i love third person action games. but i feel unease about the current trends of designing philosophy behind this genre.
The first game i bought was king's quest mask of eternity. It's a blend of adventure, RPG, and action genre. i was hooked since then. I played Oni, MDK, Rune, Heavy metal FAKK2, Blade of Darkness Severance, Max Payne series, Devil may cry, bushido blade series, Tenchu series, Outcast, Prince of Persia SOT series, Zelda Wind Waker, psychonauts, and many many more. I found each one of them was an exciting piece of work. i was very excited to look forward for new games to come. But i was disappointed gradually. Very disappointed nowadays even.
the reason for this is because, most of the TP action games went to one of the two directions, shooting or quicktime event. I loved melee and platform in TP action games. I don't hate shooting if designed well, like MDK. most of the TP games now revolved around shooting, not melee. it is degrading in my opinion. because 8 years ago, fighting in TP game was much more diverse and awesome. Oni and Blade of Darkness Severance were the prime example of melee combat excellent games. There are other hardcores would even point to Die by the Sword as a reference.
i'd like to venture a guess for why shooting is extremely popular among the game designers. It's a very easy mechanics to design compared to melee combat. there's not so much collision detection to sweat over. There's not as much animation to grudge about. although today's standard of shooting in games were already raised much higher than MDK. It seemed to me, the whole process still just came down to Person A shoot Person B, Person B react animation to where bullets supposed to register, animations of being shot was then activated. i don't see the need for collision detection. Even it does need to have Collision Detection, the amount of it was largely reduced compared to the real melee combat. And you even need to consider, what happend if the melee combat has multiple enemies. Collision Detection would be hell. animation would be a torture.
The quicktime event... le sigh. it must be one of the worst invention in video game history. From God of War's big battle to Resident Evil 4's wagging to escape situation. To me, the invention is invented to relieve game developers' brain cells. Of course, there's consideration for the gamers as well. But rather than saying it's for the gamers, Market share should be a bigger blame for it. As the video game emerging to become a huge profitable industry. the goal for any coporation is to increase profit. So, nintendo invented the wii, and other game companies, including Sony, microsoft, invented quicktime event to lure more people to gaming. no, nintendo invented Wii alright, others just recycled old stuff and mass produced it. what's quicktime event? as a player, you just randomly pressed buttoms according the queue on the TV screen. What's easier than this? It's also easier for the developers to pull off some dramatic and awesome looking sequences without messing with the control. However, games with quicktime events do not feel like playing anymore. because as players, they are not doing the action on the monitor which translated to mean that players are not playing in my opinion. They are merely like a well trained dog responding to the bell, which reminded them of lunches.
Talking about melee, which made me so sad. when we looked back 10 years ago. everybody is experimenting with their own ideas. from those years, Oni was born, BoD Severance and Rune were born. Heavy Metal FAKK2 was there. Bushido Blade series was out. even crazy as die by the sword attracted die hard fans everywhere. The combat, with hand or with weapon was getting more and more detailed. Some of the game, like Oni, bushido blade, and Blade of Darkness Severance were almost as good as any real fighting games on the market; even had a lot more potention in creating an exciting story line than any of the fighting games on the market. but they withered and died... now, we de-evolutioned into arcadish action games, like ninja gaiden, devil may cry, and god of war. i don't hate those games. i played two out of three from the list. but it's so different from Oni, blade of darkness, or bushido blade. even when the blood was flying like a raging volcanoe in ninja gaiden, i felt detached. i didnt feel empowered or involved when god of war groweled like female cat in Spring time. i cant' even mention about the quicktime event in god of war, it made no sense at all. it's a very sad decade when most of the game developers are trying to make movies rather than games. using quicktime as a device, i felt it's game designers who are playing gamers rather than gamers playing the game the designers made.
as a side note, i am more a pc gamer than console. i felt in this degrading trend for melee combat console was a huge factor. It is very sad and extremely annoying. But there's always a light shine through darkness. For me, it's the arrive of the Mount and Blades. I could almost felt through my hand when my opponent blocked my weapons! it's incredible!
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