Something happened. I think it was just last year that was a dud. There are some great games coming out this year. I was just looking at a preview of Halo 3. The visual quality is much improved. The user interface is much improved. I even see differences in the physics. Finally, a game that begins to be worthy of their untold millions. Halo 2 was all Bungie's money and Microsoft's talent, when it should have been Microsoft's money and Bungie's talent. Halo 3 appears to be what remains of Bungie talent bankrolled by Microsoft.
On the other hand, Team Fortress is almost all designer talent, with very little in terms of technical innovation. The game appears to move very much like HL2DM, but the visual quality is unparalleled. "Be the Cartoon." I believe that this year's improvement in games less attributable to an increase in game design intelligence, and more attributable to a broad adoption of high definition video for both game play (what you buy) and game cinematics (what they sell you).
Speaking of visual quality, we watched yet another "Trailer/Feature" for Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of the Patriots. It looks so great. To bad we will never get to play a game that looks that great. Not only is MGS notorious for being heavy on full motion video (where the user sits and watches and does not actively play,) I have come to the personal opinion that the in-game camera is entirely lacking in narrative contribution. In stark contrast to this kind of unimaginative use of the in-game camera is the Gears of War camera, which is dynamic, adaptive, maximized (as in the use of three depth-of-field effects on the camera at the same time), and very much apart of the scene (blood splatters onto the camera lens in the style of slasher flicks.) Worth mentioning with regard to the skillful use of the in-game camera as a narrative device is Jackson's "King Kong" game. The scenes where you play Kong is a shining example of how a third person camera can be used with a player character to make the player feel like they are staring in a movie.
So in my mind, the jury is still out on how cinematic a game should be. Lots of FMV does not make it. Some film makers have produced playable games of high cinematic quality (Jackson) while others have not (Wachowski). Halo 3 is offering more and more camera control, which is good. In the world of the computer, the camera is imminently scriptable, and should do more than just follow. But who can accomplish that without a vision for it? Anyway, things continue to improve (or, at the very least, evolve.) For that reason it looks like we will all be spending a lot of time in front of the HD console this winter, so you might want to keep these issues in mind :0)
For more game preview visit 1up.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment