Climbing in Games
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ก.ย. 2024
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Crystal Dynamics has made Tomb Raider more streamlined and accessible - but have we lost something in the transition from clunky climbing to effortless traversal? Let's look at some games, from Grow Home to GIRP, that do something more interesting with movement.
Wired UK - "QWOP and GIRP designer Bennett Foddy on the 'neurological magic' of games"
www.wired.co.uk...
Games shown in this episode (in order of appearance):
Rise of the Tomb Raider (Crystal Dynamics, 2015)
Tomb Raider (Core Design, 1996)
Tomb Raider Legend (Crystal Dynamics, 2006)
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (Naughty Dog, 2011)
Tomb Raider II (Core Design, 1997)
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 (Neversoft, 2002)
Dark Souls III (From Software, 2016)
Tomb Raider: Anniversary (Crystal Dynamics, 2007)
Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft (Core Design, 1998)
Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness (Core Design, 2003)
Tomb Raider (Crystal Dynamics, 2013)
GIRP (Bennett Foddy, 2011)
Grow Home (Ubisoft Reflections, 2015)
Mirror's Edge (EA DICE, 2008)
Assassin's Creed Unity (Ubisoft Montreal, 2014)
Assassin's Creed Syndicate (Ubisoft Quebec, 2015)
Assassin's Creed II (Ubisoft Montreal, 2009)
Rock N' Roll Climber (Vitei, 2009)
I Am Alive (Ubisoft Shanghai, 2012)
Shadow of the Colossus (Team Ico, 2005)
Crackdown (Realtime Worlds, 2007)
Dying Light (Techland, 2015)
Sunset Overdrive (Insomniac Games, 2014)
Music used in this episode:
Star Plant Theme (Grow Home)
Boat (Mirror's Edge)
Bud's Theme (Grow Home)
Introduction (Mirror's Edge)
Star Plant Theme (Grow Home)
Grow Home OST © Ubisoft
Mirror's Edge OST © Electronic Arts / Solar Fields
Other credits:
"Assassin's Creed Syndicate Gameplay Walkthrough - Part 9 - ROPE LAUNCHER!!" - GhostRobo
• Assassin's Creed Syndi...
"Mirrors Edge Time Trial 5 World Records in a row" - Kanal von pzypherx
• Mirrors Edge Time Tria...
Prisoners © Warner Bros. Pictures
Contribute translated captions - amara.org/v/C3...
![PURPEECH - นี่ฉันเองคนที่... (It's me) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/NuhHd0hOOg8/mqdefault.jpg)
![[TH] JFT vs RLF - VCT Ascension Pacific - Day 2](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/PuIH7w_jO6c/mqdefault.jpg)
It's silly, but "I am Bread" goes all in for grip based movement
Prowlingmonkey But it is tricky as hell and yet fun
Titanfall is crazy too
@@darthmop1 Not fun. Controls are unwieldy on purpose. Games that are hard can be fun, but I Am Bread just feels cheap.
Now we have the lovely walk in the park, "Getting Over It"
@@sirprintalot The controls may be unwieldy, but when you master them you can do some really satisfying things. Watch some speedruns, how they throw that piece of bread around the room.
This video needed to be made. Nowadays climbing and platforming is so automated that it feels trivial climbing a huge tower. The funniest part is how they try to add dramatic music, camera angles and make the voice actor sound scared in a vain attempt to make players feel the tension. This might work on a movie but not in a game where you're supposed to feel these sensations through the gameplay mechanics.
Hell, even Titan Fall has better movement than that
Welcome to gaming 2013+,bud.
No longer do we play games,now we just watch interactive movies xD
@@rectaalborween8471 there's some exceptions, but it's rare
@@randomguy6679 AAA wise? Yeah it's really rare.
But indie games are still good tho. It's just a shame so many people disregard them and go for the "games" in the AAA market that might as well be movies.
Word, i remember playing AC black flag by holding down W and space or whatever and looking only at the minimap. Its really not fun
This isn't really a response to this video, but a comment on your channel in general. I appreciate that there's a channel I can go to that talks about the actual aspects of game design, and not just some guy on a webcam shouting obscenities at the current flavor of the month. Real content is hard to come by on TH-cam, I'm glad there's one more creator out there that sees it that way. You also do your best to discuss contemporary issues in design, and not just the low hanging fruits of yesterday. Your methods may not attract the most followers, but I'm sure you've come to notice a dedicated, well-informed viewership in recent months. Keep up the good work, and it will only grow.
