Working Title 11.21.08: Working Example - The Same Mistakes

Posted by Jordan Williams on 11.21.2008

After all of these years of innovation, it still seems that developers are making the same mistakes over and over again. Why is the 3D camera always so bad? How about that cheap fighting game AI or the stupid FPS AI? Time to find out.

Welcome to the #1 Column in the world to FINALLY have an Xbox 360 again WORKING TITLE. Man, I was so happy to get this big white motherfucker back. I shall go on record right now and say that The Dormroom Dominator game this year might be Left 4 Dead. Oh my fucking god that Demo is so goddamn sick.

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So, this week as the title of the column may have given away, we are going to discuss things that should've been done in video games as a whole that for some reason haven't been done yet. These are things that reviewers are always complaining about in most video games yet no one ever seems to take heed and just fix the damn problems. They are recurring problems that happen all the time from dumb AI to bad cameras. Why does this stuff go on?

Is it because developers are lazy? Is it because the engine they use has fundamental flaws? Maybe we are doomed to always have these problems with video games for as long as we play them?

I fucking hope not.

This is why I'm going to show you who does it right and who does it wrong. Not every video games 3D camera or AI is horrible; there are some shining examples about how it works well and how it just fails.

Working Examples

So why is the camera ALWAYS bad in Action games? What about dumb AI when it comes to first person shooters and cheap AI when it comes to fighting games?

What's the real deal here? Are these things that the developers do to intentionally piss us off or does it go deeper than that and really come to the point that no matter what we do we are always going to be plagued with these problems?

How about we start with the one that seems the easiest to fix but also the one that they mess up the most.

Can't See Shit, Captain

With graphics this good nowadays, how come you still can't see half of them in a decent 3D action game due to the horrible cameras the plague more than half of them? The 3D Camera has been a source of many praise and criticism because in some games it can literally make or break the gaming experience for most people. The camera is you're only window the action and if it's obscured...or in some cases functionally retarded...it will just make the game incredibly unplayable and then where are you? Left playing something else.

So lets look at a game that does it wrong, because it's always easier to complain about things than it is to praise them, isn't that right WWE fans?

Oh yeah. I went there.

The Wrong Way: Sonic 3D Games

I want to meet the man who designed the 3D gamers for Sonic Adventure and kick him in the nuts. Who the hell manages to make a camera so damned badly for a game series that requires you RUN REALLY FAST? Is it really that hard to just put the camera behind the blue little bastard and keep it there? Oh no, instead we have a camera that seems to be a fat lazy fuck and won't follow the little speed monkey beyond a few feet. Then for reasons unknown it'll just snap back to some predetermined location on the level and resume its massive amounts of sucking.



It didn't get any better whenever you weren't playing as Sonic either. Remember Big the Cat? I was actually one of the few people that liked playing as him and Big as a character but if that goddamn fishing simulator didn't have one of the worst camera angles this side of Drake of the 99 Dragons.

Yeah, I know, I could've used D99D for the example here, but sometimes it's just not any fun if you pick something too easy.

The point of the matter is, a Sonic game shouldn't have been hard at all to make a decent camera to. By no means is the camera as bad as some of they games I COULD'VE put here, but for something that's so simplistic there's really no reason at all why the camera should be cutting through walls, lagging behind the character, and at some points not even SHOWING the character. It's really not all that complicated, even though I'll give them a little bit of slack, they were having to somehow make a camera that could follow the fastest thing alive.

If you read that final line and sung the Sonic cartoon theme song give yourself a pat on the back you sad motherfucker, you.

The Right Way: Super Mario Galaxy

The inherent problem with having to find the right way to do things is that sometimes there's too many to choose from. In this case there were about seven games on the list I could've used but I decided to go with a more recent one, plus I could never pass up a chance to go "LOL MARIO BEET SONIC". Super Mario Galaxy didn't have a perfect camera by any means; I honestly don't think there IS a game out there with a perfect camera. I do think, however, that SMG did the best they could with roughly the same style of gameplay.

The small sphere like levels gave them an easier time overall to get the camera angles correct, and if you really think about it that could've been a fiasco if they hadn't handled it the right way. And then when it comes to the bigger levels or the boss battles the camera always manages to stay in that sweet spot where you don't have to worry about it phasing out of view or getting stuck on something. You always have a clear view of what's going on and what's about go on and in games where the difference between life and death can change in one missed jump or one non-dodged attack it's always good to make sure you have a perfect line of sight.

