Toejam and Earl: Back in the Groove

Alright, I'll say it - I think the animation and odd mishmash of styles is really bad. The art and animation looks rushed, or just done by people who weren't particularly inspired. The music is alright, but it seems a little unfitting. The sound design reminds me of a cheap flash game. The cheapo presentation of the first game was likable in its own right, and it was consistent throughout. The second game had excellent presentation and consistent style. But this one? Animations look wobbly and in need of a few iterations and reviews. Sequences don't have good timing, the characters don't convey any inertia in their movements, and the playfield looks like a wreck.

Now that I've seen the gameplay footage for the game, which I've avoided for the longest time, I feel that my early fears about the future of this game have come true, and I feel very let down. Of course I'll want to try the game, but this looks like it didn't turn out well.

It looks alright to me, the only hodgepodge is the backgrounds vs the sprites. But it still does look unpolished, it could use a lot more transition effects.

My beef with that style of animation is that it looks to me like a cheap flash cartoon, with inadequate keyframes and far too much tweening. Interestingly, this promotional music video features animation with lots of keyframes and much less tweening and mutation, and I think it looks a lot more presentable and likeable, even if it's "not as smooth".

The style kinda reminds me Ittle Dew 2, but the background graphics really do clash with it. Otherwise, it looks fine.

They had a slightly different style earlier on which I liked better, but I'm kinda okay with the current iteration.

Did they not improve the dated gameplay at all? It looks exactly the same as the 1991 version, just with worse graphics.

If there's nothing new about the gameplay, I don't understand why this game was even made... There are hardly any sound or graphics improvements... those walk cycles look floaty as hell, Earl has no weight whatsoever. I rented the original game several times back in the day (and also the sequel), but not understanding English at the time meant I often didn't know what was going on... Now that I do understand what they're saying, I kinda feel like playing the original rather than a pointless remake.

Here's some earlier footage where things looked a little different:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMcQJfv3DmY

Also there was a strange point in the campaign where they asked for feedback on it:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1578116861/toejam-and-earl-back-in-the-groove/posts/1154110

Some later screenshots where it was a little closer to the current version:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1578116861/toejam-and-earl-back-in-the-groove/posts/1476548

The animation for all of them is still so bothersome to me. Not enough keyframes, lots of tweening, and no inertia. Breaking the character into body part images and rotating and skewing them for movement looks really when it's [all you're doing. There's a reason no high profile animated works are created that way. It worked for cheap flash animations, and it's the backbone of beloved animutation, but here I think it just looks like a turd.

The hula dancer's front-facing animation is a mess.