Gaming's Greatest Animation | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
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- Опубликовано: 4 апр 2016
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Let’s get animated.
Animation is recognized as a great art form in classic cartoons, anime, and children shows, but here at Game/Show we feel that animation in video games gets overlooked. On this week’s episode, Jamin discusses what goes into creating spectacular animation, and how this translates to the world of gaming.
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""Oh Damn!"" by CJVSO
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""Digital Sonar"" by Brink
""Mindphuck"" by Known To Be Lethal
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""After Hours""
""3170 Lakes"" by Chooga
• Chooga - 3170 Lakes
""Beautiful Days"" by Extan
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""Spectrum Subdiffusion Mix"" by Foniqz
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""Good Way Song"" by Electronic Rescue
""Alice y Bob"" by Javier Rubio and Parsec
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""Sleet"" by Kubbi
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""Toaster"" by Kubbi
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""Patriotic Songs of America"" by New York Military Band and the American Quartet
cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/sea...
""Lets Go Back To The Rock"" by Outsider
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""Run"" by Outsider
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""Fame"" by Statue of Diveo
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""Freedom Weekends"" by Statue of Diveo
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Hosted by Jamin Warren (@jaminwar)
See more on games and culture on his site: www.killscreendaily.com
Made by Kornhaber Brown (www.kornhaberbrown.com)
"Prince of Persia for it's rotoscoping technique"
Amm..., hey man, the footage should've been the original Prince of Persia by Borderbund.
I always liked the animation in Mirror's Edge. By that I mean, the quick glimpses of your limbs that you see as you vault over obstacles, kick open doors, or jump and roll. It's the first, first person game that made me really feel 'present'.
I can't help but gush over the art every time I play Yoshi's island. So many details like baby Mario's hat bobbing up and down, Yoshi's head slightly squishing when he hits a block, balloons falling ever so slightly downwards only to float back up again when Yoshi jumps on them makes everything so incredibly fluid. It also had one of the most powerful graphics chips at the time IN the game cartridge, meaning it could do really cool stuff like make sprites stretch and grow or have rotating objects. Especially impressive are two of the boss fights; one takes place on the moon which you can run around, and the background of the Earth and the universe scroll flawlessly in a circle depending on your movement. And of course there's that famous Baby Bowser fight, what a visual masterpiece.
Not to mention the Amazing use of parallax with the backgrounds. That game was a visual treat through and through
Not a lot of people notice this, but smash bros; and specifically smash 4; have visual responses for pretty much every minute action you perform and that makes the experience so satisfying. Just jumping into an aerial is a combination of a puff of dirt that you launch with the force of your jump, the effects of air movement and the 3-4 hitbox visuals.
+TheSBled I totally agree! I love the attention to detail Smash has always offered. The visual fidelity, as well as high resolutions makes for a total treat. I think Smash 4 is one of the best, if not THE best looking games I've ever played.
What makes the Super Smash Bros series work so well is the fact that the tactile feedback for the playable characters makes you actually feel like you're that character! The character animations work individually well to the point where players often describe their play style as their main character they play as, and the opponents who you fight who play the character really well will often literally represent that presentation of the character, as we've seen with Melee's Fox becoming the public perception of Fox's character.
Essentially, the animations of characters in fighting games can come to define a character when a player plays them a certain way.
The terms you used in this episode are not precisely industry standard. In a convoluted manner you've expressed a few of the 12 principles of animation, principles that every animator uses to create "good" animation. The 12 principles are: Squash and Stretch, Anticipation, Staging, Straight Ahead/Pose to Pose, Follow Through and Overlapping Action, Slow In and Slow Out, Arcs, Secondary Action, Timing, Exaggeration, Solid Drawing, Appeal. These principles were originally created for what is known as traditional animation, but with some extrapolation, apply just as firmly to computer animation (I normally interpret solid drawing as proper mesh topology, rigging and skinning). Though not one of the 12 principles, but implied in several of the 12 principles, is weight. As an animation and game professor I also like to stress the importance of weight, understanding weight distribution, basically where the weight is, is vital in creating good animation.
