Whiplash

Not your average platform heroes--and for Crystal Dynamics, that's the whole point.

Crystal Dynamics knows a thing or two about action and adventure. Having wrapped up the latest titles in its Legacy of Kain saga, the developer is setting out to claim new territory with its cartoon action/adventure, tentatively called Whiplash. (It was tentatively called Chain Gang in our June issue, but Eidos changed the name on us. Sorry.)

Before you roll your eyes and say, "Great, another cute platformer," the developers want to alleviate your fears. "As a team, we were tired of how unoriginal and played-out most games within the genre have become," says Lead Designer Noah Hughes. "We have striven to not blindly follow others? lead, while still learning from their mistakes." According to Level Designer Cory Stockton, "This is a very, very crowded genre, and most of it is filled with cookie-cutter copies of the same games that come out year after year. We knew right off the bat that we would fail if we did that."

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But who are Spanx and Redmond, and what makes them different? Spanx (a crazy weasel who debuted in Mad Dash Racing) and Redmond (an uptight rabbit) are imprisoned in an animal-testing facility. They?re chained together in a cage and are on their way to certain doom in the Genetic Recombinator when chaos erupts and they manage to escape. "So begins an adventure," says Hughes, "where the pair will make lots of enemies and several allies while trashing a whole lot of stuff along the way, and eventually sticking it to the greedy corporation behind their imprisonment."

Hughes continues, "Picture if you will, a flaming rabbit on the end of a chain hitting a rent-a-cop, who combusts and runs into a lab-geek, who lights and runs too close to a pressurized tank, which explodes sending him through a window releasing two test-monkeys, who chase the containment specialists that just arrived since the first guard slapped an emergency button and triggered a security alert, as chairs fly about the room smashing into expensive equipment, which end their existence in a flash of shorting circuitry much to the delight of a mad little weasel."

A lot of what makes the game so interesting is its approach to humor and chaos. Whereas most platformers feature snide remarks and wisecracking characters, Spanx and Redmond go a bit farther with the kind of madcap craziness you?d expect from a crazy weasel dragging a rabbit on a chain. Producer Alex Jones describes the insanity: "The environments we present to the player are like dry leaves and tinder, and then we put them in charge of these two comically mismatched characters, who together are like a match and lighter fluid. The result of this mix is like a carnival of chaos and destruction that I think players of all ages are going to love."

Almost every game in the genre features certain cliches, from collecting tons of random items to silly objectives that have no impact on the game?s story. Here, rather than searching for "orbs," you?re charged with destroying corporate property and freeing imprisoned animals?and you don?t really have to do any of it to win. Any animals you free will help you in certain places by distracting enemies or even lending a hand against a boss. Combat also features more in this game than in other games of the type. "Way too many platform games feature one-hit-kill enemies with no skill," says Stockton. "We wanted to make the combat work on a couple of different levels: We wanted you to be able to take on one powerful enemy and use combos and auto-targeting, and we also wanted you to be able to take on 10 guys at a time and wreak havoc!"

Tossing innovation into a tried and true genre is always tough, but it looks like Crystal Dynamics and Eidos might be on to something here. "This is a game that is true to itself," says Hughes. "We are not making our version of someone else?s game by subbing in a weasel. Our goal is to provide a humorous, action-filled experience that takes the player on an adventure with heart and soul. If in the process we encourage other developers to stop walking so closely in each other?s footsteps, then that would be great, too."

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