Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

INSANELY TWISTED SHADOW PLANET
Platform: Xbox Live Arcade
Publisher: Microsoft Studios

Michael Gagné did a series of MTV shorts called Insanely Twisted Shadow Puppets, and now he's done the visual design for a video game. (He's also done other stuff. Check out his website!) I've been pumped for this one since I saw the first trailer, which makes the end result a bit of a disappointment because the final game contains few, if any of the gameplay elements the initial trailer hinted at, but I like this one enough to just review it on its own terms, so enough of that.

ITSP is a sidescrolling progressive-map-unlock game of the genre established by Super Metroid, except you play a small flying saucer so you can fly freely from the start, and never have to wonder when you'll find the double-jump unlock. The story is… I guess you're like an alien researcher or something, only an evil spore hits your sun and turns it into a big dungeon planet, and so you go off to fix that. The tutorial level is set on your homeworld, and the rest of the game is set in the big sprawling shadow planet itself. There's no text so the story is just a framing device for why you're a flying saucer exploring a big evil cave system.

It is, first of all, visually imaginative in a way not normally seen in video games—all big patches of black contrasted with stark reds, greens, and blues. I love the way it looks. Much of the backgrounds are dynamic, too, with little waving tendrils everywhere.

It is, secondly, generally well-designed in gameplay, except for the homing missiles, which actually caused a friend of mine to put the game down and stop playing. I shall explain the weapon upgrades as context for this criticism. You start out with a little gun, then you get a pincer-arm you can use to play with the physics engine or grab enemies and smash them into environmental hazards, and later on you get a big saw blade, a laser, a directional shield, etc.. One of the weapons you get is a missile, which you can directly control after you fire. Once you get this you'll start encountering missile mazes, where time slows down and you direct the missile to a target. These are too long and too hard, and not sufficiently well-introduced. I was great at them because some other game, I don't remember which, used a similar mechanic a couple of years ago, so I had the reflexes developed already, but my friend who does not play games for a living said the first missile maze felt like the sort of thing you should get after a long series of much shorter, simpler mazes to introduce the concept.

Other than the missile mazes I think the game plays very well, though. Sorta Geometry Wars-y − one analog stick moves you around, the other directs where you shoot/scan/shield/saw/grab. I love Geometry Wars and I love Super Metroid, so the whole thing is win/win for me.

It does seem too short. I mean, there's not quite enough gameplay variety or implied narrative here to support greater length than it has, so it's about as long as it can be (the last level has to introduce a gimmick, a lantern you drag around to light up the area and short out electrical circuits, to avoid feeling repetitive), but even so, at the end I was left wanting more. That may count as praise or condemnation, depending on how you look at it.
Oh, and there's a multiplayer mode where up to four players travel down a long corridor dragging the lantern from the final level, while being pursued by a giant monster. It seems neat.

Overall it's a worthwhile purchase. 1,200 Microsoft points, or about fifteen bucks. I can think of $15 meals I've enjoyed much less.

STEPHEN LEA SHEPPARD