![]() A means of motion interaction, like Lighthouse or the Razer Hydra controller, will be necessary for optimal interaction. In the case of virtual reality, using a gamepad to move around and interact reduces the sense of immersion. Still, full body interaction is a field that is bound to grow with the expected rise of virtual reality technology. But really, probably the biggest reason motion controls aren't more popular is because few people want to play through a 20 hour game that requires them to run, jump and sweat all the way through, which left many motion games relegated to dance, sports and shooting genres. Adding to its stigma is how the Kinect controller often doesn't work very well or accurately, as evidenced by Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor and arguably for D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die. They're just not appropriate for many games, and developers looking to take advantage of the Wii's meteoric popularity shoehorned it in. The same goes for the dance game craze starting with Dance Dance Revolution. We argue that light gun games like Duck Hunt, House of the Dead, and Time Crisis are technically motion based in much the same way that the PlayStation Move is a motion based system. It's easy to blame the Motion Control fad on the Nintendo Wii console, and it certainly played a huge role, but the truth is that both players and developers have wanted deeper ways to interact with games for a long while. The best we can hope for is that developers will use them sparingly, appropriately, and avoid them as substitutes for deeper gameplay. ![]() However, even using QTEs in this way has its perils, since they can dilute the emotional intensity of a scene by reducing actions to prompted button presses - as used in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, when players must press a button to pay resepects to a fallen soldier.īut this mechanic is still a cheap and easy way to say "It's interactive!" So, it's unlikely to go away completely anytime soon. These days, they're more often used now for throwing in a little player interaction during cut scenes, like with some of the Paragon/Renegade interactions in Mass Effect 2 and 3. Repeating a sequence a dozen times to memorize a series of button presses ruins the sense of immersion. The main problem with QTEs is that they often make for a poor substitute for deep gameplay. However, the game's popularity might have done more harm than good, since it inspired a number of games that copied its style. Arguably, the game that made the best use of QTEs was God of War, which used them in boss battles to pull off brutal and often gruesome moves. But despite being an annoying mechanic that is nowadays often regarded as a lazy way of adding interaction, it still pops up in one form or another, with one of the more recent examples being Mortal Kombat X. Quick time events (QTEs) have been around since the days of Dragon's Lair, Cliff Hanger, and Road Blaster from the 1980s, which goes to illustrate how there was never a time when they weren't annoying. Just play Metal Gear Solid 4 or one of the later Final Fantasy games to see how FMVs have evolved. They just feature pre-rendered animated characters, sometimes with celebrity voice actors, instead of live action ones. It may have gotten a name change, but static movie cut scenes and talking head boxes are still in good use. We're not just talking about retro-style adventure games like Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure and Unstoppable Gorg (which is meant to be campy). But, in truth, this is a fad that continues today. Full-motion video technology was in its infancy at the time, so players had to deal heavily pixilated video or watch them in tiny boxes.įast improving 3D graphics technology made it possible to phase out FMVs, and games like Command & Conquer 4 pretty much proved that we might be better off without them. Examples include Night Trap, Phantasmagoria, and a long list of others. However, amateur talent and poor writing often led to a sense of campiness that marks the era. Although games like Mortal Kombat used live actor sprites instead of full video, and Dragon's Lair used 2D animation, they almost certainly added to its momentum.Ī number of memorable games came out of the FMV era, most notably The 7th Guest, Command & Conquer, and the later Wing Commander games. ![]() With games like Mad Dog McCree (1990) on laserdisc and arcade, having live actors in a game seemed like the way to go. The logic behind it was that there was no better way to make a game feel like an interactive movie than to actually have video footage in it. Pre-recorded movies featuring live actors was a fad that came with arcade games and the video disc era and reached its peak when CD-ROMSs and DVDs were popularized. ![]()
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