When considering game animation the principles still apply, but, depending on the "responsiveness" of the game they may be eliminated. For example, in a twitch response game, anticipation is normally cast aside. In a canned animated sequence the viewed character will crouch down and swing his arms backward, gathering potential energy prior to a jump. After he will unfurl his body, stretch his arms above his head and throw his weight into the air. In a twitch game, the user wants his character to immediately jump to avoid that oncoming obstacle, so the anticipatory move is dropped. The character goes from walking to a mid air pose instantaneously. This is not a new method of animation, just careful application or removal of the 12 principles.
I adored the mocapped animation in Last of Us. The way the characters moved, each with their own distinct gait, that changed depending on the situation. At the start, when you're playing as Joel's daughter, and she's still half-asleep and shuffling around... I thought that was beautifully done. It could be argued that, as mocap, it's not true animation, but the game still had to adjust it to what you were doing.
Okami has some amazing animation. Not only is the style unique to what you expect from games, but they capture a sense of motion, sometimes being smooth and relaxing, others urgent and dangerous, and still others whimsical or humorous. I haven't played it in years, and I'm hardly knowledgeable about technical aspects of animation, but I remember this game being a sight to behold...
Would love to see more BAD examples of the concepts you're talking about. Don't be afraid to slam on bad games. Take a point of view, PBS! The extra contrast would make the point that much better.
+Nick Georgopoulos Totally agree
It's the obvious answer, but Journey.
If you've never seen it, I highly recommend everyone look up Skullgirls, or better yet, play it yourself. It's a fantastic hand-drawn fighting game, and gets one of the most important animation aspects for fighting games, the juiciness, so right that you really need to have the controller in your hands to get the full experience.
Ori and the blind forest knocks animation out the park, The hefty flaps of the Owls wings, the tree bursting as it is filled with water, and the beauty of the moves you learn
I'm actualy really surprised that you didn't mention Cuphead
Rage is one of my favorite for human animations. Their facial expressions and movements were so natural and human that I often forgot I was talking to video game characters.
Perhaps Ori and the Blind Forest? That game is by far the most gorgeous game I've ever played, and it's animations are no exception (Though they stand out less than the general art).
The endless expressiveness of the sprites in Metal Slug are some of the best in games, I think. So much detail and drama packed into so few pixels.
Also, the scene in Mother 3 where Flint gets the bad news. You know the one. Again, so much with so few pixels.
Ori and the Blind Forest is a masterful example of great game animation - it's worth it to just watch its first few minutes of gameplay. The player guides the protagonist through a story of highs and lows, and the controls and character animations match up perfectly with the emotional tones.
The super-glide in Kingdom Hearts was the first time I ever literally felt like I was flying in a video game. As far as animation in games goes, I'd argue that that's greatest compliment you could give it.
Favorite animation. I remember being incredibly impressed with Donkey Kong 1994 on the Game Boy. It took that tiny, chunky little Mario sprite from the early 80s Donkey Kong and really gave it a new life. Not only does Mario have all sorts of acrobatic poses and moves, but he has a lot of unique death animations too -- being burned, electrocuted, flattened, or even taking falling damage by landing on his head. It's like he's a completely living cartoon character, and it still reads well even in black and white and with the Game Boy's tiny sprites.
I haven't played that many games, but I always liked the visuals of Ratchet and Clank. The way the weapons worked was viscerally satisfying. Plus, jumping up and slamming Ratchet's wrench on the ground to shatter all the crates and other breakable items in the area was a joy to behold.
another thing about game animation that is pretty amazing, is that the animations have to look good from any angle as players often have free control over their camera. in a movie or a cartoon, animators have a static camera that will be the same every time.
I've always felt that the parallax effects in the background of Terraria are not only beautiful, but do a great job of giving extra depth to an otherwise 2D game.
I think my favorite animation I've seen in a video game is Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Tons of personality comes through in the way things move.
I also love the player character sprites in some of the "Metroidvania" style Castlevania games; Alucard from Symphony of the Night and Shanoa from Order of Ecclesia come to mind. There's such an elegance and flourish to them that it does add to the feel of the controls.
