By Nathan Grayson on April 18th, 2012 at 9:30 am.
“Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet” is quite the mouthful. The implications, too, are downright fascinating. Are there, for instance, Shadow Planets that are neither insane nor twisted? Could they even be generally pleasant with moderate weather and shadowy denizens that have sunny personalities? Perhaps the sequel will be Pleasant Vacation Spot Shadow Planet. At any rate, the least savory of Shadow Planets is now open for business, and you can grab the highly acclaimed action adventure puzzler shooter and probably golf sim on Steam, or keep reading the rest of this post – which will ultimately enrich your life in no meaningful way.
OK, are they gone now? Hah, suckers. Here’s a video of an war-endingly adorable porcupine refusing to give up its corn. Is that not the most heartwarming, sadness-melting sound you’ve ever heard? There is no situation in which this video is not the correct answer, and now, faithful readers, I bequeath unto you. Also, I guess the quills sort of make it look like a Shadow Planet level. You know, if you squint. A lot. Pretty much until you can’t see and have to just imagine a Shadow Planet level.
18/04/2012 at 09:51 Askeladd says:
The tea you got there must be pretty funky.
18/04/2012 at 13:47 tourgis says:
I think Nathan has terminal Whimsy. There is little that can be done when it has reached such an advanced stage. A sorrowful smile and a safe distance (particularly so when porcupines are involved) are both recommended.
18/04/2012 at 09:53 JackShandy says:
How do porcupines get off with spikes as wussy as that? They’re basically just strands of fur!
Down here we have echidnas. You can’t pick those things up with inch-thick gloves.
18/04/2012 at 10:11 Notso says:
It’s probably a baby. Trust me, in South Africa, adult porcupines look nothing like that. I used to help my grandparents release them into the mountain after they caught them eating their farm’s grapes. You can’t even go near them because they launch their quills at you. Oh and one of their dogs had to be put down because a spine went through the roof of his mouth into his brain. Just saying.
18/04/2012 at 10:47 Zanchito says:
Are you sure they weren’t hydralisks?
18/04/2012 at 11:08 DutchDrunk says:
I would love to have one of those ranged porcupines in my Legend of Grimrock group, sounds like they can be pretty damn accurate.
I also should stop playing this damn game.
18/04/2012 at 11:10 JackShandy says:
Yeah, ok, Porcupines can be cool again. I’ll allow it this once.
18/04/2012 at 09:58 trjp says:
As someone who’s actively tried not to support XBOX Live in any meaningful way (after they ripped-me-off I’d sooner poo in their shoes, frankly) I’ve been looking forward to this on PC (where I don’t have to pay to be slapped and beaten).
It’s just when it arrived, it’s price tag appears to have gained rather more digits than it deserves – PC releases tend to compare favourably to MS’s “magic ponies” currency, cept this one.
It was 1200 magic polos on the XBOX – the max price there and one many people said was a bit steep for it’s content anyway. That translates, at worst (MS RRP), to £10-odd. Anyone with the ability to enter a discount code could probably have hacked that down to £9 or even a bit less – so £12 seems steep (it breaks that magic £10 mark which tends to make me wince).
I feel a Steam Sale coming on…
18/04/2012 at 11:34 Lemming says:
If you’re trying not to support XBL you may want to move on then. This is GFWL-infected.
18/04/2012 at 11:43 trjp says:
At least SOME of the money doesn’t go into MS’s undeserving hands tho – buying MS Points feels like giving money to a drunk who’s in the hallway of a pub telling you he’s going to spend it on food :)
18/04/2012 at 11:49 Toberoth says:
Hahaha that is brilliant :-D Made me grin, well done you.
18/04/2012 at 17:24 oceanview says:
Dear lord, thank you for mentioning this.
No sale.
normaly it’s mentioned as third party drm on steam. It’s sneakily hidden this time…
man I was really looking forward to this game.. what a shame.
18/04/2012 at 19:02 Lemming says:
Yeah it’s tucked away, but it is mentioned on the Steam store page. Once in the initial description, and in little writing at the bottom as registered trademark.
