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.
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.
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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 !
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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?
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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.
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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.
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Actually combat is a lot of fun. Lots of action and you really do need to think about your next move too
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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?
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Even if “Verticality” is a real word, it’s still a stupid one.
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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.
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Steampunk wild west makes me think about wild wild west with will smith
That’s not a positive thing
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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.
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No boobs?
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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”.
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But the real question is:
Does the verticality make the game funner (or even funnerer) than pure horizontality would?
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That other vertical shooter looked much better – it actually included vertical shooting. Can’t remember it’s name right now, though.
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I’m with EyeMessiah on this one…
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I prefer verticality to verticalness. But yeah, didn’t see that much of either in the actual combat…
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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.
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Eee ‘ats a terrible video player they’re using.
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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.
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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.
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Speaking of verticality, why haven’t we seen a Descent clone, since, uh, Descent?
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Looks pretty cool to me. I’m all for the verticality.
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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.’
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Amen Erlam!
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Cmon why the hell are you guys bitching about the word “verticallity”? Who the hell cares? Jesus…
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@ 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.
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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.
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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.
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