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This Year's Top Game Design Innovations
Next Generation has one of those end of the year 'top 10' lists we all love so much, with plenty of room for discussion on this one. They claim to have picked out the top 10 game design innovations of 2007. It's hard to argue with elements like Portal's portals or Mass Effect's conversation wheel, but was Metroid Prime 3 on the Wii really as good as a mouse-and-keyboard PC FPS? "When people ask 'How do we make a good shooter on a console' what they really mean is 'how do we make a shooter that feels as quick and responsive as a PC shooter on the console?' Apparently the answer is the Wii mote. I was blown away by this fact. Nintendo had always been the 'family friendly' console to me so I didn't consider the FPS ramifications of the Wiimote but clearly it's the best tool for the job. With some tweaking and some refinement down the line I could see the Wii (or a console with Wii like controls) becoming the platform of choice for hardcore FPSers, even over the PC. If this does become the case it will owe it all to Metroid Prime 3."
The only reason this is controversial is because the wiimote doesn't have good enough aim. It's often off by an inch or more on smaller tv's. This is hard on hard core FPS fans, but for me this isn't a problem. First, between wrestling with the auto-aim feature on a lot of shooters and using two analog sticks to control my movement and aim, I find correcting for the wiimote's bad aim to be easy by comparison. I'd rather have faster, more responsive aim that's off by a consistent amount than have to use a regular controller.
but was Metroid Prime 3 on the Wii really as good as a mouse-and-keyboard PC FPS?
Metroid Prime 3 hit a weird spot. The first two Prime games certainly featured first person shooting, but didn't play anything like an FPS game. They played like an adventure game with a different camera angle. Prime 3 moved much closer to the FPS realm. If you're an FPS fan, you'll probably like the beginning and end of the game and tolerate the middle. If you're a Metroid fan, you'll probably feel the reverse.
There's no doubt Wiimote+Nunchuck beats the keyboard part of mouse+keyboard. Precision moving and jumping is far easier with an analog stick than with a keyboard. If like me you rarely play FPS games, the Wiimote is easier to use than a mouse. But my gut feeling is over time, the mouse would be slightly easier to be precise with as it's on a flat surface rather than being held in the air.
Of course, I play for the adventure, not the shooting, so I just left lock-on turned on, which means for the most part you only had to aim at bosses. If you found a good sitting position where you could rest the Wiimote on your knee and aim from there, you might be able to beat a mouse in precision.
There's no way the Wii mote compares to a mouse and keyboard for shooters.
The only reason it's usable at all in Metroid Prime 3 is because the Z button auto-locks your view onto the target.
If it wasn't for that feature, the controls would be hopeless.
I didn't have that issue with a big screen. I wonder where that line really diverges, is it bad on say 19" TV, but Sweet at 42"+ ? Dunno. It was pretty easy for me to pick off people in the distance on my projector and I have a 92" screen on that.
I know I'll get flamed to hell for this, but unlike the article I think the Wii Controls are already better than the PC's (and there is still room for improvement*). The Advanced sensitivity on Metroid Prime 3 is "Nearly, but not quite as sensitive as a mouse", but for what little sensitivity is lost, the Analog on the Nunchuck kicks the shit out of WASD, and there is simply nothing that can compare on the PC with the visceral immersion of the Grapple gun.
Using your left arm to throw a grapple on you're opponent's shield, then jerking your arm back to pull the shield out of their hand so you can blast them with your arm cannon is something you can't get elsewhere. Add that with full analog movement, and you have an experience that not only rivals, but betters the competition.
*Games are already improving on the design, play Medal of Honor Heroes 2 and customize your aim sensitivity to achieve mouse level precision if you like.
You know, some time in 2003 or 2004, I was talking to a gamer coleague about FPS on consoles, and bitching about how much it sucks with twin sticks compared to a good keyboard and mouse. And from there it went into the all time nerd favourite, singlehandedly solving all the world's problems, like Picard. In this case, well, how would _you_ make a console controller that works well in FPS.
So what we came up with was: a trackball. No, really.
