, each unique in its own regard. Some fights were interesting, others meh, but all were certainly fitting.

Needless to say, the art itself is a masterpiece. A beautiful Samurai Jack-esque art style combined with a few flourishes of originality lead this game to looking like quite possibly the most unique game of the year.

As for ease of use, it is a given in a game as polished as this.

GRAPHICS

Well, again, it goes without saying that this game has spectacular graphics. The art style alone is memorable and noteworthy, but the cleanness and beauty of the graphical implementation itself is flawless. Whether in still frame or in motion, it's just beautiful. I really can't praise these graphics enough to do them justice.

SOUND

Dimmu Borgir, a band that my buddy Joe loves (Contributor #2 here at Save Point), allowed the developer of ITSP to utilize their more epic pieces for both teaser trailers as well as in-game music. Personally, I wish the music was a bit more prominent during gameplay, as it all sounds a bit empty, but overall it's not too bad.

The sound effects are quite good, and suit the gameplay well. No complaints.

GAMEPLAY

ITSP isn't the longest game, but in that relatively-short timespan, you will experience a very fun and addicting game. I myself was hooked from the moment I began to play it until I had finally beaten the last boss after dying several times.

I should mention that ITSP does have a 4-player multiplayer co-op mode, called Lantern Run. It's possible to play this solo, but it's incredibly hard. I played about 40 seconds of it before dying on solo, so I can't speak for its quality, though it seemed like it could be fun.

You fly around in a little UFO thing that attains gadgets it can use for various tasks as the game progresses. The "meta" gameplay is very much like Shadow Complex or Metroid, but on a shorter, smaller scale: the game map is big, but not huge, and you'll explore all of it quite easily. For those who have never played the aforementioned, it can basically be summarized as "lots of backtracking" and "open exploration concept", however in ITSP, the game pretty much forces you down certain paths, even more so than other similar games.

As you progress, you will attain gadgets that you can use to assist you against enemies and bosses. These include a Laser weapon that is good for mowing through swarms, a Grabber Arm useful for latching onto things, and an Energy Shield. The variety is quite good, and you can assign up to 4 to "Hotkeys" (i.e. the face buttons A, X, B, Y). This is quite handy, though I do wish they had allowed the D-Pad to be utilized in addition to or in place of this, as there are more than 4 gadgets you'll be wanting to use regularly. One gadget in particular that is very useful is the Scanner you start the game with: when you scan enemies and notable terrain, just like in Metroid Prime, it will let you know their weaknesses or what you need to use.

Scattered throughout the world are Artifacts and Concept Art pieces, the first of which awards an Achievement for finding all 18 of them. If you keep an eye out, these aren't hard to find, and certainly provide a secondary set of goals for the player, particularly with regards to backtracking.

In addition to this, there are upgrades littered around the map for your main gun and your ship's defenses. The first of these is found early on, but the others require map exploration, as each needs 3 or 5 (for 2nd or 3rd upgrade) pieces for completion. This also awards an Achievement.

ITSP has some few puzzles that require a bit of thinking, as well as boss fights that aren't straightforward and predictable in nature. Usually I find this kind of stuff to be annoying, and requiring me to go look up solutions on Google, but for the most part the answers were quite intuitive. A few I had to think about after a liberal bout of swearing and frustration, but nothing too notable.

One thing I should note is that, when you die in ITSP, you simply restart from your last save point. You don't lose anything, and enemies stay dead, though bosses will reset. Some hardcores will be BAWWWWWWWWing about this I'm sure, but for me it was welcome.

One of the few flaws of ITSP is that when the camera zooms out or there are lots of enemies on-screen, the game suffers from slowdown. Nothing crippling or annoying, but certainly noticeable. As well, when zoomed out, unless you have a big TV, it will be difficult to see where your ship is sometimes.

ETC.

One thing of particular note that bothers me is that, in making ITSP, they seem to have had to cut a lot of cool things they had shown in the trailers and preview pics (one instance above), as well as a few elements of the game (such as the Samurai Jack-esque explosions). Hopefully this stuff makes it into a sequel.

SUMMARY

ITSP is a fantastic game, though it is fairly short. Would I say I got my money's worth? Probably. Maybe 1200 Points is a bit high, but for the polished nature of the product as well as the beautiful art design, I would say it's worth it. There are no recycled areas, and the gameplay does shift well, depending on what weapons are required as well as what section of the game world you're in (I note in particular, the Electrical Zone). Overall, I would say ITSP is a worthy Summer Of Arcade title in the same vein as Castle Crashers and Shadow Complex, and thus, I am rating it a Buy with a value of 85.

Achievements - 170/200
Hours Played - Probably around 8 hours
Game Completed - Yes

My Rating - 85 (Buy)