By Jim Rossignol on September 26th, 2008 at 11:40 am.
Is that even a word? Apparently so. And it describes the way that Damnation‘s levels have a good deal of height and vertiginous ladder-scrambling to them, as well as being the main theme for this most recent trailer. I have to say it’s a bit of a mixed bag: the environments do look incredible, and there’s some real thought gone into making the Steampunk Wild West theme as spectacular as it should be… and then the shooting just comes off as a bit limp. Nevertheless, it’s worth taking a look – Damnation has an agreeable amount of insanity to it.
26/09/2008 at 11:47 Mister Yuck says:
I dunno. I heard a couple of guys talking a whole lot about ‘verticality’ but I didn’t see anyone shoot at an enemy above or below them…
Also verticality is a stupid word.
26/09/2008 at 11:56 spd from Russia says:
cool stuff. Im not a big fan of climbing alone (liker tombrider)
but if they seamlessly blend platformer with shooter – It`d be cool. and look, its on the PC too !
26/09/2008 at 11:57 Aubrey says:
Portal’s developer commentaries keep talking about avoiding too much verticality, since it’s almost impossible to get players to look up or down for clues.
Might be a different case in a third person game, I guess?
26/09/2008 at 11:57 Meat Circus says:
Futon effect.
People wanting a shooter will be annoyed by the endless platforming. People wanting platforming will be annoyed by constant gunplay interruption.
Result: everyone’s a loser.
26/09/2008 at 12:09 Greg Wild says:
So it’s basically steampunk Prince of Persia?
I can’t help but feel they’ve neglected the combat (surely one of the most vital parts of any Wild West themed game?) in favour of platforming.
26/09/2008 at 12:44 Jigglybean says:
Actually combat is a lot of fun. Lots of action and you really do need to think about your next move too
26/09/2008 at 12:54 Radiant says:
The shooting mechanic [it fixes cars] looked a bit ‘hold fire till the other guy is dead because his lifebar is shorter then yours’ but I liked that they are aiming for something different.
What happens if you fall down?
26/09/2008 at 13:21 Okami says:
Even if “Verticality” is a real word, it’s still a stupid one.
26/09/2008 at 13:25 Yhancik says:
Looks like it could have been a potentially interesting game if it didn’t try to be a shooter.
I just hope that this “verticality” will translate to more than climbing/sliding/jumping.
26/09/2008 at 13:30 teo says:
Steampunk wild west makes me think about wild wild west with will smith
That’s not a positive thing
26/09/2008 at 13:31 Duncan says:
RE: “verticailty” – Crackdown says hi!
Too much brown for my tastes and while the large vistas shown looked quite large and impressive, I couldn’t help but notice the standalone / disjointed tower sections connected by obvious ropes.
Not impressed so far.
26/09/2008 at 13:39 EyeMessiah says:
No boobs?
26/09/2008 at 14:12 johnny_cuts says:
For goodness sake, verticality?
Why does everything have to have an ‘ality at the end of it now?
What’s wrong with using the correct word instead of this horrible “Americanism”.
26/09/2008 at 14:20 Khargan says:
But the real question is:
Does the verticality make the game funner (or even funnerer) than pure horizontality would?
26/09/2008 at 14:39 Koopa says:
That other vertical shooter looked much better – it actually included vertical shooting. Can’t remember it’s name right now, though.
26/09/2008 at 14:44 Valentin Galea says:
I’m with EyeMessiah on this one…
26/09/2008 at 15:11 gaijin says:
I prefer verticality to verticalness. But yeah, didn’t see that much of either in the actual combat…
26/09/2008 at 15:55 johsjohsjosh says:
Steampunk is overly used as a description. If you don’t know what to call it make up something new please stop cramming everything into steampunk category…everyone does this now how did this start. Looks exciting.
26/09/2008 at 16:05 Jonathan says:
Eee ‘ats a terrible video player they’re using.
26/09/2008 at 18:27 Bigger Than Xenu says:
This doesn’t look bad, but I get a better sense of verticality (how often does one get a chance to use that word?) from Capcom’s Dark Void.
26/09/2008 at 19:15 Simon says:
It’s a bit emberassing to claim being a vertiscal shooter when it’s just a few platforming elements. Especially next to the tons of videos of the coming new Bionic Commando game and esp. Dark Void. The former having a lot more up & downs in the gameplay and the latter doing the vertical shooter thing literally.
26/09/2008 at 23:30 john t says:
Speaking of verticality, why haven’t we seen a Descent clone, since, uh, Descent?
26/09/2008 at 23:51 Resin says:
Looks pretty cool to me. I’m all for the verticality.
27/09/2008 at 00:31 Erlam says:
Minerva is a ‘vertically’ (and horizontally) based FPS, but it doesn’t have gimmicky pipe jumping. This looks like you’ll spend 30 minutes trying to figure out what the fuck you’re supposed to be using for ‘intuitive vertical movement.’
27/09/2008 at 00:40 Valentin Galea says:
Amen Erlam!
27/09/2008 at 01:50 greenbunny45 says:
Cmon why the hell are you guys bitching about the word “verticallity”? Who the hell cares? Jesus…
27/09/2008 at 13:49 Ian says:
@ Aubrey: I’m sure I saw something similar about an FPS developer ended up cutting back on enemies that crawl on high ceiling etc. because playings look around but not up and down enough and get caned.
@ greenbunny45: Because the video offers very little discussion about gameplay is my guess.
27/09/2008 at 18:29 Morningoil says:
Verticality, iirc, is the name of one of the pieces rehearsed but never performed by Ryder, the protagonist of Kazuo Ishiguro’s dizzying masterpiece, The Unconsoled. Which I don’t imagine has much to do with this, but hey.
17/05/2010 at 16:13 Draz says:
I’ve played the skimpily-clad butt off of the UT2K4 mod of Damnation, and I found it high in ‘verticality’. (Does that qualify as a pun? Hmmm…) The levels *were* very tall. Also, when using Spirit Walk, you could save heaps of time by just going straight up or down (in a ‘verticalitous’ fashion, I guess) and possessing vertically-adjacent enemies *just* long enough to jump them over the side to fall to their deaths. Eviltastic!
I really do think that the word ‘vertigious’ would have been more appropriate, however. Of course, THAT probably isn’t a word either. The phrase ‘Really Tall’ would have been a lot clearer, but way less funny.