The perfect camera may be something we'll never see due to the fact that the camera would be needed for different things, but I do think that some developers don't actively TRY to make the 3D camera any better, I think they just 'settle' and just go "Eh, it works most of the time, so it should be fine" and as we have seen with many games in the current generation, that just doesn't cut it. Next you'll be telling me that making a fighting games AI obscenely cheap is meant to test skill.


Making A Fighting Game's A.I Obscenely Cheap is Meant to Test Skill

Ha. Ha.

Anyway, it's one of those truths that we have just come to accept when it comes to video games. Mario games will sell like crazy, Capcom games not called Resident Evil or Street Fighter won't, and for some reason every fighting game in the world will hit that point where it's unbearably hard to continue.

The statement "The Computer Cheats" doesn't even cover it here. Fighting games are always about skill at their core, but sometimes the computer exhibits skill that is sometimes so far beyond what a normal person could pull of that it's just down right cheap. Remember in the old Street Fighter days when Guile would fire Sonic Booms while walking forward? How about in Mortal Kombat where Sub Zero would freeze you in midair and instantly segue into another move and freeze you once again before you even hit the ground? It was enough to make you rip your own face off and cry yourself to sleep.

Fighting games of course have come a long way since then, but sadly the "cheating" computer is still part of this equation, but there are some beacons of light out there that tell us that strategy can still beat being 'cheap'.

The Wrong Way: Virtua Fighter 5

Ohhhh fuck you, Akira. Just getting that out of the way now because whenever I mention VF5 I have to say "Fuck you Akira". Anyway, many people call VF5 one of the best fighting games of this generation and the series as a whole one of the best fighting games series EVER. But I've noticed that after a certain point VF hits what I like to call the "No Fun Zone". Sure, when you first get into the game it's very fun to learn move and master them and start beating the computers ass in all times of wonderful ways...but then at a certain point the game just clicks and no longer becomes fun.

The computer starts resorting to cheap tactics to win. All of the sudden Wolf starts chaining together throw combos that are otherwise impossible to do quickly. Akira is chaining hits together so fast that you don't even have to react and even shitty characters like Jackie are making you the biggest bitch to walk this side of a fictional Arcade.

At this point you're only real chance to win is to play equally cheap, seeing as I am a Vanessa fan this usually means all I'll do is tackle the shit out of them and punch them a few times then break an arm. I'll repeat this until they die and I'll feel dirty on the inside. The point of a fighting game isn't to out-cheap your opponent, it's to out think them and when games like VF5 get to the point where you have to just rely on one or two moves to win because the computer has set the bar so high it's just no longer about strategy which is just damned sad.

The Right Way: Soul Calibur 4

Fuck YOU Killik. Just like with VF5, I have to do that when I talk about Soul Calibur. Now, a lot of you might think that Soul Calibur is just as cheap if not a TAD cheaper than VF5, but the things about the Soul Calibur series is that even when the game starts to get cheap at there is still a strong point of strategy to fall back on. The only reason I say this is because I play with Astaroth, a character that for whatever reason has gotten roided up in SC4 and become a top tier MONSTER, but in previous games he was always looked at as lower and mid tier. People would laugh and heckle when I busted Asty McNasty out in tournaments but would quickly be humbled when I would move his slow ass around the ring with ease and completely destroy them.



The point I'm trying to make is that SC4 is still cheap as fuck in the higher levels, but if you have a strategy you don't have to resort to being equally cheap to beat it. While people just might argue "Well, you just suck at VF5" I'll gladly go ahead and take that compliment and move on, but I still think the heart of any game is to have fun, and when it gets to the point where the game itself keeps you from actually having fun the game has officially missed it's point.

Thankfully, Soul Calibur 4 hasn't gotten to that point (unless you play online) and you can still beat just about anyone in the game without having to resort to being painfully cheap to do so. Maybe one of these days we'll having a fighting game that actually evolves with you as you play to the point where instead of being cheap, it simply learns how you play and forces you to evolve along with it. That would be damned awesome.


Using Cover is Only for Smart Folk

At least that's what some games would want you to think. The First Person Shooter genre didn't really take off until the last generation and last year it had one of its best years in AGES. But there is always one area of the game that gets panned all the time and is usually its biggest focus.

The A.I.

For games that are so damn unrealistic it's sort of funny that everyone wants true to art realistic AI when it comes to FPS games, but in an age where we have computers that can beat God at chess and physics that accurately time the bounce of a boob, you'd think we'd have enough logic to make it so the computer understands the best course of action when it comes to not getting killed is to NOT stand in the way of the bullets. How about NOT running over to that grenade? Duck behind a wall do SOMETHING!

Of course AI in FPS games has gotten a little better, but that doesn't excuse these poor excuses down here.

