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Let's see how Konoko's mobility stacks up against Julie from FAKK2, a game that came out five months before Oni. Bonus Rune pic at the end. |
In the foreground, Julie, the player character, is crouching while watching a ghost Julie demonstrate what she's going to have to do. Notice that her "ghost" is hanging slack on the bar, but there's a wooden beam in her way up ahead. |
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After getting on the bar, Julie is then instructed to pull herself up and shimmy down the bar so that she can make it over the wooden beam. |
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Next, Julie's ghost demonstrates ledge-grabbing, with side-to-side hand-walking. |
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Remember these from recess in elementary school? This is what we could term forward-backward hand-walking, but see the obstacle on the monkey bars? You can also hand-walk side-to-side to go around it as you make your way down the bars. It's a two-dimensional version of the previous ledge movement. |
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Julie can also push and pull any object designated as moveable. You drag the box onto a target to proceed. |
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You thought we were done with Julie's mobility showcase? Think again. You can see that the rope deforms dynamically according to where she holds it. Notice that her body is counter-balancing itself; climbing up and down leads to a realistic swaying of her torso as she reaches up with alternating hands to grasp the rope. In order to get the vine swinging, you use the forward/ backward keys to gradually build up a pendulum-like momentum, like you do on a swing by using your legs. You can let yourself fly free at any time. |
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Julie can also climb walls when they have a grabbable material, whether it's an artificial one like this lattice, or something natural like a network of vines. As you would guess, you can travel in two dimensions once again, on a vertical plane this time, instead of the horizontal plane of the monkey bars. Uh-oh, wait a minute. It looks like, in order to get over this wall, Julie has to climb right, but there's not enough room for her feet to get a hold on the lattice if she goes over there.... |
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Fortunately, Julie's a strong girl (you should see her wave the chainsaw sword around like it was nothing!). She simply lets her legs fall free, until she climbs up high enough, at which point she automatically brings her legs up to help her climb. |
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Finally, Julie shows how she can traverse ledges too narrow to walk normally on. All of the mobility options on this page are very natural feeling and control well, but this one is especially impressive. The movement is purposely disconnected from the camera's orientation. This is important because, as you go around the corner, you shouldn't have to think about your changing axis of movement in relation to the camera. Many games would make you stop and re-position the camera before continuing, or would lock the camera to your character's orientation, but in FAKK2 you can move the camera around Julie freely with the mouse while holding down the same movement key the entire time in order to keep proceeding along the ledge smoothly. |
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Finally, young Viking upstart Ragnar demonstrates that, sadly, even a muscle-bound guy holding a torch and a shield has more mobility than Konoko. He can't do any of the other tricks above, though. |
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