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Gaming: First-person vs Third-person [split topic]

Started by Nik Drou, January 22, 2010, 03:21:14 PM

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Nik Drou

I only just bought GTAIV the other week and I'm at roughly the same place.  There's a lovely feeling of atmosphere and immersion, so much so that for the first few missions I tried to play as 'realistically' as possible, stopping at red lights and trying hard not to kill anyone.  Unfortunately, the game simply won't allow you to not to be a psychopath.  A fact cemented in
Spoiler alert
killing Vlad for a very poor reason
[close]
, which is impossible to avoid and seemed a bit out of character for Nico.  So far, all the missions seem to involve doing jobs for people that look and sound like they're played by Robert Loggia, or at least are really big fans of Robert Loggia.  It's still very enjoyable, but mowing down innocent civilians to no real consequence isn't as fun as it used to be.  I'm not sure if it's down to the improved graphics or simply my own lackadaisical maturation.

As I'm here, I'm tired of games that look like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnT1tSmXRdQ

I know it's a bit of a Gears of War clone, but still.  It feels like half the games coming out have this kind of art design.

The Masked Unit

Same engine innit. Having said that, it does look particularly like a Gears rip off.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

It's that cumbersome beefcake lumbering around in that 3rd person view I don't like. It looks very arcadey and some of the effects are pretty tacky.

Boring graphics, really...it's time for a new console or a concerted effort to revitalise PC gaming.

Nik Drou

I think overall I prefer third person to first, it's just the mess of greys and dark greens and queasy alien landscapes that I find dull.  I remember feeling chased away from videogames by the sheer amount of shooters where you played some humourless mercenary/soldier/hard-bitten twat in a dystopian environment. 

VegaLA

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on January 22, 2010, 05:25:52 PM
really...it's time for a new console or a concerted effort to revitalise PC gaming.

Well, the 360 is five years old this November, and it looks like the Console companies are keeping their word and keepign the current circle alive longer then the usual five years. Personally I think thats a good thing, there is still so much life left in them, the only aspect of gaming which may need a hardware update is MMO games.

mobias

I hate first person shooter games. Its a format that has now been done to death. I know games like Halo and Crysis really push the genre but I always find it difficult to relate to anything in first person shooters. Also they tend to be just that - shooting games. You always just have this bouncing gun view in front of you. It was great in the days of Doom because it was a really new and exciting way of playing. In third person games you can do so much more I think. Its much more cinematic. You can relate to the character in front of you. When its done at its best like in GTAIV or Uncharted 2 then its like controlling a movie that's happening in real time.

The character animation in GTAIV is still the best yet. They used the Euphoria Engine which was actually developed at Oxford University and is an off shoot of a program that was originally written to predict and map animal bodily movement. Euphoria has been used in a few games. I read that implementing it into GTAIV was the single biggest technical challenge Rockstar faced with the game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphoria_(software) Its being used in Red Dead Redemption which incidentally looks fucking amazing http://www.rockstargames.com/videos#/video:203/

mobias

Quote from: VegaLA on January 22, 2010, 07:11:40 PM
Personally I think thats a good thing, there is still so much life left in them

I think they definitely do. Its clear both the PS3 and 360 are going to have a second lease of life with the motion controller stuff that's going to come out for them. I'm not a 360 owner but I would say the PS3 has only really come into its own in the last year or 18 months and I think there's a good few years in it yet. I've read a few interviews with games developers where they've stated they're only now getting to grips with programming for it. I'm more inclined to think Microsoft will release a sequel to the 360 sooner than Sony do with the PS3.

AsparagusTrevor

Quote from: mobias on January 22, 2010, 07:16:17 PM
I hate first person shooter games. Its a format that has now been done to death. I know games like Halo and Crysis really push the genre but I always find it difficult to relate to anything in first person shooters. Also they tend to be just that - shooting games. You always just have this bouncing gun view in front of you. It was great in the days of Doom because it was a really new and exciting way of playing. In third person games you can do so much more I think. Its much more cinematic. You can relate to the character in front of you. When its done at its best like in GTAIV or Uncharted 2 then its like controlling a movie that's happening in real time.
Surely third person has been done to death just as much as first person? It's only two different approaches to similar gameplay styles, but first person is going for a more immersive experience whereas third person is more cinematic. What if a game had both options, switching between cameras surely wouldn't really make a game vastly better or worse would it?

mobias

Quote from: AsparagusTrevor on January 22, 2010, 07:42:03 PM
What if a game had both options, switching between cameras surely wouldn't really make a game vastly better or worse would it?

