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Best In Game Animation?

A

axxxj

Animator in Waiting
What game in your opinion has the best in game animation in it and what made it so good.

Also what do you consider the most important aspect of animation that a studio needs to get right to make the game better and help to draw you in.

Sorry for all the questions but i'm interested in this for two reasons, one is that part of my dissertation deals with this and also it is something that is so important in games but is often neglected.


I feel recentley Half Life 2 really made big strides in the direction of believable animation expecially facial animation.

Also the way in which the prince of persia interacts with the environments is really cool.

RE4 had some cool moments in it as well.

Psychonauts looks to be promising in this area to, and i especially love the look of it and so i hope the animation holds up.

Cheers
AJ
 
Celda - The Cel Shading wasn't used as a simple OMG BLACK OUTLINES gimmick. Nintendo took a very distinct approach to the visuals of Celda and created something that looked like an animated feature, and not a low poly video game circa 1995 (e.g. Jet Grind Radio).

The attention to detail in character animation also complimented the visual style, with creatures having a sort of Chuck Jones Looney Tunes elasticity to them.

Celda really knocked my socks off. I just wish it were more fun to play. :/

Shantae and Xtreme Games - If only because I didn't think it was possible to milk that kind of performance out of Nintendo's Gameboy Color hardware. The characters were wonderfully animated and vibrantly colored. Xtreme Games is one of the few GBC games with ecchi bounce. You got to give it points for that alone. :P
 
bastards! I've been holding off on it because I want to finish some other games, but now I've got to go play Wind Waker again.
 
First thing that made me fall in love with Fable was the animation. The way your Hero leans when he runs, the weight and movement is perfect (reminded me of Mario 64). When you go into berserker mode, cast spells, roll and dodge projectiles etc

Some enemies were missing a few frames like the damn hobbs, but everything else was fantastic.

Celda gets my vote for best animation. so smooth
 
My picks are Pikmin 2, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Jet Set Radio Future, Fable, Panzer Dragoon Orta, and World Soccer: Winning Eleven 8.
 
-=::[Eagle-Vision]::=- said:
RE4
Click to expand...
I look forward to a *hopefully* good port on PS2, but did they fix that thing where if you walk into a wall, the walk animation keeps going while you face the wall?

I always laughed at that in RE2, because it was some of the worst animation I'd ever seen.
 
Pardon my shitty gif making skillz

re429ph.gif


Best reloading animation ever
 
Damn how could I have forgot about Celda.

That game blew me away graphically it was only the ANNOYING sailing that let it down.
In some ways I think the new zelda doesn't look as good cause you can tell it's a game, but Celda just looked like a cartoon at times, things like low polygons and low res textures didn't even figure into the equation, the style was so painterly and smooth.

Also I just remembered that Beyond Good and Evil had some lovely animation, especially the way she leant into a turn etc.
 
World Soccer: Winning Eleven 8.
Click to expand...

I love the game...but the animations aren't that varied. I think for what they have it's great...but very repetitive.

As far as sports games go...even though this was the crappiest Sports game of the year, NHL 2005 had very impressive animations. If the game didn't play like crap, it would be entirely lifelike...by far the best animations as far as sports games are concerned.
 
In my experience MO CAP can be really hard to work with, especially for in game animation that has to move at speeds that are generally faster than we move in real life.
 
Sho Nuff said:
Celda's characters move really well, I'd probably give it to that.

RE4 doesn't count -- it's all mocap!
Click to expand...
Most of metal gear solid's cutscenes are motion captured aswell, which is why the cutscene animations are far superior to the ingame ones.
 
Celda, DMC3, Soul Calibur II and Tekken 5. Special mention to Jak 3 for the insane facial animation. MGS3's in-game animation isn't too hot, but cut-scene stuff is just the best.
 
Ico, the Prince of Persia series, and the Jak series (especially Jak 3) are today's benchmarks. The demo of God of War shows lots of promise, too.

If we go back about a decade, Out of This World and Flashback come to mind as having groundbreaking animation. The early Prince of Persia games were also right up there with them.

Going even further back, Epyx's Impossible Mission had some amazing animation for the main character, which influenced some of the athletes' animations in Summer Games and later games in that series.
 
Based on the limitations of the hardware, the Metal Slug games still amaze me to this day. The sheer attention to detail is incredible - follow-through on hair and clothing, elaborate reload animations for the rifle-toting soldiers, and still the best 2-D explosions ever, all using tiny sprites in lo-res. Seeing the squid-like aliens in motion for the first time left me slack-jawed.

The SNK of that era employed some of the best traditional animators the industry has ever seen. Many 3-D videogame animators working today should be embarrassed.
 
Vampire Savior

Daytona USA 2: The Amusement Park Stage

Metal Slug III(arcade version)
 
Another vote for Wind Waker here. Also Sands of Time gets my vote as well because of the number of animations in the game and how well they were all done. MGS3's ingame animation was better than in the cutscenes but that's nothing to scuff at. The rifle reloading animation and the red9 reloading animation in RE 4 are two of my favorites.
 
Zelda the Wind Waker (All)
Super Mario Sunshine (Mario only)


Prince of Persia's had poor char. anim IMO.
The motion trax are blended together roughly at best, and I felt the sense of subtle control just wasn't there (which is a result of the animations avaliable for the game to draw off of.
 
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