supernatural
The First Full CT60 demo by Evolution!
We've waited a while for this one. In fact Evolution showed us a nice and
skeletal preview at the Outline '04 party, with the confident promise from
Deez that it would be finished just a few weeks later, and much bigger than
before.
Well that's me taught a harsh lesson about believing in Evolution
timescales. Maybe they really meant "Evolution", as in a process that takes
thousands and millions of years to evolve a small rodentlike creature, into
something capable of building the Empire State building?!
(Pause to listen to gale of faint laughter from the rest of the Atari
scene! Ah well....)
But after a two year silence, fingers were pulled, fragments of code were
dragged from the dusty graves of hard drives. The same fragments of code
were despairingly thrown to one side and they started again, so what we
eventually got was almost completely different from what was shown at
Outline '04.
Still, it's here now, lets go and spin it up.
It starts off dark and brooding, which is well in keeping with Deez's
preferred style. An elaborate 'Evolution' logo fades up, then down again.
The music strengthens, and a beat starts, and we're into the first main
part. This is a corridor tour de force. It's not just a careless trip down
any old "will that do?" texture. Deez and company have really taken great
care here. The scene presented to us is suitably broken down, gloomy, and
menacing, it is stuffed with all sorts of interesting lighting and textures
and broken down stuff, as if you are the mute and helpless witness to
something really awful that happened there a decade before!
Too late to take a bath here...
This slowly fades out, then we are greeted with a lone survivor of the
original pre-version of the demo, as a bunch of 3-D metablobs are melting
into one another, against a golden syrup backdrop!
This liquid and languid screen provides a nice mood change before we are
greeted with another textured punch to the kidneys, as we now spin around a
scrapyard. This has all sorts of decrepit remnants, all beautifully drawn.
Never before has crud looked so atmospheric on a Falcon! There are some odd
bits which make you say "What the f*ck?!" thrown in for no extra charge,
such as a giant slug reposing on top of one of the junked cars!
Hang on, that's my car in there!
There is another step-change to something less urgent, with the obligatory
high quality still piccy. This continues the overall 'dark' theme of the
demo, as we see that some dude is getting tortured, or simply going out of
his mind to the light of a 40 watt bulb! For some reason, it puts me in mind
of some Agent T. pictures.
There is a part which almost looks like a greets screen, with a giant
textured spinning 'whatever?' with phrases that sound like crew names, but
aren't.
"Forces Phenomena beyond normal scientific understanding". They *could* be
crew names if you concentrated really hard!
As a demo goes, it is very grandiose but fairly short, as we reach the end
of the main part. A red pyramidal 'Supernatural' title appears then fades
away.
But we're not done yet, as there is a change of music to something more
'amigasynth' or Ace Synth sounding, and a slowly spinning voxel vortex
appears. This is merely the background effect as a lengthy infotext and
related credits scroll up the screen, there is quite a lengthy explanation
of how the demo came together (eventually.)
What we have here is a generally slow and stately progress. Evolution have
given us a worthy first big demo for the CT60, even if it feels that some
stuff was still left out. This is way overdue, but still very welcome.
Of course, we didn't have too long to wait and see what the Dead Hackers
were going to do, but that is another whole different story which we will
tell elsewhere!
Pro's..
It's the FIRST full-sized demo for the '060!
Nicely slow and atmospheric..
First class texturemapping..
Great design..
Con's..
It's just a little bit on the short side..
It's very late! Can we have the next one a bit quicker?
CiH, for Alive Mag, July '06..
|