Well it wouldn't make it better or worse because at least you would have the choice. Personally I don't find first person shooters nearly as immersive as third person games but that's just because I don't find that single view you get nearly as engaging. I know there are some really good well thought out first person shooter games out there but I just think its been done to death, not in terms of the general creativity of the story or game play, a games a game after all in which ever point of view you play it, but in terms of third person games having a bit of an extra dimension to them. A first person game will pretty much only ever be a shooting game going by the sorts of console games that are out there now. At least there are third person games which don't only involve shooting. Are there many first person games that don't only involve holding a gun or some weapon in front of you?  It seems to me games developers can do more with third person games.  You can have a universal camera view point that you can control  to best suit or see what your avatar is doing on screen. Its fairly telling that Rockstar have said they're not fans of first person games for all those very reasons.

All of that is my personal preference. I know some people swear by first person shooters like Halo but I just hate being stuck in that one view point. It feels so constricting.



Hobes

Quote from: mobias on January 22, 2010, 07:16:17 PM
I hate first person shooter games. Its a format that has now been done to death.

Mirrors Edge?

mobias

Yeah I've played Mirror's Edge at a mates and its one of the very few exceptions. I couldn't actually decide whether Mirrors Edge was completely amazing or much less so. I was a bit divided over it. Also I've got Killzone 2 which is an unbelievably well produced game but I think what I'm getting at is similar to what Nik Drou said. There's a certain look and feel most first person shooters have. It always seems to be the same game you're playing but with some vaguely different plot line. First person games lend themselves to a certain type of game play and it always just seems to be the same. That's the part that seems to be done to death, for me at any rate.   

Big Jack McBastard

Mmmm, I know this feeling where you instantly know the controls and can forge ahead like a pro in short order.

I have the same notion of Mirror's Edge, spent half the time loving it and half questioning whether it's any good, an oddly ambiguous sensation, still not gotten back to playing beyond the first couple of levels and it's nearly a year old now.

Craig Torso

Mirror's Edge was fantastic entirely because it allowed you to choose whether you kill anybody.  How many other games (with actual baddies to go up against) give you that choice?  I always thought that wasn't really mentioned enough in the reviews.  It's a big step forward in some ways.

Still Not George

Quote from: Craig Torso on January 22, 2010, 09:42:05 PM
Mirror's Edge was fantastic entirely because it allowed you to choose whether you kill anybody.  How many other games (with actual baddies to go up against) give you that choice?  I always thought that wasn't really mentioned enough in the reviews.  It's a big step forward in some ways.
Well, it was definitely mentioned in the reviews, but the best review I saw of it pointed out that it ruined that whole atmosphere of choice in a couple of later levels by basically forcing you to go through guards in certain places. Is that the case? (I never really played much of it, see.)

Baxter


HappyTree

I've been unsure about Mirror's Edge but I know I'll end up getting it since it costs about £3 now.

Craig Torso

Quote from: Still Not George on January 22, 2010, 09:44:07 PM
Well, it was definitely mentioned in the reviews, but the best review I saw of it pointed out that it ruined that whole atmosphere of choice in a couple of later levels by basically forcing you to go through guards in certain places. Is that the case? (I never really played much of it, see.)
It was mentioned but surely in a time when loads of games are full of moral choices the only game that actually says 'hey you don't have to kill everyone!' should get more praise than it did just for that idea alone?

It certainly got more difficult in the later levels to stop yourself from grabbing a gun but it wasn't impossible.

Spiteface

I'm no FPS fan, but I am legit looking forward to the new Aliens vs Predator game due next month.  I like the Alien films and the first Predator film (the AVP films, it's safe to say, were shit though), enough to make an exception.

My main passion will always be Sonic the Hedgehog, and fighting games.  Street Fighter is the sport of kings.

bill hicks

Quote from: Baxter on January 22, 2010, 09:56:29 PM
Or for another now old-ish take on FPS:
Condemed The game Trailer

I was just about to mention Condemned as soon as the subject of immersion and alternative First Person games came up.

Condemned really affected me a lot when I played it. Something about the way that game is put together married to the viewpoint makes it so much more immersive than any Third Person experience could be. When you walk into a room with just a single light in the centre, shadows casting all over the shop and hear an enemy grunting and swearing to himself in the blackness it is the most terrifying thing in the world. The whole game carries a sense of threat.

I remember Shawn Elliot playing the second one (which I haven't played yet but bought a few weeks ago on the cheap) where he said that he could only play for an hour or so at a time because the game made him feel depressed and anxious. The bleakness of the environments and the world and the way the game presents player death, not just a simple bullet from across the map and a quick respawn but a heavy object to the face that messes up your view and makes you feel the impact of the shot, combine to really mess you up.

I think way more horror games should use First Person. It really does put you into the game a lot more than seeing an avatar on the screen does.

kittens

I downloaded the demo of Condemned 2, played it for around fifteen minutes and for the rest of the evening I was just fucking terrified.

mobias

Is that the game Charlie Brooker was going on about in Gameswipe? Sounds fucking nuts.

AsparagusTrevor

Condemned does a good job of making you feel like you're looking out from the character's body, rather than a camera at head height like a lot of first person games. It feels like you've got weight and momentum. Mirror's Edge is another game that manages this well.