Thank you! It's nice to hear people that appreciate the videos
ThaPirateninja
I just subscribed, and you are quite correct.
"Real content is hard to come by on TH-cam"
What? Have you even looked at youtube, or tried finding anything good? Topics like actual game design may be rarer, but there's still plenty. You've gotta remember that Sturgeon's law is also a thing.
That intro sounded wayyyy too seductive
do you watch extra credits?
I miss knowing how far Lara would jump in Tomb Raider. It's all just so automated know and I swear there's sections where she jumps way further than usual just because it's a scripted action sequence.
+Mellow Gaming That's definitely a thing in Uncharted as well. I remember jumping to a chandelier in 3 and it felt like I had vaulted over a building
For sure. it doesn't come with that memory of older games though, which i suppose makes it sorta OK. The jumping feels like Nathan Drake's jumping. Still simplified to hell though. I do find the climbing in that a little less automated than many games... just.
+Mellow Gaming I think it's done automatically to prevent the modelers from having to measure the size between the cliffs so the jump does not come too short. If it's too far away between the cliffs then modelers have to redo the mesh.
Back then when the first Tomb Raider was made everything was made in scaled chunks. You could see in the video that there is always a square platforms on the first game. So of course it's easier to know if you can make the jump when you have calculated that Laura can make the jump in X amount of squares.
+Mellow Gaming Thank Naughty Dog
***** True that. But I tend to believe it's Naughty Dog that popularized this sort of platforming.
"Imagine a tomb raider with the physics engine of Mirrors Edge, the tense grip meter of I am Alive, and the hand over hand climbing of Grow Home, and just try and tell me it doesn't make you a little bit excited."
But that means the game would be dynamic and fun without the need to murder anyone. It could just be about the danger, thrill, and wonder of discovering ancient secrets...
I'm not gonna try and pretend, that makes me very excited. Also slightly depressed. I doubt they would ever do that with a new AAA tomb raider.
make it yourself ;)
Give it a few years. These things come in circles. Soon enough the market will shift towards more innovative triple A titles. I mean, Shadow of Mordor had a bunch of interesting ideas and it was a massive Triple A release. I mean, most of those ideas were just improved version of existing mechanics, but that's what we want for Lara too, right? Take cool climbing mechanics that exist and execute them with a massive budget.
There are games that are dynamic and fun where you can kill people such as the far cry series. I think mark is just talking about the climbing mechanics also imagine that in the imaginary tomb raider game that mark was talking about where you can climb a tree and get into a bad guys place through a window "hole?" i guess (english is not my native language) and silently take them down dont tell me thats not exiting
@@Yodah97 A few years? Hah, the mechanics in shadow of mordor is copyrighted by WB and it would only end in 2035 (if they don't prolong it).
@@robbieaulia6462 or if they sell liscenses(idk if that's how you spell it) to allow other studios to use them. Definitely was a dick move to patent it, I mean other studios could still have a go with a slightly different system but they'd run the risk of a lawsuit and no one wants that.
Too many games have "climbing mechanics" that only really mean "hold a direction and the animation will play".
I blame Assassin's Creed
@Veldrin on Mirror’s Edge
People in general are like that.
Gaming has become so popular and mainstream because it's not really "gaming" anymore. It's borderline watching movies at this point.
At least the saturated AAA market is. Stick to indie games,and you should remember what gaming really is like.
@Veldrin on Mirror’s Edge I guess I'll check out titanfall 2 when i get a decent PC if it's that good.
Yeah, I've seen a video comparing Uncharted to assasin's creed, and they thought Uncharted's climbing system is slow, and hard, and worse than in AC, just because you had to do more than holding shift and W, and maybe press space once in a while. I mean... Uncharted's climbing isn't even that complicated! Hell, it's one of the simpler systems, which Mark said should be improved!
I'd say most games would be better off with fluid climbing if they intend to have it there to add a feeling of freedom in verticality, just like how you don't alternate pressing two buttons just to move your feet to walk, most games that have walking aren't about the actual walking. Including the word ''mechanics'' may feel a little misleading, but it's technically correct, the only reason we don't say ''walking mechanics'' is cause it's obvious it'll be there (Unless actually noteworthy like in one game shown here and Death Stranding), not because it's not a mechanic. You don't point out ''there is this walking mechanic, it let's you move'', but it's worth mentioning that ''it has a climbing mechanic, meaning you have more freedom to carve out a path''.