Think a standard console controller. Say, a Dual Shock, because everyone knows it. But it's the same principle for an XBox pad, Dreamcast pad, Gamecube pad, whatever, really.
Now think replacing the right stick with a small, thumb-operated trackball.
Think about it. A trackball has much the same advantages a mouse has, because it _is_ a mouse turned upside down. You can turn around 180 degrees at the flick of the thumb, and stop on exact pixel you want to. The problem of joystick vs mouse is really that moving with a joystick can be very fast or very accurate, but not both at the same time. A mouse lets you do both. So does a trackball.
So, really, why doesn't anyone do just that?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I've played several FPS games using the dual-analog scheme consoles have relied on to this point, and it always destroyed the immersive effect that is the FPS game's chief advantage. No matter how good you get with the sticks, the resultant motions on-screen are always jerky and mechanical. Robotic. It's a grating difference from the much more organic WASD + mouse scheme.
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is the closest to that organic movement I've experienced. It's still not perfect; the aim is a smidge twitchy, and it would be nice to be able to spin a bit more quickly. Those faults aside, it's deeply intuitive. No, it's not light-gun aiming, but neither is any other successful FPS scheme (rail shooters are the only games I've seen with light-gun aiming), so I don't know why anyone who's an FPS fan would complain about that. As I said, the slight jumpiness of the aiming means sniping isn't really do-able, but relative aiming is what anyone who has used a mouse control system is used to. Just hold the Wiimote at your side, where you're not tempted to look down the barrel, and let your wrist do the work...you'll adapt to it in an instant.
And yes, using the motion control for the grapple and combination locks and the like is *very* satisfying. Really, I highly recommend any FPS gamers out there to give this game a look. I think you'll like what you see.
The Humblest Mollusk on the Net
Super Mario Galaxy might be one of the few games I play again from start to finish. :-D
Video games have played with gravity in the past, but applying the concept of planetary gravity (with slightly non-realistic physics, but when you're orbiting around an ice cream cone, does it really matter?) to a 3-D platformer was the best idea I've ever played.
At some point I'm going to find the smallest, most isolated planet I can find and try to see how many times I can orbit it with a long jump.
That they did this without making me nauseous also deserves some sort of award. I seriously wonder how they did it.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Ignore 'off by an inch' comments. These are people trying to sight down the 'barrel' of the wiimote as though it were a light gun.
i had the same idea, but only found 1 decent place for it: go to the 'Deep Dark Galaxy' in the garden. in the middle of the starting beach there is a cannon that shoots you to a planet with a firepower flower. instead of shooting there, aim at the green planet on the right. there is a screw that you unspin, and the planet will begin to shrink. if you do a few long jumps, eventually the planet will shrink enough that it sends you into orbit! that is until the planet disappears, and there is no more gravity - then you get sucked over to the brown planet that you were supposed to go to in the first place.
And I can see your point about reading faster than listening, that's the case for me as well. On the other hand, for selecting my side of the dialog it does break the flow to read 4 to 6 full sentence (or multi-sentence) choices that are totally different from one another. I can see where it could flow faster to just pick in essence from: I agree, I disagree, I'm skeptical, etc. Once you do that you still get the your full sentence expressed, you simple don't see the full text of all the unchosen options.
The more interesting bits of the dialog are the NPC responses, since they include new information, and those are still fully intact (although spoken, which does slow down delivery).
And from the little I've seen watching my friends play Mass Effect, there is still plenty of pure written material outside the dialog mechanism.
Any infrared light source near the TV (or IRsensor on the Wiimote) could be disruptive. Lamps, Candles, and especially the Sun. The WiiMote uses the the sensor bar to triangulate position based on 2 steady points (provided by the sensor bar). If multiple sources are competing with the signal then it will confuse the Wiimote causing jitter. The Sun is the worse as it can blanket the Wiimote sensor with IR light making it impossible to detect the 2 points of the sensor bar among all the noise. So as an experiment you may want to close the curtains, blow out the candles, and turn off any lamps that may be near the TV to see if they are adding interference.
