Whiplash
The house that Legacy of Kain built strays from all that bloodletting in favor of something a little more lighthearted. Hands-on impressions, screens and more.
Published: October 7, 2003
With the Soul Reaver and Legacy of Kain games being pumped out of Crystal Dynamics over the past few years, it's easy to forget that the company really broke into the mainstream with the Gex series; games that were anything but short on 'tude and personality, both of which are crammed by the fistful into their next non-Kain project: Whiplash.
The heartwarming story of a pair of lab animals who finally break free of their captors and cut a swath of destruction through their high-tech prison, Whiplash seats you in the tweaked-out tail and twitchy ears of Spanx, a electro-shock-addled weasel tethered permanently to Redmond, a rabbit that's served as the unwilling recipient of dozens of makeup tests, chiefly getting doused in DuraSpray, a substance that leaves him invincible. With Spanx making a beeline for the exit with an indestructible Leporidic wrecking ball, a plethora of options present themselves as to how to use Redmond's invulnerability on the way to escape.
Taking advantage of Redmond's inability to be hurt is actually at the core of the gameplay. Using machines scattered around the labs, you can blow him up like a balloon, freeze, electrocute, irradiate or enflame, use him as a literal wrench to throw into gears, or a living hairball to clog a toilet, turn him into an explosive, use him as a cannonball... There are literally over a dozen ways to basically abuse Redmond (besides the usual bunny-fueled whiplash that serves as Spanx' default attack), all of them gut-bustingly funny.
With destruction as the crux of the gameplay, it comes as no huge surprise that Whiplash's environments are so destructible. Computer terminals, filtration machines, soda machines, beakers, chairs, desks - nearly everything that isn't bolted down can be pecked away at until there's nothing left, and that damage actually gets tallied up as you go along; cause enough damage and you'll bankrupt the megacorporation that's so keen on testing products on animals.
It's this combination of light puzzle elements and kinetic action that keep Whiplash fresh - at least in the preview build we spent some time with. There's something cathartic about tearing through a lab whipping the crap out of everything in sight. Some of the tests that are being done on the animals (most of them you'll want to free) are twistedly hilarious.
Even at this early stage, Crystal D's knack for kicking out a personality-driven action game is obvious. While we observed the odd camera glitch and a couple instances of things still lacking a final sheen of polish, the build we played was still a few months from final, and there was plenty of time to tighten things up. The core of the game and overall graphic detail (Whiplash sports a solid, if simplistic, engine adept at lavishing deep hues of blues, greens and reds everywhere while keeping detail on things like animation and character models nicely balanced) were already markedly solid. Likewise, the control feels exceptionally tight and it's endlessly fun to just sprint from room to room tagging everything in sight and watching it all slowly fall to pieces in a shower of debris.
We'll have time to really get into the meat of Whiplash as we near the game's November release, but if the early impressions of the game hold true all the way through, it could easily end up being one of most interesting takes on an action puzzler in a long while.
The heartwarming story of a pair of lab animals who finally break free of their captors and cut a swath of destruction through their high-tech prison, Whiplash seats you in the tweaked-out tail and twitchy ears of Spanx, a electro-shock-addled weasel tethered permanently to Redmond, a rabbit that's served as the unwilling recipient of dozens of makeup tests, chiefly getting doused in DuraSpray, a substance that leaves him invincible. With Spanx making a beeline for the exit with an indestructible Leporidic wrecking ball, a plethora of options present themselves as to how to use Redmond's invulnerability on the way to escape.
Taking advantage of Redmond's inability to be hurt is actually at the core of the gameplay. Using machines scattered around the labs, you can blow him up like a balloon, freeze, electrocute, irradiate or enflame, use him as a literal wrench to throw into gears, or a living hairball to clog a toilet, turn him into an explosive, use him as a cannonball... There are literally over a dozen ways to basically abuse Redmond (besides the usual bunny-fueled whiplash that serves as Spanx' default attack), all of them gut-bustingly funny.
With destruction as the crux of the gameplay, it comes as no huge surprise that Whiplash's environments are so destructible. Computer terminals, filtration machines, soda machines, beakers, chairs, desks - nearly everything that isn't bolted down can be pecked away at until there's nothing left, and that damage actually gets tallied up as you go along; cause enough damage and you'll bankrupt the megacorporation that's so keen on testing products on animals.
It's this combination of light puzzle elements and kinetic action that keep Whiplash fresh - at least in the preview build we spent some time with. There's something cathartic about tearing through a lab whipping the crap out of everything in sight. Some of the tests that are being done on the animals (most of them you'll want to free) are twistedly hilarious.
Even at this early stage, Crystal D's knack for kicking out a personality-driven action game is obvious. While we observed the odd camera glitch and a couple instances of things still lacking a final sheen of polish, the build we played was still a few months from final, and there was plenty of time to tighten things up. The core of the game and overall graphic detail (Whiplash sports a solid, if simplistic, engine adept at lavishing deep hues of blues, greens and reds everywhere while keeping detail on things like animation and character models nicely balanced) were already markedly solid. Likewise, the control feels exceptionally tight and it's endlessly fun to just sprint from room to room tagging everything in sight and watching it all slowly fall to pieces in a shower of debris.
We'll have time to really get into the meat of Whiplash as we near the game's November release, but if the early impressions of the game hold true all the way through, it could easily end up being one of most interesting takes on an action puzzler in a long while.