The reason you may want to point out the mechanic in spite of itself not being engaging in isolation could be that using it has meaning within the rest of the game. Reloading is a mechanic, not very interesting, but what does it lead to in context? It has meaningful consequences within the core game, it doesn't need to be some kind of mini-game distracting from that.
Prince of Persia. Making a jump in that game is nerve-racking
And then Sands of Time...
TBF, they evened it out in Warrior Within. A game that is so hard that the time rewind is more of a necessity than super power. Heck, even with it the game is very difficult. Overly so, IMO.
ShehzaanA Abdulla Couldnt finish WW because it was just too hard.
I don't blame you TBH. I got through it with a lot of grit and determination. When I finished the game I was a man.
A frail, jaded and bitter old man.
ShehzaanA Abdulla I came close, I was at the final Boss (bad ending fighting the girl), But I just simply could not beat her.
"I'll find my fun in the challenge tombs" - Literally summed up my thoughts while playing the Tomb Raider reboot. I guess it's more about what the game is trying to achieve. The simple combat in the original games was made up for by the puzzle solving and the level transversal. The game pretty gave you no indication as to what you were supposed to do and even new weapons were hidden in arbitrary, mechanically-difficult to reach places. While the new games were very cinematic and aesthetic, I felt that they lost the emersion with how telegraphed everything was and the wide range of tools gave a false sense of complexity. The only time I felt challenged in the new games was when I was simply overwhelmed by an obnoxious number of enemies. Tomb Raider was never supposed to be about combat, it was supposed to be about adventure. There is certainly a trend of making games more accessible to casual gamers these days, but at the cost of that great sense of satisfaction when you finally master some complex, unforgiving mechanics. I miss games that would take weeks to complete (even if it meant attempting the same jump or boss fight for an hour) because they felt more like a journey. The story doesn't necessarily have to be longer, but you experience each level/area/dungeon so much more and every action is deliberate and weighted. Otherwise you may as well just watch a movie.
Think about it this way. If you're a CEO of a company, and then you find a clear trend for a potential cash grab. Why wouldn't you do it?
You're both wrong. Tomb Raider wasn't about combat OR adventure. It was about a STORY. You don't play Tomb Raider to be yourself. You play Tomb Raider to be a badass named Lara Croft.
Not every game has to be difficult or complex. Especially if the selling point is the story.
If you want difficulty, either play rage games or Souls-like games. Don't play 3d platformers.
Also, as far as "you experience each level/area/dungeon more", do you? Or do you just experience that one jump, that one fight, that one endless cycle of frustration more? Even if it were about exploration, the goal of exploration would be to explore, not to make people suffer on one. single. jump.
it's unwieldy, but i really love the movement/traversal/climbing in the physics game Human Fall Flat. in that game, you control your character's two hands. with the mouse and keyboard, you move the mouse to direct the camera, and left click to shove your left hand in the direction you're looking. the right mouse button controls your right hand. you can't climb ledges much higher than you can stretch your hands up and jump to grab, so there's no scaling of cliffs, but when you haul yourself up a ledge it really feels like you're, y'know, hauling yourself up a ledge. i guess it's "real time animation" like you're talking about here, and it works really well for a physics game like Human Fall Flat.
Human Fall Flat is just awesome, what a climb system
It's even more fun with a controller, because your fingers literally tire out after a level with tons of climbing, but it's still a lot of fun!
I actually found a unique way to "climb" where you hold onto a surface with one hand only, then you swing your body side to side before grabbing with the other hand, hopefully getting it higher up than the other hand. It's hard to pull off consistently but it's satisfying to pull off
Not so much about climbing but in terms of traversal Spider Man 2 (the movie, the game) was fantastic. You didn't have to master the web slinging to get from A to B, but if you wanted to be efficient, quick and look cool it required a fair bit of skill and finesse. And there were plenty of challenges scattered around to test those skills.
I have such fond memories of free roaming in spider man 2. Definitely a fun game!
Damn, Spider Man 2 on the PS2 was such a fantastic game! Those memories man...
Oh man that was fantastic. I like to go back to that game every now and then just to swing around. The physics are sort of broken but damn does it feel good.
