Remember when Syd Mead and Ridley Scott told us the future would be a drizzly nighttime dystopia with flashes of neon? Remember how we all agreed for several decades that, yep, that’s what it’s gonna be like, all right? The bright color and quaint tilt-shift aesthetic of Tokyo 42 has other ideas.
I think I understand what tilt shift is when I see it, but is it anything more than an isometric perspective with perhaps some depth of field thrown in?
I'm not sure if that's the extent of the technique, but I know that's part of it. But the effect is to make full-sized things look weirdly like miniatures. It's probably some kind of Photoshop filter or something.
Played this over the weekend at Rezzed for about 10 or so minutes and it was delightful despite how early on it is in development. I particularly loved the little details, like some folks doing yoga on a rooftop or, if you spin the camera round just right, a naked couple through a small window, one lying on the bed and the other in the window smoking. Tokyo 42 seems to be to dystopian sci-fi what Splatoon is to post-apocalypse; that is, not clichéd and not miserable!
This releases soooooon. May 31st for PC and Xbone. PS4 at a later date.
***And I just noticed this was a front page article and not a game thread post, lol.
The link in the top post doesn’t work for me for some reason, the one that’s supposed to take me to the front page post.
Soooooooooooooon…
Yikes. Should have called it “Sensible Tokyo”.
For someone reason, this felt really dry. Like I couldn’t understand the context for what was happening.
That gameplay video is what happens when indie games with gorgeous animated .gifs hit the stark reality of long-form gameplay with user interfaces, objectives, and other ugly crap getting in the way of high concept visuals.
Which they occasionally recover from when you get to play it yourself instead of watching a video, but still.
I don’t doubt this will be viewed as heresy, but to these old eyes this just looks like a colorful Japanese ant farm.
Not heresy. I kept absent-mindedly rolling my mouse-wheel during the video, desperately trying to zoom in.
It looks like Postal in those Barbie World esthetics wrongly applied to Japan since South Park. I find this very disappointing.
But the TV cam at the beginning was nice.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
-Tom
Which part, that I’m getting old or that this looks like an ant farm? For the former it beats the alternative, for the latter it just means this one isn’t likely my cup of tea.
While this isn’t remotely related, I’m glad someone here mentioned State of Decay was on sale, I’ve binged 10 hours in 2 days and had a blast getting repeatedly dead. Probably died at least 4 or 5 times, so I’m awful and still great fun. I might well be forced soon to start over (but only if they kill every last one of us), I’m down to 5 survivors, so unless I find some survivors (aka canon fodder) soon my ineptitude will doom us all…really liking this one.
Seriously, brightly colored Japanese ant farm sounds like a blast. :)
Not just “ant farm”, but “colorful Japanese ant farm”! That is a big part of this game’s appeal. And I can’t imagine a videogamer who wouldn’t want to run a little dude around in a colorful Japanese ant farm. :)
-Tom
OK, then I’ll concede this much even though it still looks to me like I’d be squinting the whole time I’d be playing it, I’ll reserve judgement and await hearing what you think of it (assuming you’re doing a review).
“Best played on IMAX.”
So, got an email today announcing this launched, given the length of the game is not all that long I’m surprised someone hasn’t posted any reviews yet on steam?!