Rocket Knight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7yjb_gr2Po

This sorta went unnoticed. As you all know, Konami gave Castlevania the "rebirth" treatment; for some miraculous reason, Konami is doing the same for the cult classic Rocket Knight Adventures series.

I'm interested in seeing how this turns out; however, in my opinion, much of the visual charm that was present in the old games doesn't seem to be present in the style of this new game. Eh, I mean, it looks alright, but it just doesn't seem as dynamic as it should.

Thoughts?

Looks ugly and bland.

Originally Posted by Hazzle

Looks ugly and bland.

Which is extremely unfortunate, because the original two certainly didn't. Personally, I'm tired of all this "2.5D;" if you're going to make a side-scroller, go ahead and make it with 2D sprites. It looks much prettier.

Yeah, Rocket Knight Adventures is a really great game.

And the problem isn't that it's 2.5D, Bionic Commando looked great. The game is just ugly.

Well, it's really hard to do 2.5D without the game looking ugly, bland and lifeless, but there have been plenty of games that have succeeded in being both 2.5D and appealing to the eye. I'll agree that straight 2D is typically the best way to go, especially with the level of detail that can be brought to the table with today's technology, but it's not like any developer who chooses 2.5D is doing wrong. They just have to actually commit to it.

The new Rocket Knight doesn't seem to be cutting it, though, which is unfortunate. It's really weird how the debut trailer shows the first two games, which definitely did have a sort of visual charm, and then shows the new game, which completely lacks visual charm (for the most part). Did they really make this trailer with the idea that showing all three games would justify the looks of the third game? I mean, drawing a comparison only hurts things.

Guess Konami couldn't afford to give this game a budget because they had to fund another three MGS games.

What also bothers me is that this will just feed the idea that sidescrolling platformers of any kind should just be relegated to being downloadable, and aren't worthy of full retail price on a disc. It's a revived franchise for the new age, would it have been so hard to go all out and give the game a treatment similar to Little Big Planet or New Super Mario Bros. Wii or something?

While I agree, I don't think it's especially relevant here. This would never have been a disc released.

But they still could have made it look (and most probably play) ten times better and still released it digitally.

True, true.

Well, I hope the game is at least fun. In terms of play it didn't look that bad from the trailer. We'll have to wait and see.

I accept with information:it's really hard to do 2.5D without the game looking ugly, bland and lifeless, but there have been plenty of games that have succeeded in being both 2.5D and appealing to the eye.

It does look ugly, but I'm excited. I never liked Contra but Contra rebirth on Wii is ok. And I love Sparkster. My avatar was Rocket Knight until a day or two ago. I look forward to seeing how it turns out. But it doesn't really matter how it turns out; I'm downloding as soon as it debuts just for the title.

Rocket Knight Adventures is one of my favourite old-school games, so I'm both excited and a little worried about this. The game looks hideous so far, the voice that I assume was meant to be Axel Gears' just didn't fit - actually, voice acting at all wouldn't fit - and I really don't want Sparkster's legacy to be ruined byt a supposedly-nostalgic cash-in. :/

Also - why only PSN? That's a frickin' pain.