I wonder... have you all seen the new spiderman game trailer? It looks amazing and the web slinging is even better then the PS2! (or thats what people have said)
*pizza mission music plays in background as my PTSD is triggered*
Speaking of the direction of the Tomb Raider series, most good games seem to devolve into a FPS over time. I guess because FPSs are safe bets, require technical skill over creative insight, and the longer the series goes on, the more you need your brand to return a profit. It's only very rarely that a creative property is allowed to be creative over time, like Super Mario Brothers. Most of the time, though, you get Fallout 4: Fallout 3 mixed with Call of Duty.
I've noticed this too. Many interesting are shedding their most unique aspects to become quite generic shooters - like TR, Fallout, Hitman, maybe Metal Gear, etc. A little worrying.
+Ryan N ...do you even know what First Person means?...
+Peter Lawrence SHOOTER, you forgot one word.
They devolve into shitty first person SHOOTERS, it's not cs 1.6 times anymore, get out.
Purple Ice No, I won't fall for this bait.
+Ryan N I think you are right about that, I never liked the killing, choking, Rambo Lara.
Prince of Persia: Sands of time.
the wall run, the traps, the puzzles and that clever time reversal mechanic in case you screwed up.
Yo BotW picked up on that stamina thing
@King MSB Hard? 😕
Have you watched gmtk's video on botw btw?
@King MSB not hard. Challenging. Completely different words
That's exactly what of thought of, I love that game
Botw wasn't the first zelda game to have a stamina bar/circle
@@jessedwards6432 we're talking about stamina during climbing. Zelda games weren't first that introduced stamina bar, so what. What's your point?
Ever since I played Shadow of the Colossus I have though climbing in most games is pointless, you just hold a direction in tomb raider and uncharted and occasionally jump, you might as well just not have to press anything. your totally right and im glad you made this video, hopefully some developers will see if and take note.
Kyle H breath of the wild has a similar approach to climbing
Hoichael Stoderzinken for example, there are certain parts to a climbing plane where the ground is lateral enough to be able to let go of climbing, and walk up for a short distance, regaining much of your stamina meter. While you cannot do this on some mountains, its best to map a path up the mountain, taking note of some parts that are less steep than others.
Kyle H So you want to have a complicated tense climbing part after you just killed a horde of bad guys in Uncharted. I quite like the automated climbing it's not completely boring and it gives you some quite time especially in higher difficulties.
I started SotC right after finishing Ico, feeling a continuity. The button held for handholding in Ico is the same button held for climbing in SotC.
I am from the future!!! What about the beauty that is Celeste? I know it came out years after this video...😅
You really are quite something. I never know what your next video will be but I can always count on it being interesting. I can't think of another channel that tackles video game design in such a fascinating and satisfying way.
+Lawliet Jayson Thanks Lawliet :)
While I currently devlop websites and enterprise desktop applications, I plan to turn to game development in the future. Game Maker's Toolkit makes me consider aspects of a game I haven't even thought of before - I just took them for granted and didn't consider the effect on the player's experience.
TBH Celeste is one of my most favourite games of all time the controls are very simple but the satisfaction when you finish a level is beyond amazing
B-Hopping and Surf for Counter Strike will always be my second favourite after mirror's edge.
There's something about manipulating the game's physics to add massive amounts of speed and momentum into your character that just feels right.
I prefer rocket jumping, blast jumping and sentry jumping in tf2
I think it might be partially due to my own mastery of the game, but my favorite game in terms of movement is Super Mario Sunshine. I can get across any stage of that game in seconds, just because I spent so much of my childhood playing it. I got to the point were I could keep my momentum up and just fly across the plaza. That kind of flipping acrobatic movement felt so freeing to me. I love that game.
sunshine is probably one of the most complex and free form momentum/park-our based platformers out there. there's enough options at any one time that with mastery will allow you to do amazing tricks, but has enough restrictions to stop you from becoming to overpowered. my favorite thing to do in that game is spray water on the floor and slide down the ground at break neck speeds.
its why, to me: Super Mario 64/sunshine>galaxy/3D world. not to put those games down or anything, they're excellent titles and deserve all the praise they've gotten. i just preferred how free form and complex 64 and sunshine's controls were, all with the push of 2 buttons.
i'd highly suggest watching Matthewmatosis's videos on the Mario series
I will always love 3D Land and Galaxy 2 for bringing back the structure of my favorite Mario games (3 and World) to the 3D. I remember being disappointed at the enemy-sparse collectathon nature of Mario 64 back in the day, because it didn't match the feel I had of the series (plus the actual pure platforming stages - the Bowser levels - were too abstract for my taste). On the other hand, 64 and Sunshine were good at being their own thing, and I feel for the fans that might not be getting what they want from the newer games.
