Getting Hype With Abyss Odyssey

I hadn't heard of Abyss Odyssey before today. ACE Team's previous titles, the Zeno Clash series, hold a place in my heart as some of the most weirdly beautiful games I've ever seen. They've got similar roots in fighting game brilliance to this, which favours a 2D platforming perspective for something a bit more standard. The main draw is being able to switch form into any one of a number of characters and enemies you find throughout the game. Which brings us to the latest trailer, a combo video of sorts (and there's nothing quite like a surprise combo) showing off what one of their testers managed to do with their combat engine. Spinning kick your way through to it below.

Awesome on its own, but designer Carlos Bordeu (interviewed by Nathan last month) has written up a blog post explaining some of the complexities. He opens with one of my favourite things in games, the idea of bugs and unintended side effects becoming fully fledged features when communities exploit them. His fighting game examples are most famous, but StarCraft: Brood War had plenty of them and most FPSs have some form of bunny hopping implemented. As technology and development cycles progress, it's one of the things we're likely to lose out on. More complex code produces bugs that simply crash rather than create interesting loopholes, and rigorous testing often stamps out anything likely to be discovered.

The first "Know Your Enemy" trailer is embedded below, which is a little simpler but helps to explain the basics of the system for those unfamiliar with Super Smash Bros.

Got them tingles now. I am so much more in love with the idea of fighting games than actually playing them against people and having my talent displayed to the world. My greatest multiplayer achievement is landing rather impractical (and not very impressive, considering) Urien combos in Third Strike. A nice, safe single-player where I can experiment and still progress might be exactly what I want.