Another issue is distance, if you have a rectangular living room you may have issues with the Nintendo Stock sensor bar after 10 feet or so. (or if you are too close IE: less than 3 feet from it will cause issues)
I hope that helps.
Two issues:
1) A keyboard is strictly digital buttons. It's no where near as precise as an analog stick for movement.
2) Ease of access. You have plenty of keys, but a giant grid of keys isn't nearly as easy to use as something you wrap your hand around that has buttons placed so that they can be easily reached without confusion. Keyboard keys require more force and press down further than controller buttons, making them not as fast to hit. When you're trying to use 26 keys with one hand, it's easy for your hand to get lost on the keyboard, requiring you to either look down or take the time to reorient yourself.
The only advantage a keyboard provides is that it has a lot of buttons, which just isn't necessary for the vast majority of games.
People always prattle on about innovation, but in my world everything takes a back seat to fun. I don't care how "ground breaking" a game is, the big question is whether or not it's fun. So, if you want to talk about changing gaming and doing something new and different go for it, but just remember, it's still a game.
### the resultant motions on-screen are always jerky and mechanical. Robotic
Kind of like real soldiers, so I don't consider that a loss. Almost all FPS are utterly ridiculous in modeling a human being. They model a cylinder with a bit of wobble and a gun, thats it. No legs or stuff that actually matters a lot in actual movement. What WASD+mouse has going for it is that it doesn't have restrictions, you can turn as fast as you want, you are not limited by the game, only by your mouse skills. Which might be interesting for eSports, but for immersion I find it quite awful, since well, reality simply doesn't work that way and even SuperMario doesn't allow you to turn around on the stop, yet most FPS do.
Sorry to be a naysayer, but you're completely wrong here. I've played and loved console and PC FPS games from Quake and Goldeneye to Crysis and Halo 3. The game that finally swapped me was Bioshock. Played it first on the 360, then over to the PC. It's not the console games that are twitchy, it's that damn WASD walking on the pc. In Bioshock on the pc, you are ether standing still or running. You'll literally miss half the game if you play it on the PC, with so many environments that must be strolled through to be enjoyed. Same thing with the aiming, sure you're going to be less accurate on a stick. Much less accurate actually. However, try and do a smooth pan using a mouse . . . impossible. Herky Jerky award goes to the pc again. Both reasons why I went out and bought a 360 wireless adapter for my PC to enjoy the superior graphics of a pc (projected up onto a ten foot wide 720p screen) combined with the superior controls . . . of a console.
Written much more about this below on my blog.
http://www.jakepcw.com/muyuubyou/?p=578
only one everything
### Bioware usually does that kind of stuff with conversations
I haven't played Mass Effect, but I did play KOTOR and Jade Empire and the dialog system in Mass Effect looks quite a bit different. For one thing KOTOR and Jade Empire are awfully black&white, you can do good thing and bad things, but basically never anything in the gray area, which makes all the dialogs feel very forced and unrealistic. Also your hero never talks in either game, other then indirectly through your dialog choices, which isn't exactly a good thing for cinematic feel. From what I have heard Mass Effect has far more gray-area choices and your choices are topic/thought based, instead of being exactly what comes out of your heroes mouth, also your hero talks in the game, making the dialog feel much more alive.
All that said, its still nothing really new. It might be new for Bioware game, but realtime dialog was already done in Fahrenheit/IndigoProphecy some years ago (in general one of the innovativest games I have played in a long while), Dreamfall also had something similar, but without the realtime component. And looking back at older adventures one will also find quite a few that aren't based on strict dialog trees.
### but usually just with a single spherical world, not several you can jump between.
Psychonauts had tons of individual gravity and some MegaMan games had inverse gravity in some areas. But I haven't played SMG, so I can't really comment on it.
Overall innovation these days seems to be more a thing of "hasn't been done that often", "hasn't been done in a while", instead of a "has never been done before". But then with 30+ years of gaming, that is to be expected. Still a little sad that most games just copy last years block buster instead of copying a bit more creatively from other games in video game history.