Freeform gameplay in general is not something that sits well with Nintendo.They have always been at home when controlling and fine-tuning the player's experience, and you can see that with both the 3D Marios (which gradually drifted back into self-contained levels) and Zelda (whose history since the third game has been a struggle between freedom and formula). Just look at fans of Zelda 1 that still miss a true exploration-based Zelda to this day.
Mastery of a game is the best way of giving a gratifying experience for a player. In dying light, at the beginning of the game you find yourself climbing and traversing the environment to avoid zombies and to not get killed. Once you gain skill points and learn how to use them well, your fists and the environment are all you need to slaughter tons of zombies in style. At the end of the game, I found myself casually climbing, mocking, and killing easily the most dangerous of enemies, I had become a god in the game.
Then, Odyssey happened.
cappy unlocks soo much possibility in parkour and i love it
Mario games are built on movement first and everything else comes second. In fact, each game world is built to accommodate Mario's new moveset, not the other way around, which is why every single one of his games flows like water.
I've said for years now that Tomb Raider desperately needs to make the climbing-traversal *actually perilous* if that IP is to find it's own voice again, after _ages_ of (very pretty) 3rd person action mediocrity...
- I feel "I Am Alive" does well for climbing; using its stamina system *for climbing* in the way that "Dark Souls" uses its stamina for combat, I really think there could be a great vein of gameplay-immersion to be mined there, if looked at by developers.
I'm generally bothered that most gameplay has been reduced to just fighting.
Prince of Persia had quite a bit of sword fighting and tough platforming, with pretty damn cool moves. I don't get this trend where basically everything goes on auto, it's really boring.
one reason: more gamers= more money.
randomguy6679
"Games for people who actually don't want to play games". or otherwise games designed around addiction.
It's quite painful to see. It'd be nice if there was some more general "literacy" for gaming.
It's what happens when you let nepotism-made idiots who missed the bus to Hollywood direct and produce your video games.
Stroggoii
Well yes.
But it's not just those guys.
I found even the fighting to be really bad honestly...There was no real challenge to the game and it just felt like a rehashed crappy shooter. If I want a fun shooter with heart pumping action I'd play DOOM.
My favorite used to be the Prince of Persia trilogy by Ubisoft themselves till Mirrors Edge and Grow Home came out. Climbing the giant plant/vine/tree/whatever feels really therapeutic.
This video is 2 years old, and obviously came out before Super Mario Odyssey, which isn't even remotely similar to Tomb Raider. But I think there's a lesson to be gleamed from Mario, too; accessibility and depth/satisfaction are not mutually exclusive. You can beat Super Mario Odyssey relatively easily; the "main" story is not particularly hard. But that's not the point; Mario's movement is rich and extremely satisfying to use. You can time three B presses into a triple jump, a Y press into a hat throw, a combined ZR + B press to dive, another B press for a subtle boost as you retrieve your hat, then finish with another ZR + B dive. Alternatively, you can transition into a chain of wall jumps. Either way, you can combine over 9 well-timed inputs - *not including* the analog stick, which you could've been manipulating this whole time to alter the direction and distance of these jumps - to travel massive distances and make impressive jumps. It requires skill to master, but the mechanics aren't difficult to learn. When you pull off one of those tricky jumps, there's a real sense of satisfaction. And even when you're not going for a well-hidden Power Moon, the jumps are just plain fun to make.
A few incidences in the game stand out to me. The first was in Wooded Kingdom; here, there's a vertical labyrinth, and the "normal route" is to capture an enemy and use its mechanic to make it through. Alternatively, though, you can combine a long jump, hat throw, and dive to make it across the gap. This was clearly intended by the developers (as in a racing segment much later in the game, the top racer actually uses this trick), but when you discover it, it *feels* like you've just beaten the developers' plans, and it feels great. Something similar happens in Metro Kingdom, where two buildings are separated by a massive distance, and it is just barely possible to jump between them if you have a real mastery over the controls. It took me several tries to pull off the jump, but it was incredibly rewarding. At another point, in the Luncheon Kingdom, you're scaling a volcano. It's perfectly fine to take the normal path, but there is a difficult shortcut that involves a skillful vertical jump. There's not really anything to *gain* by doing this - it's completely optional, and there's no reward for doing so - but your companion, Cappy, gives a brief line - "Nice jump!" It was satisfying to do even without developer acknowledgement, but I just about freaked out when this happened. Finally, there was one point where I managed to cheese a Power Moon in a way that the developers clearly didn't intend. In Seaside Kingdom, there's a secret where you need to capture one of the level's enemies to fly up a shaft. I, having just entered the level, had no idea that this enemy even existed; so instead, I spent 5 minutes trying some insane backflip-wall jump-hat throw combo, and when it finally worked, I was ecstatic! I knew that this *wasn't* the intended approach, or even a reasonable approach, but there was a lot of payoff in mastering movement.
