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Games with great animations

Happy Naruto UNS2 was finally mentioned, it was the first game that came to mind when seeing this thread.

Also:

Killzone 2/3
Halo Reach (3 and ODST were just ok IMO)
Assassins Creed
Ico
SF3
Newest unreleased Tomb Raider
Uncharted 2/3
Prince of Persia 2008
Battlefield 3
Euphoria games (GTA4, RDR, Backbreaker)
And last but not least: Astel on the Sega Saturn
 
4 pages in and no Vanillaware love? I am disappoint.

2i8x6vr.gif
 
Anilusion said:
Heavenly Sword has pretty damn good animations in cutscenes at least.
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As well as in combat. Its got one of the few combat systems where you can just string moves together when no enemies are around and play out your own Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon dance of death. Beautiful stuff.
 
Afrocentric-Asian said:
Epic Mickey had some great animations, it really captured that Disney feel for Mickey, Oswald and the others.
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This is mine. Oswald and his children especially are always a pleasure to watch. Really fun and rubbery.

Rabbids Travel in Time also surprisingly had that well executed rubbery quality to its animations.

I'd also nominate the PS3 Ratchet games. The cutscenes in the upcoming Ratchet are simply stunning.
 
Mickey Mania
Out of this World
Lion King
Heart of Darkness

Im sensing a pattern ...

Recently it depends. I think as a whole Japanese animators are better at full body animations but suck at facial animation. American animators are more complete and can animate a face if required, which is nice.
 
Darkstalkers, Wind Waker,TF2, Street 3, Ghost Trick, Team Ico, the last 3 or 4 KOFs, Wario Shake it

Yeah ... everything pretty much said =3

And ... everyone call me crazy when i say this ... but i have an unorthodox special mention to ....

rOdwJ.jpg


This dude on the smash bros series !

When i discovered that he is a 3d Model my head EXPLODED
Good animation is when it achives what it needs to be achived in a awesome sense of fidelity ... and this is top animation

Also, the smash bros (specialy brawl) has some awesome animation too .... best sonic animation in the character story .... not that this is an huge achivement =P


edit : how could i forgot ????

Splosion Man for the thousands (and all HILARIOUS) running and idle animations
 
Ghost Trick looks more like a rendered animation they took stills from. Is this the case?
 
Dacvak said:
Ghost Trick looks more like a rendered animation they took stills from. Is this the case?
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Yes, but everything was done by hand... not motion capture

Ghost Trick Director Shu Takumi said:
To show how quirky these characters are we put a lot of effort into the animation. We spent time in making full body character models. WhatÂ’s interesting is we made them in 3D first. Usually, people would use motion capture, but we didnÂ’t want them to be super realistic so we didnÂ’t go through the whole motion capture process.
We made each of the 3D models by hand and hand animated to them. This gave them an element of quirkiness, weirdness, that bit of individual style.
Once we had them in 3D we rendered them into the 2D sprites youÂ’ve seen.
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Full Interview

perfectnight said:
Yeah I don't get the Zelda mentions. That E3 boss fight video was just horrid.
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Skyward Sword does have its "gamey" animations, but you cant say its that way throughout the entire demo that was shown. If you watch some of the extended gameplay in the dungeons you can see they improved upon alot

Even the boss fight's subtle animation, stands out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3o5TWzPmk8 @4:36 the way the boss dodges
@4:40 and the way he takes Link's sword are great
 
I could name tons of games so I'll just say...



Any game that passes the 'stair' test. Basically when you put your third person character on a flight of stairs, he/she should be able to put their feet on different steps, and have one knee bent. 3D Zelda does this for example.

You'd be surprised how many games never do this.




Any game that has animating faces during gameplay. 3D Zelda also has this.




Also gotta give a shout out to Goldeneye 007/Perfect Dark and Resident Evil 4/5. It's one thing to have a brilliantly animated character, but it's AWESOME to have an enemy model that reacts to all of your attacks realistically (shoot them in the hand, and they grab their hand in pain).
 
FlashbladeGAF said:
elenabendwin.gif
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That's some good rotoscoping but horrible pixel art. You can almost see the digitized model underneath, except for the face which looks inconsistent with the rest of the body.
 
Another nod for Ghost Trick. That was the first time I had seen animation that made me question Street Fighter 3's top spot. Really gorgeous work they did with it...

Edit: Honestly, the cutscene animations are great in Skyward Sword, but I'm not so sure I'm convinced on the actual gameplay. Granted I haven't watched the latest trailer since I've been on a bit of a blackout, but from the last footage I saw of in-game action, it wasn't fascinating by any means. Have things changed that much?
 
Radogol said:
That's some good rotoscoping but horrible pixel art. You can almost see the digitized model underneath, except for the face which looks inconsistent with the rest of the body.
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Except...I'm almost certain you're dead wrong...you can look at the artbooks and see the pages of handrawn frames that the sprites and animations are based on. And imo, smooth animation >>>> high res pixel art
 
_dementia said:
I don't know about easily, but SF4 is definitely impressive.

Those slow-mo superflashes can really emphasize how great it is
http://youtu.be/tRATFvSP8hA
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That was one that came to my mind actually, when i had SSF4 deejay frame data vids i played his super/ultra over and over in slow motion because the detailed animation in his movements blew my mind.

But yeah its not to say 3s animation is "bad", but lets just say "love", "feel", and "charisma" don't really do much for me as actual arguments.
 
Finaika said:
I wouldn`t call that good animation. Its just grass swaying, and the character just standing still there.
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But the grass swaying looks nice because it is nicely animated. But it really isn't the best example of the game's animation. Other areas of the game include huge, crashing waves, for instance, where every frame is hand drawn.
 
DeathMonkey said:
I've always loved the animations from the 2D Fire Emblem games:

General_animation.gif


-Scott-
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I was going to mention this, also Team Fortress 2.

I was disappointed by Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon's animations.
 
LA Noire has the best facial animations and this is fact.
 
RooMHM said:
Never understood the praise for Uncharted's animation. Sure it's detailed but it looks like drake is ice skating.
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The praise / GDC acknowledgement for animation is because it does all of it fluidly in realtime while being controlled by a player & environment. The blending of shooting backwards while flinching because of an explosion as you're coming out of a crouch animation is unheard of in the gaming world. As traditionally you're just blending through different mocap'd animations. Crouch, run, taunt, idle, etc.

I think they only have animators for the Cutscenes at this point? The Ice staking happens from time to time, but the overall character animation is second to none. It would be mighty hard to look at all the climbing/rolling/jumping etc and just write it all off because of the odd foot translation issue.
 
Dr Eggman said:
LA Noire has the best facial animations and this is fact.
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Yeah, the facial animations are amazing. Its very unfortunate that the body animations are archaic in comparison...making for some very awkward moments.

Uncharted and Assassin's Creed series are probably the best in the biz. Valve gets credit for facial animations as well.
 
abstract alien said:
Another nod for Ghost Trick. That was the first time I had seen animation that made me question Street Fighter 3's top spot. Really gorgeous work they did with it...

Edit: Honestly, the cutscene animations are great in Skyward Sword, but I'm not so sure I'm convinced on the actual gameplay. Granted I haven't watched the latest trailer since I've been on a bit of a blackout, but from the last footage I saw of in-game action, it wasn't fascinating by any means. Have things changed that much?
Click to expand...


yes, latest trailer happened
 
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