The Wrong Way: Goldeneye

Oh no. I have insulted THE GREAT AND MIGHTY GOLDENEYE! May the N64 Gods strike me down for I am a heathen? It's no shit that Goldeneye is a pretty damned good game and probably one of the best FPS games ever made, but if you sit here and try to tell me that the AI in that game was top notch I'll spit in your mouth and call you a liar. The AI did do basic things like hide behind cover and pick its spots, but for the most part it was just as robotic as it's always been and never really exhibited any intelligence other than "Shoot the British guy".

Now, before you all go all "WELL IT WAS THE ONE OF THE FIRST MAJOR FPS GAMES" and blah blah, I'm not knocking it because it was retro, look at all of the games I'm talking about here, most of them are either old games or games that are part of a long running series. I know Goldeneye was the forefather and all of that, but when one of your bullet points on every piece of promotional material is lifelike AI and you still have guys who you can run up and whack in the face with your bare hands before they even fire off a single shot, you've obviously messed up in your coding somewhere.

Now with that said...

The Right Way: Goldeneye

This is what those of you who frequent the wrestling section of the site would call a swerve. While Goldeneye also catches flack from me by being an example of bad FPS AI, it's also an example in GOOD FPS AI. Can you honestly think of an FPS game before this where they computer actually exhibited some semblance of intelligence like this? It's just as stupid as I've made it out to be in the above section but for every stupid thing Goldeneye did, they did an equally good thing to make up for it.

How about the computer actually taking position and trying to box you in? What about knowing your location and determining what might be the best way to go about attacking you? Remember shooting a rocket launcher at a crowd of enemies and you'd actually see a lot of them dive out of the way at the last moment so they didn't get completely obliterated? That's some damn innovation for you.


Strategic hiding place...or too dumb to pull pants down? You decide."

The enemies actually came pretty far from the days of other FPS games before it and after it. Remember Duke Nukem and Doom's style of AI? Stand here and shoot until you shoot them dead. How about Turok and...well...Turok 'Run at you at high speed until I get shot' was the quote of that game. For all of the missteps Goldeneye took in it's AI it did everything it could to make it the best, and at that point, the more revolutionary FPS AI the world had seen.

But then you have to realize that was also 12 years ago...so what the HELL is the excuse for games STILL having shitty AI!?

I'm waiting.


Working Feedback

I used to think I was hardcore, thanks for shattering that fucking pipe dream... But according to your guidelines above, I am basic on the weekdays, and hardcore on the weekends... Unless I am drinking, then I only play after the bars close.. Whats better than hopping online and dropping that xbox 360 preffered rate.. I'd like to boast that I am now at 33% preffered, and 67% avoided... Who's your daddy? Thats right, drunken Toddo is. ~ Toddo

I see someone here who needs to add me on Xbox Live. I see a lot of drunken Left 4 Dead fun in our future. The tag is DasUberOgre for anyone else who wants it.


"Cloud and Sephiroth totally have butt sex."

Cloud takes I assume?~ Mark Samela

Yes. Yes he does.

I'm a creative writing minor and I'd like to write a piece for your column in the near future, respond back to me here, I guess?

Also, what class of gamer would I be? I play 3-5 hrs a day minimum, 12 hrs max, but I manage work (budget goes to gaming, food and college), school (A and B student) and a G/F. Is there such a thing as a well adjusted gamer?

....Should I write something on well adjusted gamers?~JDL

Yes, yes you should. Also, I know this is going to sound weird...but does the JDL stand for "JediDrunkenLlama"? I'm serious.

I was going to say that only a MMO has the power to addict gamers to the level of SIG, but then I remembered a friend who quit his job (that he didn't like anyway) while racking up the max amount of hours a Nippon Ichi title (either Disgaea or La Pucelle) would record to the save file, then putting in probably that much time over the limit.~Rod

MMOs are the front runner when it comes to addiciting someone to the levels of an SIG, but as you mentioned there are other games that can lead them to the darkside as well. Back in school I knew someone who was painfully addicted to Perfect Dark. They'd spend every waking moment playing that game and doing multiplayer matches with DarkSim bots only he was sure he could take them all down with just a pistol whip. He also got to the point where he could do full missions on co-op mode by himself. Sad human being right there.

Working Question

Let's play a game of "Call it". Due to the super stacked holiday season as well as a general good year for video gaming as a whole. Who do you think is going to walk away with Game of the Year this year? Also, what the hell happened to the Wii? That thing has damn near disappeared this holiday season and I don't mean in available consoles, either.


Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams…and next week history will be made.


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