Of course, Tomb Raider and Uncharted won't be implementing triple jumps and hat throws any time soon. But I think it's evidence that movement doesn't have to be trivial; it can be accessible, challenging, satisfying, and simply *fun* all at the same time.
I agree! One of my favorite things to do in Super Mario Odyssey was just finding the highest point in a kingdom, trying to get there, and then seeing if I could make it to another interesting point across the way. "Is this jump possible?" and "Am I good enough to make this jump?" were enough motivation to give me hours of gameplay.
Celeste is another game I got a ton of fun out of by playing this way. I'll often go to through levels (that I've beaten many times) and just try and figure out a different way to get to the end of each screen. Like, sure I can take the straightforward route. But can I do it without touching the floor??? Can I do it without dashing??? What's the fastest I can go??? It's endlessly fun to me.
Reminds me of abusing Mario's backflip, spin, wall jump, spin combo in Galaxy to bypass most Spring Mario sections and certain parts in other galaxies.
Lets make every game have the same control scheme as QWOP
Seems to be pretty much what this guy wants, anyways.
it's important for a game like QWOP to exist to deconstruct movement and show us the farthest limits of going in that direction would be. The correct answer of course is always somewhere between "something in the middle" and "depends on the game", but knowing about things on the ends of the spectrum really allow a developer to choose carefully just how involved they want you to be.
@@DrJigglebones lol no he is asking for more challenge than holding one button you salty dunce
@@FormedUnique ikr, if the parkour is just holding 1 button, why did the game dev even bother adding it.
Grow Home was just perfect. It feels tense to run at that height, but the mechanics feels so smooth that your are confident enough to even make stunts at ridiculous places
I'm a parkour traceur and a game designer. I firmly believe game designers can learn a lot from studying how traceurs approach physical obstacles in the same way animators learn movement from dancers.
Another example is Vector game for mobiles and facebook. It's like a 2D Mirror's Edge.
I can talk a lot more about it if anyone is interested.
Personally, I'm interested in learning from bouldering style climbers to know how to deeply designing pure vertical climbing.
You should make a video about it!
It'll be very challenging for me because I'm a noob at editing and my diction is barely legible.
I think Dying Light from Techland does a good job on giving you a sense of tension and adrenaline while climbing/running/traversing rooftops and roads and buldings, populated by zombies. The feeling of grabbing successfully the corner of a platform, therefore escaping the slow but constant hostile presence of the zombies, it's rewarding and makes you breath heavy as you go from resting-point to resting-point: in the sense that on some rooftops you would never be reached by zombies, so you can breathe and think where to go next...but then usually you'll have to be fast, not look back, and this gives you the feeling of having danger all around you all the time.
When at night you are sometime chased by (can't remember the exact name of those enemies) this kind of "evolved" and more monstrous zombie creatures that come out only with darkness, the whole system reaches a new level of tension bcs you die easy if they reach you and you literally don't have the time to glance back to see if they're far enough from you. You keep them "in check" on the little gta-like radar, but that doesn't inform you so well on the immediate distance between you and them.
So it's really a tense chase, I think definitely a pretty successful one!
This is a pretty great video and I like the idea of games not just being about killing, but still being exciting. Like a Tomb Raider game where you never have to kill anything, but just make your way through a perilous tomb. The difficulty and excitement coming from the movement.
+El Burrito raiding a tomb, if you will
+El Burrito Hell even the puzzle parts or tombs in the newer tomb raider parts are so streamlined it's hardly a puzzle any more. In older games getting through the level alone was a challenge. But hey I'd gladly play the newer games with more of a story focus.. if it wasn't for her egocentric character that's putting me off.