I'm right now playing The Path and I love how the different walking animations of the girls says so much about their personalities.
Piled on top of the many other things that it did before its time, the NPC animation in Star Wars: Republic Commando is absolutely top notch. From your fellow squad mates checking each other's equipment before the mission to the fantastically well done motion capture work done for all of the door breaching and tactical maneuvers.
I love that you include procedural animation.
while coding and crafting a space fighter game I have learned that how the camera moves is almost as important as how the actor moves... if the plane moves to the left, the camera needs to move to the right, as if the player is dragging the screen in the direction he intends to go. It gives the proper feedback that way, and then add into that the actor clues like banking, pitching, rolling, and visual effects. :)
Thanks!
I always felt Wind Waker is a great example of a mute character having personality through his animation.
You mention SotC, but I thought Ico did a lot more with their animation prowess. I remember thinking just how much I felt for the characters because of the way they moved: The way that Ico would call for Yorda, and the way she would respond, especially at the times that she didn't or couldn't catch up. What's brilliant is that they had multiple animations for the same game action, so it really gave you sense that they were doing this for real. Although, definitely the same could be said for Agro from SotC.
I also remember when I played the first Uncharted demo, I was blown away by the little details they chose to animate Nathan. Like when you were behind cover, and being shot at, he would flinch his head forward as the bullets hit the cover. Those details really put so much more life into the characters.
gotta look at the life expressed in rayman origins for that from me it has so much life to it
Destiny, GTA V, and Battlefield 4 are the three best-animated games I can think of off the top of my head. For sure there are more, though
Dragon Quest 8 It's s awesome how great it feels just to fly as a bird over the world map or ride a sabertooth across the amazing landscapes of that game. Many of the characters are completely silent throughout the game, but you never feel as if you don't understand them because the animation is so awesome.
I think Metal Slug had some pretty cool animation for its time
+brickman409 For it's time? I think it holds up today =) I love those sprite graphics.
Hell, even with the resurgence of indie sprite-art games I still think few have matched the level of excellence SNK showed with Metal Slug! Their art and animation was gorgeous! It's a really sad thing they ditched that for the uggo art they're going for in the new King of Fighters. :(
Cuphead looks like it will be great.
The best animation is probably in Skullgirls or Lab Zero's next game, Indivisible.
Since it's Japanese, the best pronunciation for Totoro is "Toe toe row" (ととろ) rather than "toe tor oh". Syllables for japanese words are made up of consonant-vowel combinations with the occasional individual vowel, like the name Yoko Ono (yo ko oh no).
Ghost Trick is stunning
Woo! Animation! Something I can talk about.
There are a few really important things that we fail to remember about game animation vs tv/film animation. One of the most important aspects, most particularly in third person scenarios, is that as an animator, you don't get the liberty of cheating on a pose. Your character has to look good from a solid 360 degrees of view. I saw a talk by Jeremy Collins on his process of ideal 3D character animation at the Montreal International Game Summit a few years back, and he discusses this in depth. Collins worked on films like Tangled and he discussed the transition of trying to make ideal 360 degree poses. In film we cheat a lot to get something to look right for the camera, at the expense of breaking the rig to do so. Games don't give you that liberty. Mind you, there were some brilliant scaling cheats in Firewatch that you should try to find.
Another important thing that impacts the way you animate a character is how responsive your controls need to be. Fighting games have a much smaller amount of time to incorporate anticipation in to their attacks, while other adventure RPG style games can allow for that freedom. A great talk to look in to this is Mariel Cartwright's GDC talk about making fluid and powerful animations for a game like Skullgirls (will link below).
You also see a lot of cases of the use of cycles and animation blending between said cycles. Uncharted has some of the most fascinating animation cycles with its use of procedural animation and blending to make Nathan feel more alive. An IK connection on his hand is formed when he gets close to walls so that he reaches out and holds them, his slips and falls are blended in to his walk to add stumbling, but the coolest thing about it is the use of a "wiggle cycle". Essentially, Nathan has a second animation state running in the background that is just a seamless loop of Nathan's T-pose just wiggling randomly over the course of a couple minutes. Blending this with his idle or run or walk gives this unpredictable feel to what would normally be a noticeable pattern in a game animation.
