I didn’t get a chance to see Spine when 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:it was first shown during 🐽Gamescom last year, so I was eager to get my hands on it during last week’s Summer Game Fest. This ambitious action game from Cypriot studio Nekki aims to c༒ombine Batman: Arkham-style free-flowing combat with the cinematic flourish of classic Hong Kong action films like Hard Boiled and The Killer, as well as the American films they went on to inspire, like The Matrix and John Wick.
It’s cyberpunk Gun-Fu with an emphasis on expressive camera movements, and it was one of the coolest games I saw throughout all of Play Days. Spine still has a lot o𒉰f development time ahead of it, and it’s still fairly rough around the edges, but Nekki’s vision is clear, and if it nails down the tech, this is going to be a major🔯 evolution for the action genre.
Baba Yaga Comes To Gotham
I don’t know if it's good that John Wick has become the de facto example for the entire gun-fu genre, but at least it saves me having to describe a bunch of John Woo movies from the 80s (not that I’d have a problem with that). Gun-fu combat is a tightly choreographed ballet of ballistics and body blows, so as you might iꦰmagine, it’s not a very easy thing to represent in video games - at least outside of CGI cutscenes ( says hi).
Nekki has cracked that code, or at least is well on its way to doing so. While the version of Spine I played wasn’t technically flawless - some animations weren’t very fluid and the camera didn’t always do what I wanted it to - it’s easy to see where it will end u♒p given enough time, and it’s pretty damn impressive.
It starts with Arkham-style free-flow combat, which is already pretty impressive on its own, even 16 years later. Spine allows you the freedom to move around the room, chaining togethe💟r strikes, dodges, and shots as though the entire fight was scripted. In reality, it’s about the furthest thing from scrip🌱ted as you can get. That’s what’s always made Batman’s combat cool, and Spine does it even better.
Perspective Is Everything
Nekki’s big technical achieveme😼nt here is the way the camera emphasizes the action. The studio’s goal is to design the camera so that you never have to control it yourself, allowing you to focus on your inputs and let the camera naturally do the storytelling.
When it works, i🧸t's incredible. Every finisher is punctuated by a dramatic camera move that brings the focus in close and circles around your character to give you a real good look at all the ass kicking you’re doing. As you backflip and slide from goon to goon, kicking them to the ground before firing a glock point blank into their stupid faces, the camera effortlessly keeps up, sweeping back and𝔉 forth and spinning around like an experienced dance partner who knows how to let you take the lead.
Like I said, it’s not perfect yet, and for this experience to work, it has to be. Any little hiccup in that flow throws the 🃏entire thing off. If the camera gets lost behind a steel beam for a second, if your arm bends backwards unnaturally to shoot someone behind you, if every single second of the action doesn’t make you feel as cool as John Wick, the whole thing is ruined. Nekki’s ambition isn’t just about revolutionizing action games; it’s about creating a🎃n experience that really only works if it's flawless.
Brains, Brawn, And In Instinct To Kill
Aside from glitches, there are a lot of things Nekki stil🍌l wants to add to Spine that aren’t in the game yet. Game director Dmitry Pimenov tells me one of those things is environmental interactions. Eventually you’ll be able ꦜto slam enemies into walls or knock them over furniture, and of course, the camera will move to support that action.
The devs have a lot of great ideas for other ways the camera can become part of the 🎉action too. In one room, the camera pivoted to a bird’s perspective just as I crossed the threshold. I proceeded to shotgun blast every approaching baddie, sending them flying back with an explosion not unlike John Wick 4’s famous top-down one - an intentional homage, no doubt. Pimenov says there are more ways they’ll use the camera to do unexpected things throughout Spine. I can’t wait to find out what they have in mind.
If you want to see Spine make it acros🎐s the finish line, I recommend adding it to your ASAP. Shooters are a dime a dozen these days, but Spine has something truly novel to offer, and I really hope to see Nekki’s vision fully come to life. It’s close, but then again, if gun-fu was easy, wouldn’t we all be doing it?
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Spine
- Developer(s)
- Nekki
- Publisher(s)
- Nekki
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
- Steam Deck Compatibility
- Unknown
