First post, by Rekrul
What do the games Max Payne, Max Payne 2, Jedi Academy, Rune, Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2 and American McGee's Alice have in common?
They're all third-person games that use the standard FPS setup to control your character. In other words, the mouse controls turning and aiming while the keyboard controls movement. While each of the games might have been criticized for other elements, I don't recall ever seeing anyone complain that they were too hard to control. When talking about these games, you never hear anyone say "They were good, but a third-person game really needs a different control scheme."
So why is that every game company in the last 5-8 years or so has felt the need to screw with this established control method when making a third-person game?
The standard control scheme for third person games is now that you use the mouse to control the camera, independent of the character, and you turn by moving in the direction you want. Some people will say "So what? It's not any different." But it is. For one thing, manual targeting is virtually impossible, because your character no longer looks/aims where you're pointing the camera. Normal strafing is no longer possible because when you use the left-right movement controls, your character turns in that direction. This also means that you can no longer turn in place. Changing what direction your character is facing requires you to actually take a step in that direction.
To compensate for the fact that you can no longer accurately aim, most third person games include an auto-aim function. Or they have a special aiming mode. Or they feature a target lock that keeps your character turned toward the enemy in question at all times. This prevents you from quickly dealing with other enemies that might be creeping up on you. You either have to cancel the target lock and focus on a different enemy, or cycle the lock through the available enemies until it lands on the one you want.
The first game I encountered that used this control method was Spider-Man: The Movie. Then it showed up in the later Tomb Raider games, and now it's used in the Alice sequel, Madness Returns.
The only perk that this control method offers over the standard FPS controls is that you can view your character from any angle. Big deal! They could have simply added a key command to allow you to rotate the camera. In every other way, it's a downgrade from the controls in games like Max Payne. Unfortunately, game developers have now gotten the idea that that's how a third-person game should be, so now all third person games are saddled with this annoying control method.
Honestly, I thought that most everyone had come to the conclusion that FPS style controls with mouselook were the best way to play 3D games. However it seems like the industry considers them a mistake that needs to be corrected with something better.
I can understand that People found the camera in the original Tomb Raider annoying, since it tended to do strange things, but why did that necessitate having it controlled independently from your character? Would anyone really have complained if Tomb Raider Legend had used the same camera and control method as Max Payne or Jedi Academy? Do you really have a need to watch your character from the side as you run blindly into something you can't even see because of the viewing angle?
Every time I watch someone playing one of these games, 99% of the time, they're basically playing it like an FPS by using the mouse to point where they want to go and then using the forward control to move in that direction. They're constantly adjusting the camera angle, which results in the character zig-zagging all over the place, rather than the fluid movement you get when the mouse actually turns the character.
So can someone please explain to me why all the game companies believe that the camera control needs to be separate from the character, with special new combat modes, instead of just being able to aim/turn with the mouse?