I could probably go on for paragraphs about this, but those are a few examples of some of my favourite things you see in game animation. Seriously, it's some cool stuff.
"Making fluid and powerful animations for Skullgirls": ruclips.net/video/Mw0h9WmBlsw/видео.html
I really don't think we can forget what Fromsoftware is doing with Darksouls and Bloodborne. The types of animations they are doing with their enemies and bosses, we just don't see much of that in other sources of gaming. It can be as horrific as the Gaping Dragon or as angelic as the Dancer of the Frigid Valley. Not to mention adaptations they are able to do with a single character mid fight, let's talk about Ludwig's fight in Bloodborne. Starting off as some sort of horseman and ending the fight as a regal knight... it's impressive stuff. The last thing I'd bring up is the... explody black mass thing we've seen in some of the darksouls 3 footage (I'm sorry I don't know the official name) but again some really interesting stuff. Okay! That's enough of my rant :)
Hyper Light Drifter's animations are incredible, especially that they decided to convey the entire story through visuals.
Maple Story (while it did SO MANY things SO VERY wrong) had some great attack animations that felt really satisfying to use.
Nidhogg
Jet Set Radio's visuals were also super spot on.
there's some good stuff in some of those Wario games
I've never played a Wario game personally, which one do you recommend I play first?
Pixel I don't know all of the names. I think whichever one came out first was really fun.
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective!. It's a relative unknown DS gem made by Capcom with superB fluid animations.
+mahousenshi00 I was excited when I saw they were bringing it to phones, then soon found out it was iOS only. So, so disappointing.
Final fantasy will always have my heart when it come to graphics because of their cut screens.
Specific to animation, they are consistently well done.
It may be outdated by today's standards, but when they came out the Aladdin game for Sega Genesis and both the Genesis and SNES versions of Earthworm Jim had what was at the time incredibly fluid animation for a console game.
I loved the Broken Age animation - there is something to be said for the beauty of the artwork, which also makes the world so calm and whimsical, I just want to step in.
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons got to have my favorite animations in videogames.
Yeah, that is well animated.
One of the hardest things about animation in games is that one of animations key principles is anticipation. Anticipation is a motion that happens before the action (Tigger compresses downwards like a spring to prepare us for the springing upwards, or Wile E. Coyote leans backwards briefly to charge up before running forward after Roadrunner.) You can't do that so easily in games though, because when you push a button to enact an action the response needs to feel instantaneous (Mario needs to be ready to jump the moment I hit the button, not just starting his pre-action anticipation move.) Cartoony games like mario or rhythm heaven can get away with having a punchy instantaneous rhythm to them, but more realistic games like uncharted have to get much more creative with how they make controls feel instantaneous without sacrificing believable animation.
Agreed, though I would say that some cartoony games also have that challenge.
Another World! Thanks for reminding me. That game blew my mind when I was a kid. That era's Prince of Persia on the Amiga blew my mind with its animation too and it looks like they've carried on the tradition in more recent iterations.
Skullgirls, I don't know how but they manage to make every character's moves a reference to something. (not to mention Peacock is just one big Disney reference)
The Last Blade 2, and Garou: Mark of the Wolves are exceptional examples of fighting game animation.
Hibiki in Last Blade 2 actually has a pretty significant opportunity for character development as you play through arcade mode: When you're fighting, she's all business. But when the fight's over, if she dealt a killing blow rather than just a defeating one, she's shocked and distraught and remorseful, dropping her sword and clutching her head. But keep doing it, and her post-fight reactions change. Eventually she gets more and more okay with it. There's a lot communicated in her mannerisms with that.
And now that I think about it, Dark Void for X360 has some really good character development expressed over time, expressed through animation and actually never mentioned in dialog. Just check out the way he uses his arms and legs as he flies, at various points in the game.
