Intro Created from something more or less completely malevolent by Paul Interrante and twisted even further into Quake 2 motion by Brad Grace, Dr. Gabriel Faustus is an average yuppie plastic surgeon from L.A. who, like most Californians, happens to be stark raving mad. As the most likely product of a collision between a calculating scalpel-wielding obsessive and a maniacal clown, Faustus as likely to sculpt you a replacement nose as slice you an extra mouth or two. Consider him both a reason to steer clear of those insidious doctors and a character preview for the Thrill Kill four-player fighting game to be released for the Sony Playstation this October by Virgin Interactive, of which he is a part. The Model
Thrill Kill's lanky, "bear trap for a mouth" Dr. Faustus has come a long way from Christopher Marlowe and Goethe. Paul Interrante, apparently the modeler for Thrill Kill, is the one responsible for the construction of the good doctor. "Creepy" is the best word to describe him (er ... Faustus, not Paul), though with a certain amount of pretense "ironic" works too. Gabe embodies both the skinny intellectual that you could break like a twig (should you make it past the scalpel) and the cold uncompromising might of the thoroughly deranged. Though his overall look probably makes it hell for him to get willing referrals and causes his bedside manner to send patients screaming into the halls, he's very attractive for our purposes as shotgun-wielding surgeon-shredders. His spindly arms and legs do great things for the character, even more so than the metal jaws he sports on (in?) his face. A blood-stained apron gives Faustus the perfect finishing touch. It might have been nice to see Faustus with a custom weapon model but the addition of "standard" VWep support for the model means that he will be carrying id-issue weapons throughout the game anyway so there'd be little point to that beyond the curiosities of a model viewer.
The doc is built from separate body sections that blend together well for the most part once a skin is applied. The elbows are an exception in that the upper arm section hangs over the lower and creates a kind of thorn where they meet (a similar effect occurs in the knees, but is not so prominent). Based on the construction premise behind Faustus, I assume that Thrill Kill will use a runtime skeletal deformation system for the animation of its characters. The face count isn't out of control, but at 640 triangles before the weapon model, it could stand to be lower. The main reason for this slightly high face count for an equally slightly blocky-looking model is that the normally hidden areas of the separate body sections are capped with triangles. This might be another consequence of the runtime skeleton approach to animating in that it's more difficult to keep these "interior" parts completely hidden when you're generating sliding and rotation limits on the fly, than if you had an artist setting the frames and making absolutely certain that no backfaces are theoretically visible at a given time (though yes, I realize that many modelers do -- a bit lazily, I'll add -- retain caps even when they're working with Quake 2-style frame sets). Whatever the reason for the sectional caps, it would have been nice had Brad deleted them and manipulated the nearby vertices to accommodate when he animated Faustus for Quake 2. In fact, I don't think it would have been a sacrilege toward Paul's work, for conversion's sake, to have deleted the caps, welded the surrounding vertices, and then repaired the skinmap in NST. The Animations
Dr. Faustus' animation is good stuff, if abbreviated. Most movements manage to reasonably reflect the doc's thin, wiry composition. Jump even gives him some age, a character surface most Q2 PPMs dare not scratch. He kind of moves as one's grandfather would, if that grandfather happened to be near overdose on a Viagra/PCP cocktail and was packing heat (it could happen, you know). The Crouch scenes almost give him a spider-like quality, something this spindly malcontent is dying for. A "mad scientist" tinge comes in with the Useless Five, in which he gives a diabolical laugh, takes a metallic bite out of the air before his hapless victims, scolds his enemies with an attitude-laced scalpel, and ... uhm ... condescendingly brushes his teeth? Well, whatever he's doing, it's all dripping with character and not difficult to admire from an artistic standpoint. There is a glitch in the Stand scene that prevents the scene from looping smoothly, but Faustus' bobbing, unsteady, jerky posture helps to explain this as a muscle twitch or something otherwise unobtrusive.
That was the "good" part ... the "abbreviated" part is that two of the Death scenes are virtually identical and the Salute animation is used again for Wave. True, Salute/Point/Wave/Taunt/Flip are very rarely seen in-game, if ever, but these animations give a competent animator a great chance to show off for his contemporaries and it'd be nice if they were all utilized as such. Well, that's all debatable as far as review criteria go, but it's undeniably silly to leave us with three Death scenes when four are available.
This might come down to an example of the problems with conversion from one game to another, what with palette and size differences, but the Q2 skin leaves something to be desired. The colors don't blend well, the apron takes a comic book-ish way out and is outlined to give it contrast against the body, there is some odd use of shadow on the arms (large swaths of shadow that would be just fine in a still painting don't work well on an animated 3D model whose lighting is too dynamic for such bold moves), and the copious amounts of blood spattering the ol' doc look like thick red paint on the legs instead of a relatively thin liquid that would darken when soaked into a medium blue pant leg. The 300x227 skinmap is guaranteed to annoy 3D cards, though luckily not enough to cause a major problem. I personally wish the skin was of better quality ... there is too much good in the rest of the model to get away with such a low-grade skin. Sounds
Custom sounds are included for Faustus, though they don't seem to go very well with the character they're intended to augment. Maybe they just don't jive with my own concept ... I dunno. Three stars for making an effort and not actually becoming a hindrance, at least. Visible Weapons Support Supported with the standard id weapon models. Pack Inclusion Dr. Faustus' skin is a major drawback from an aesthetic standpoint but technically can't work to disqualify the model from inclusion in the pack (and considering some decent animation, it'd be a shame if it could). The polygon count is higher than it needs to be but is still well within playable parameters. We welcome the doc to the pack.
review by Malekyth
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