In Toon Crisis, you're a disembodied hand down streets in Soho, blowing away attacking animated characters. "Streets in Soho" is literally that; someone carried a videocamera through Soho. The disembodied hand is likewise a digital photograph of someone's hand, thumb up and forefinger pointing -- how every kid in the universe "makes a gun" when playing Cops & Robbers or the like. The only motion is traversing your "gun" left to right, with the mouse; you shoot with the left mouse button. The opponents, however (and various visual effects) are hand-drawn animation superimposed on the videography of Soho.
Toon Crisis is thus a rail shooter, that videogame subgenre in which you have little to no control over your motion, and simply rack up points by shooting as many targets as possible, as quickly as possible. Nothing particularly innovative about the design -- but the rough graphics, and the superimposition of goofy little animated characters on gritty urban streets, is amusing and original.
There's also Toon Crisis 2, but I can't recommend it; they took money from Sony to turn it into an advergame, featuring a big-breasted tart wearing some kind of MP3 player, jogging through a park in London and shooting toons; the ad placement is annoying, the chickie (depicted onscreen during cut scenes as you move from one battle point to another) breaks the immersion (it's not my hand, it's hers), and the lush park setting is no where near as interesting as the streets.
London, that is
I showed this to my sweetie, and she said "But I don't recognize the buildings... are you sure it's SoHo?"
That's Soho, in London. Not SoHo, as in South of Houston (howston, not hyewston, for you Texans), the district renamed after the area in London by real estate agents in New York City sometime in the 80s. But, you know, Soho, as in "Unddas große Feuer in Soho, sieben Kinder und ein Greis".
Since I live near THAT Soho...
...I will never look at those bins the same way again. Perhaps an enterprising artist should paint one up.
love it
What a great idea.. I did find myself trying to shoot at the pigeons a lot though. It's like you can't tell whether they are sprites or not. It reminds me of one of those old laserdisc games, like that weird Sega Laserdisc Time Traveller arcade game from the 80s.
I wish they'd make a mellowed out, atmospheric Myst-like London adventure game, instead of all those crazy cartoon monsters!