Monster hunter 4 ultimate is full of awesome animations in both player weapons and monsters.
+Puddingfuzz i agree. i always loved that the monsters were animated more like wild animals than as video game enemies who were created with the express purpose of killing protagonists
Rocket League is one of the best examples of tactile feedback I have seen in a while. The game is so immersive just by its mechanics alone.
I was gonna be upset if 3rd Strike didn't come up. Glad it did in the first couple minutes.
Ive seen some people mention them and I think that Yoshi's island, journey, and cuphead have some of the most amazing animation I've ever seen.
Last Blade 2... smooth, fluid, looked, felt and played great.
recent game that comes to mind, is Yoshi's Wooly World.
so much of the environment responds to your actions, and on top of that, has a look and feel of a world that's been handcrafted and sewn.
a very visually impressive game.
I think my favorite example of beautiful animation comes from the PS3 game that's about 80% puns by volume, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. That might come across as cheating, a little, since a lot of the art and animation appeal for that game comes as a direct result of the involvement of Studio Ghibli, the folks responsible for films like My Neighbor Totoro.
What strikes me the most about the animation in the game is just the little details. It's not necessarily about the procedural physics of making feet and stairs collide correctly, after all, it's also about the subtle change in his pace and demeanor when the player sends Ollie down a flight of stairs in Castle Town-- he shifts his weight and holds himself in the exact way anyone would when trying to descend stairs in a hurry. The motion of it is so subtle, but at the same time so believable; I love those little touches most of all.
Metal Slug will always have bar-none THE best pixel animated graphics. There are SO many frames with minute changes in them that once you put them all together you have an incredibly fluid animation. All hand-drawn pixel by pixel.
my personal favorite is the animation of Ryu in the intro scene of SF3 Third Strike and the entirety of the Banner Saga
Skullgirls. If we're talking about animation in games and we're not mentioning Skullgirls, then we done goofed.
Metal Slug series. The animation quality there is so high it's unbelievable. Especially on big machines.
KOF XIII. Not necessarily animation here per se, but just looks at these sprites, yo. They looks incredible.
Guilty Gear Xrd. Everything is modeled in 3D, but is purposefully animated so it looks like sprites. Everything is done by hand. I love the way this game looks. Like, the character's sword smears during a swing. It's not an effect, it's an actual animation. And if you look closely, the smears are actually part of the model in these few frames of animation. The same thing with the dust while your character jumps. Every "strand" of hair is animated by hand. Literally everything. It's an actual perfection.
The animations in Bloodborne are excellent! My favorite weapon the kirkhammer can either be a nimble sword or transform into a weighty hammer. the changes to the player characters animation really sell the different fighting styles. Not to mention the parry mechanic is all about spotting the tells in the enemy movement when they're most vulnerable.
Breath of Fire 3. Also, Breath of Fire IV. Seriously, late '90s/Early 2000s Capcom were the gods of 2D sprite animation. For 3D, Guilty Gear Xrd's ability to replicate 2D animation with 3D models is mind blowing
You HAVE to include Donkey Kong Bongo Beats. That videogame is Fucking Fire, son
Whoever's responsible for pulling clips fucked up when you mentioned Prince of Persia. You were talking about the original Jordan Mechner game. The clip we got was the Ubi reboot.
the lion King for Sega Genesis, even had the helping hand of the animators from the movie
Punch Out! on the Nintendo Wii is excellent. The character animations weave and flow through one another during a fight seamlessly while always keeping the player's agency intact. How characters react to attacks and dodges is particularly noteworthy but the personality of the characters is also worth mentioning. Definitely check it out, one of my favorite examples of great video game animation alongside Out of this World.
the Ace Attorney games are very good at capturing the personality of the character in the animation.
Enter the Gungeon has some great animation, so much variety and action
I really adore the animation for the DS title Ghost Trick.
Coincidentally, Dan Floyd at Extra Credits has an animation series going on their Extra Play channel (as he is an animator).
+Zac Frazier (Etc.) I was just about to mention that.
Monster hunter has a really good use of animation in the way that the attacks are given weight by the amount of the time the character takes to carry out each attack. The same can be said for the way running animation looks when performed.
