As the summer fades away, so too does the Xbox Live Summer of Arcade and a quick reflection of the games that came out during those weeks shows something that's self-evident: Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet was the best of the bunch.  This might seem a pretty bold statement, particularly up against the genius of Bastion and the depth of From Dust, however I think it's fully justified, unlike the paragraph text formatting on this site.

So why such high praise?  Read on to find out. 
 

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is an exploration-type scroller that fuses so many things together, it's hard to initially see how it would all work.  Puzzle elements combine with combat combines with dungeon crawling combines with boss battles combine with art combines with a large overall quest.  It's that diverse but not in the least fragmented.  The world within which the game takes place has its own set of levels: mechanical, electrical, ice, ocean and the regular twisted level where you start.  But again, the diversity is so perfectly integrated with its elements that it does all feel like one big cohesive world and since the gameplay elements that I mentioned above all overlap in the levels - and that they're largely non-linear - makes for a go-anywhere adventure that feels both enclosed in its world, but superbly open at the same time.

The game begins with your ship arriving on the planet, armed only with, well, an arm, you set about solving puzzles by moving things about with your little grabby limb.  Your help system is also installed: a beam that examines object and supplies you with minimal information about how to use, defeat or otherwise overcome whatever it is you've scanned.  Pretty soon, it dawns on you that the size of this game is belied by its map.  A Metroid-esque journey then ensues as you acquire more parts for your UFO, primarily by defeating boses that require a variety of different tools on your UFO.  Early on, you have your pincer, your normal projectile weapon and your scanner.  But in time, you later acquire a missile launcher that allows complete directional control over the projectile, occasionally forming part of a sort-of electric-wire-steady-hand game whereby you feed your missile through narrow tunnels to open a door.  You also gain a circular saw, handy for clearing passages blocked by loose rocks. There's an electric field generator that powers things up or shocks foes.  A telekineses beam allows for more puzzles surrounding the movement of blocks into switches, while the use of lasers is critical in the ice level, where their beams are redirected by coloured crystals that you place in order to focus them.  Upon defeating the ice boss, you gain a laser for your own use.  Along with the shield, your ship is a veritable Swiss army knife of gadgets, though there is nothing that gets stones out of horses' hooves.  ...maybe the grabby-pincer-thing.  And what makes it more interesting and challenging is that you can only use one device at a time and that switching between them occurs while the game continues to play; there's no pausing and switching, it's just all done on-the-fly.

Michel Gagné, known for his work on The Iron Giant, Star Wars: Clone Wars and his own short film Prelude to Eden, certainly left his design mark on the art style of this game.  Its luscious, smooth animations, thick silhouettes, clawed edges and innumerable stylised tentacles bring forth the feel of Limbo but with a greater sleekness and flair.  Almost subconsciously, the backgrounds smoothly glide from one to another as you traverse the levels.  The audio is similarly deftly executed with some great in-game diagetic sounds, and a smooth and fitting soundtrack that just adds to the mood of the game and the world you're in.

Obviously, all these different elements of Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet make it fairly hard to pigeonhole in terms of genre.  The closest you'll get is the vagueness of the twinstick shooter, which could be anything from Super Stardust to Tomb Raider and the Guardian of Light to PixelJunk Shooter.  And that's good, because there's far more to a twinstick shooter than just twinstick shooting, but this game goes so far beyond what you might expect from that genre that it would still, vagueness aside, be an unfair labelling.  Overall, the experience of Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet was outstanding and I can find no fault.  I got stuck a few times but didn't feel that I was so stuck that I'd have to look online for a solution, some of the boss battles had me stumped for a couple of hours all tolled, there's no big slapdown if you keep getting things wrong because checkpoints keep you safe and close to the action; it just didn't have anything wrong with it and, conversely, it had a great deal right with it.  

5/5

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is out now for Xbox Live Arcade and will set you back 1,200 MSPs and worth every penny, I tell you!