Baxter

#22
The sense of immersion in Condemned is a complex thing, I don't think the friendly NPC 'interaction' is any better than any other game but I've yet to see that done truly well, it does away with a lot of the distancing elements you find in most FPS games you're not a super-powered hulk able to take a shotgun gun blast to the chest and survive, damage to the player character is genuinely disabling, there's no rucksack full of weapons, ammo is relativistically limited (EDIT: While untrue in Condemed as with many other games I mean to type 'Realistically') and you have no psychic ability to know how may bullets you have left (you have to take the clip out to check), physical combat is disturbing if you win or loose it's not a case of swinging a pipe at a model until it falls it's hitting a simulated man with a pipe, seeing him react and then keeping going until he doesn't grunt any more.

If you're fighting an enemy with a firearm they have a limited number of bullets too, and you only take what they haven't used (but generally if they have none left they have already perforated and killed you.)

It still retains some HUD elements granted non-numeric ones but this could have been less intrusive, it uses the doom style objective system whereby you receive communication via a model rather than text overlay (but there is an overlay run-down brought up by choice.)

It still uses in-game cut-scenes but these are intermixed with event based cues, deeply terrifying throughout.

I think a lot of the distancing elements in FPS are a result of traditions from the past when there were few alternatives to numeric readouts and spinning weapon sprites for pick-ups, and partially what you might call Leaky Implementations, you have to track a value that represents player health and ammo for the underlying code but direct representation of these values to the player is perhaps a mistake when it comes to immersion.

It's tricky to keep the player informed of their status and not leak out details of the underlying implementation without creating an initially steep learning curve.

Having said that, is there any tactical advantage to knowing your precise heath or ammunition level or do you 'chunk' the information into Healthy/Wounded/Nearly dead or for ammo it's not vitally important to know precise numbers the infomation you take from it is, Could I survive a fight at this level of difficulty without reloading, will I have to switch mid-combat. Condemned limits this with a focus on head-to-pipe combat both in what's available and optimizations within the game.

Good post, Baxty. Sometimes I think you're just copy-and-pasting, you seem so smart.

Right, anyway. Has anyone played the new Silent Hill game on the Wii?

New Super Mario Bros. Anyone else play it? Did you finish SECRET World 9? I didn't, actually, couldn't get enough Star Coins without wanting to hurl the fucking Wii into an abyss. Had some of the best times over a sweet Chrimbo, though, with some four-player: me, my my girl and my bros. Best multi-fun I've had in...err, since Wario Smooth Moves (Boozy) Bungee Bros.


Big Jack McBastard

Ohh yes Condemned is wonderfully unpleasant, though a little old looking now as it was one of the first on the box, though that's not to denigrate it's impact, the grimy dilapidated environments, the rabid loonies that inhabit them and the visceral beatings you have to administer to survive, not to mention the protagonist's 'mental affliction' make for one of the most unsettling gaming experiences out there the first time round. I do like it when games are capable of actually shitting you up, it shows concerted effort on the developer's part.

The second one is pretty grim as well, you learn the source of the driving force behind the psychotic fuckers and though you encounter some slightly more esoteric enemies there are some gems in there, the bear comes to mind. It has some devilishly hard achievements too, I finished the thing with about 260 under my belt

I heartily recommend both for anyone jaded with the FPS genre, actually they're less FPS and more FPH ('Hitter' if you will).

Neil

Really interesting tangent about first-person vs third-person, splitting into new thread so we can focus more on game presentation and immersion.  Gaming will be given more space in the forthcoming forum changes.  I bought Condemned 2 a few weeks ago, but didn't know it was a sequel until I peeled off the badly-placed pre-owned sticker.  It was so good that I had to leave it until I got and played the first one - to be honest, I remembered it being quite plodding, albeit with some great ideas and game mechanics that have been mentioned by others.  This could be because I was comparing it against what I'd seen of the much more accomplished sequel.  I think I'll take another dip into the first one, but I saw it as only really being worthwhile in terms of filling in the story. 

Big Jack McBastard

Quote from: Neil on January 24, 2010, 02:31:23 PM
Gaming will be given more space in the forthcoming forum changes

Sweet! I shall be living in there.

biggytitbo

Philosophically I definitely prefer first person, the sense of immersion and suspicion of disbelief is so much better when you don't have the artifice of looking down on your character. But practically they're better too, the controls are simpler and most importantly you don't have to put up with an erratic camera, even games as incredibly polished as Uncharted still suffer from dodgy cameras, which never seem to focus quite where you want them to.

Consignia

I personally can't stand First person shooters, which is probably to do with the fact I'm dispraxic and have trouble maintaining two control axis (aiming and movement) especially during action sequences. I was OK with Doom, since that didn't require actual aiming, but most things since then I've struggled to enjoy. I suppose my issues aren't limited to FPSs, as they are also present in quite a lot of 3D games, but the ones with minimal aiming or looking are far more likely to appeal to me.