I love Alice the Madness for the simple reason that the mechanics and Alice's movements are beautiful. There's a grace to the fighting that makes me feel powerful when I play that I can't really describe. As a lover of games I find that art really impacts my experience. Games with simple graphics and animation allow me to relax and take in more of the story or environment of the world while games with high resolutions and great visual graphics have almost an opposite effect. I find that often I am more focused and think narrowly. I often miss things because of how my focus shifts from task to task. For this reason I find games like that have more replay value as you find new things that you hadn't noticed.
I've been watching some uncharted 4 game play and the animations in that game look pretty darn incredible. I think ND have some very talented animators.
I think they've been using a whole lot of motion capture there. So would not be animation.
+Alexandra Stanovska absolutely. Plus because motion capture picks up most of the basic stuff it wouldn't be great on its own. Skilled animators are needed to go in and do the magic.
I've watched a few interviews and that's what I've gathered.
It's not classical animation, which I do love, but it's still super awesome.
Oh and I'm surprised studio ghibli and miyazaki were not really mentioned in this video. Expect of course Tottoro.
For me personally one of my favorite games where the animation just feels right is Saints Row IV - a power fantasy game with poor animations just doesn't deliver the oomph needed for that theme to not get boring and mundane quickly - while it's not a perfect game the animation work that went into it managed to make the (let's face it) somewhat repetitive game play still feel like a blast even after taking out your 100th wave of alien troops. (Not the mention one of the few games that shows you can animate dancing in a video game that doesn't look awkward as hell).
I'd never seen that bit from Another World. I love how it plays out.
+luisguillermojg It's one of my all time favorite game ! I used to play it on an amiga commodore as a kid and I haven't been able to finish it, until a longplay video gave me a clue to continue where I was stuck in the game (maybe 15 years earlier) it's on steam for really good price I think
Dust: An Elysian Tale is a beautiful well-animated game made by one animator who trained himself to program and made the game almost single-handedly. Check it out.
Great episode.
This was a great episode, wish it had been a little longer, maybe showing off some more titles with fluid animation, especially ones that aren't so zoomed-out.
In terms of best animations, I think it's safe to say that Nintendo and UbiSoft pretty much have it down perfectly. UbiSoft was amazing as far back as the original Rayman, which used its unique approach to limitations to give its limbless hero many more frames than most games at the time. And Nintendo? Tons of examples, most notably in Yoshi's Island, Mario Kart 8, and Smash Bros. Brawl/Wii U.
Great animation isn't just reward and expression, it's also a balance of minimalistic movement combined with emotional expression. The Chuck Jones clips played here are great, but they're also mostly from his earlier work, when he had more focus on body language and movements. Jones eventually adapted a more subtle technique, where characters do much more with their faces and knowing how to hold frames in order to better convey the message to the viewer subconsciously. When Daffy Duck gets his beak shot off, and he looks at the viewer, slightly off-center, then squints, that does the job that used to be spastic movement and stomping, and causes the viewer to empathize.
I like how to start the video by saying that we forget the gaming when talking about animation advancement when this Channel is called Game/Show. Isn't exactly that kind of thing people may have in mind when coming here?
Speaking of classic animation, check out Cuphead, it's a game that gets animation.
Dust: An Elysian Tail gets my vote for amazing animation.
I'm surprised you didn't mention a lot of 3D games, games like Metal Gear Solid started a trend of cinematic cutscenes that make convert the games into interactive movies.
I found this episode very disappointing, sorry. It seemed like you didn't give much depth to it, with a lot of the techniques being labelled incorrectly (that Prince of Persia wasn't rotoscoped. You can't rotoscope something into a 3d poligonal model. It's Cel Shading. A Scanner Darkly, Waking Life or the Ralph Bakshi LOTR are rotoscope: they're drawings made and coloured on top of live action photos). In fact, it seemed like most entries on this list of games could be interchangeable with a lot of predecessors. What makes the explosions in Luftrausers or the animations in Alien Hominid any better than other games? If anything, we should be talking about things like Metal Slug, both for the explosions and for how to animate a 2D sidescroller run n gun.
