These have been around for awhile, so it’s likely that some of you have already seen them. But Monty Oum is made of awesome, and therefore I must share him with all those who have not seen his work.
Each video is just a no-punches-pulled, wall-to-wall blitzkrieg showcasing of awesome fighting. It reminds me of XKCD’s lament of yet another summer passing without a tmindless big-budget action movie. In Random DM Tips: Running Combat, I talked about taking a really great fight film and narrating the action on screen as an exercise for developing a larger descriptive repertoire at the game table. If you’re looking for some truly epic gaming, Monty Oum’s stuff is a great place to start.
Since I’m a compulsive quibbler, I will point that:
(1) If you’re going to use the Burly Brawl music from The Matrix Reloaded (in Haloid), I probably would’ve steered clear of actually reusing some of the fight choreography from the same movie.
(2) The fights can get a little repetitive in places. The result can feel a little bloated, with bodies just flying around without much purpose or result. But this more than made up for in the major set-pieces, some of which are incredibly clever and very well done.
(3) In the Dead Fantasy videos, some of the choreography ends up feeling like screen-caps from a fighter game — repetitive combo moves and the likes. Obviously Dead or Alive is a fighter game, but it’s not like the Final Fantasy characters are lining up for turn-based combat.
ARCHIVED HALOSCAN COMMENTS
“John Lee”
At around 1:16 in Dead Fantasy I, I’m not quite sure why the weapon is returned. It doesn’t seem to be a particularly wise tactical move.
Sunday, October 05, 2008, 1:17:50 PM
Altair
Good stuff: difficult to do that commentary, as it’s a bit hard to see what’s going on most of the time…
BTW: There’s 2:21 minutes of falling in Dead Fantasy II – that’s a drop of 7.1 miles assuming normal terminal velocities. Big building. I can just imagine my player group asking “And are we *still* falling..?”
Sunday, October 05, 2008, 11:34:12 AM
Re-watching these, I think my favorite part is definitely the long fall of Dead Fantasy II. But I’m amused by the fact that the building appearing to generate a sufficient gravitational pull to make them fall back towards it whenever they jump away from it.