18/04/2012 at 10:04 Porkolt says:
That porcupine sure has a prickly attitude.
18/04/2012 at 10:32 DutchDrunk says:
Nice porcu-pun.
18/04/2012 at 11:36 Lemming says:
He’s certainly Hegemonic.
/high-brow pun.
18/04/2012 at 11:49 Toberoth says:
He’s (porcu)pining for that corn alright.
18/04/2012 at 11:52 DutchDrunk says:
If they don’t take it away from him, he Quill eat the whole thing!
18/04/2012 at 10:26 Yachmenev says:
GfWL……..urgh.
18/04/2012 at 12:23 RedViv says:
I’ve been playing the game of “Patch me and then tab and enter again to actually make me do stuff!” game for half an hour now. I wanted to bloody play Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, not Crudely Stupid Service Mockery.
18/04/2012 at 12:24 Lars Westergren says:
“Whoops, I’ve forgotten your username and password again! Tehee!”
18/04/2012 at 10:42 Tams80 says:
I came here just for the video and while wasn’t what I expected it ended up being better than I expected.
18/04/2012 at 11:00 Mr. Mister says:
“Are there, for instance, Shadow Planets that are neither insane nor twisted?”
Well, I guess there could be two planets, a giant gaseous and a small rocky one, with very close orbits and the same transition period, such that the small planet is always at the shadow of the gaseous. That would be a mentally healthy shadow planet (that’s very unlikely to happen though, and, needless to say, unstable).
18/04/2012 at 11:05 DutchDrunk says:
I’ve really been looking forward to finally playing this game. I saw it for the first time in Totalbisquit’s videos about it, looked like so much fun.
Though I have ‘Legend of Grimrock’ to get through before I can even consider starting to play this.
18/04/2012 at 11:36 mechabuddha says:
I didn’t realize this was GFWL until after I had purchased it. I loaded up the game for the first time and curses flew from my mouth as it logged me in and then asked for my username and password anyway. Every single time I play this game, it logs me automatically in to my offline profile, but puts that gigantic login page up there anyway hoping I’ll create an online account. Furthermore, I can’t get the game to recognize my gamepad inputs. I really want to like this game, but right now it’s quite difficult to see past the packaging.
18/04/2012 at 11:46 Lars Westergren says:
>I didn’t realize this was GFWL until after I had purchased it.
I didn’t realize it until you just wrote it. And I pre-purchased it, haven’t gotten around to playing it. Crap.
18/04/2012 at 11:48 MadTinkerer says:
I didn’t realize it had GFWL until after I bought it. Installing it now and we’ll see if there’s any problems…
18/04/2012 at 12:28 DrScuttles says:
It turns out that listening to the Alien 3 soundtrack while reading RPS and muting any embedded YouTube videos posted can make the world seem 46% more sinister. However, I have yet to test out my accompanying theory that doing this will make me think of porcupines when I next watch an Alien film.
18/04/2012 at 13:48 googoogjoob says:
i was sort of interested in this then i realized it required steam, GFWL, AND a product key, and costs $15
i don’t want to get into stuff about indie game pricing and whatever, but this seems like a lot for this sort of game, especially when it has NO DEMO and enforced GFWL
apparently it already cost $15 on XBLA, pre-DLC, so i guess this is a better value than there, but still
18/04/2012 at 16:49 AshEnke says:
Yay, I launch the game, there’s a beautiful GFWL logo, and then the “Zwoosh” sound that GFWL makes when he connects me, and then the game crashes !
Fuck you Microsoft.
18/04/2012 at 16:51 CVraden says:
I think I’m more interested in the soundtrack than the actual game after watching the trailers on Steam.
18/04/2012 at 17:37 Headwired says:
That porcupine sounds a bit like a Ghast from Minecraft.
29/04/2012 at 19:57 DOLBYdigital says:
Man its such a shame this game has GFWL… I want this game to sell great on the PC since it deserves it but this will hamper it. I just found out it came out on PC so the marketing wasn’t that great either. Oh well, at least it made it to PC (we need more like this game).