Examples like Wario or Klonoa didn't do anything to help your point across. So they have character traits and those are reflected in their animation? How is this amazing? How does Klonoa wanting to live with his friends tie into the quality of the animation?
By the end of this video I don't think anyone knew any more about animation or animation in games than they already knew. We didn't hear anything about techniques (2d, 3d, flash, pixel art, FMV, paralax scrolling, stand still animations...), fluidity (and tricks like smears and how they can be used in videogames) or game animators.
+Decatonkeil Of course you can rotoscope 3D. Rotoscoping is the art of transferring a referenced image precisely. Prior to the invent, or at least when costs were prohibitive, for mocap, we used rotoscoping for shows like Bubble Guppies to create the dance sequences. We also used rotoscoping to convert Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix into a 3D film, on both the segmentation team and the depth teams.
Cell shading has absolutely nothing to do with animation, it's simply an applied material.
+CasanisPlays nice to see some first person experience here
+Decatonkeil I think they mistakenly played a clip from the wrong Prince of Persia game, iirc the original 1989 Prince Of Persia had rotoscope-style character animations
Uncharted would be a good example, people are practically making movies out of it!
Dragon Quest 8 is a game with great animations. The cell shaded world and design by DBZ artist Akira Toriyama are brought to life brilliantly. Even monsters static animations are fluid and great in between each's distinct attack or random other animation like the candy cats who roll around and the boss trolls who use a turn to lick their spiked club while laughing at you.
Well SNK did some amazing stuff across the board. I still think Square is still a leader in this space. Though this topic makes me think of Blizzard, they have AMAZING cut scenes, but when you jump in the game the animation is no where as amazing, even if it is top notch.
I've never played Another World, but its style reminded me of another one I liked a lot: Flashback.
I'm tempted to not write this comment.... But... No dislikes. Good. Good video on a topic that deserves more light. There are some seriously skilled game animators out there.
but not for long
someone put glass in their glasses. lol
Mugman and Cuphead... when it comes out. Anxiously waiting for it. I also really liked the animation in Earthworm Jim. It was so dystopian, grotesque and absurd
Just saying FFXIV is super super slick and juice-filled when it comes to animations. The amount of subtle detail completely makes me nerdgazum over and over. The world really feels alive!
I think Raven_softs Soldier of Fortune 2 for its realistic blood & gore physics that was rendered in GHOUL an improved version of Mortal Combat's gore engine. Then 2013 we got Stg_Mark IV's mega_wad Brutal Doom Starter Pack, Hell On Earth; with the ability to decorate, the floor, walls & ceiling with the enemies blood & the added bonus of blasting off body parts just like Alex Murphy.
All street fighter titles have exceptional animations done in them, before 3d and after :)
Okami has amazing animation.
If you liked this, you should watch Extra Play's series on animation. They've covered Kingdom Hearts, Bastion, Shadow of the Colossus, Jak & Daxter, Skyward Sword, Monster Hunter, and I think a couple more. All beautiful games.
Skullgirls has some of the best fighting game animations in my experience
Globox from the rayman games is so good, full of life and charming animations.
Well anything from the Ubi - Art framework really.
Psychonauts has some of the best animation! Actually, most of Double Fine's work is pretty great in terms of animation--they always do a good job unifying character design with movement to show personality.
Bastion has some great animation with Amazing feedback.
Guilty Gear Xrd is amazing. Probably the best animated game I've come across.
I would say that the first and second Paper Mario games have some of the best "juice" or feedback amongst all of the games I've played. It's a bit surprising, really, now that I think about it, as Paper Mario is a turn based RPG which doesn't normally have that sort of feedback. With almost every choice you or your partners make in a turn, you have to perform an action along with it. If the action is completed superbly, you get a boosted effect with some sort of animation to follow it. If you choose not to carry on with the action, the effect falls -and really feels- flat. Having that sort of interaction makes it one of my favorite games.
I wonder where the DOA series would fall in this spectrum...