The Attack on Titan web game accurately portrays both the difficulty of using 3D Manuever Gear (as depicted in the anime) but rewards good execution, timing, momentum and positioning of where you land your hooks. The 3DS Attack on Titan game is basically a series of quick time events to kill a Titan, whereas the web game in Unity forces you to aim your hooks, retract towards them or detract them if you miss, utilize your momentum and time your slice perfectly to the nape of their neck as you fly past them.
I think that's a great example as well. Great video - can't wait to see more!
Well, the movement mechanics are made simple for some reason perhaps. Maybe to assist the cinematics? I don't know.
Anyway, there is more movement to it in Shadow of the Colossus, than a stamina meter. The movement of your character is very "human".
When Wander is on a top of a colossus, and when it is standing on some part of it, unless he is crouching, , due to his upper body inertia, when the colossus moves, he will tumble and lose his balance, just like anyone on a suddenly moving platform would do.!
And the R1 button... When the colossus was shaking violently, I was holding down the R1 button (the grip button to hold on to the stuff) like I was holding on to my life!
Man... That game.. there is so much to it...
lets hope for the best for The Last Guardian.
randomguy6679 Yeah man, true that
I would rather hit w and r/R1 and L1 to climb a ladder and I don't see how it would change the cinematics. The running and jumping would simply take more skill, and that is why it doesn't exist; game devs are dumbing down games for more sales. They care about the money. The question is: would offering an easy system and a hard system make them the most money? It doesn't seem like it would be difficulty to add an automatic camera adjustment and jump for people playing on easy.
Hey Mark,
I am a young game designer using game maker and I recently found your channel. You are a huge help to me, thanks to your videos I am able to tell what kind of way I should make my game. This series will most likely make my game go from pyrite to gold. Good job with the videos!
I loved the climbing system in infamous 1 and 2. From what I remember with the ability to skate grind on power lines across the cities, it combined a border line Tony hawk move into assassin's Creed style climb over roof tops. And you also had some Mario sunshine elements with how you could use lighting to glide. They also used these basic elements to create my favorite and most rage inducing side quests is any video game I have ever played.
I never really thought about this so thanks for the video! I just finished playing horizon zero dawn and there is a lot of traversing tall structures in that game but it never felt like I was accomplishing anything. I would guess the reason for this change in movement mechanics in modern games is because it would frustrate a lot of people to have to worry about something that is now automated, like climbing, when all they really want to do is get to the parts where they get to shoot stuff. New games often focus on making as many parts automated as possible to increase the level of immersion without having to think through all the little mechanical things you could do wrong. I think this makes modern games much more intuitive but it also decreases the amount of thinking/problem solving involved, which is what made beating old games feel so rewarding. Just theorizing here, trying to figure patterns out. Just found this channel yesterday and love it! Keep it up man!
Hmm, I think the issue would be overcomplicating the game. For better or worse tomb raider has moved to a more combat focused series and as that area has become more complex the traversal has become simpler. It is also aiming for dare I say it a more cinematic feel, much like uncharted and whilst adding complexity within certain sections may seem like an add, they could also simply become an annoyance as that portion isn't intended to be a major portion of the game when compared to something like Mirrors Edge.
The question is really when you should and shouldn't add mechanical complexity which depends largely I feel on what you intend the player to achieve and focus on. Given the design of the most recent Tomb Raider games an increased mechanical presence in traversal could very easily be a negative. More complex and even more involving isn't always better as it moves the focus of what your game is about. For better or worse Tomb Raider is no longer primarily about traversal.
He's not really criticizing Tomb Raider's decition or telling their developers where they should go with their IP, he's just talking about a hypothetical system of mechanics for any given game
I'll admit I've never played tomb raider before, but from what I've seen/heard it appears that the older games in the series had a large element to it that involved exploration and platforming. I think it's a shame for new games in the series to move away from what made it popular in the first place in favor of making it just another combat/action oriented game.
I've heard this same conversation with the resident evil series. Started it out as a survival horror involving puzzles, exploration, and resource management and then it turned into a shooter with RE4 and on.
It just seems like the industry has caught on that a very large portion of gamers like shooters so now they just play it safe and turn every series they can into a shooter.
In response to your last statement, it's for the worse.
having more complexity and interest to Combat isn't a problem - and is rather a plus - but sacrificing much of the non Combat side for that is certainly a negative.
that being said, Crystal Dynamics has done an excellent job with presentation and flow.
i'll gladly take interesting Combat **and** non Combat Gameplay when presented with it however.
**everything** in a game should be interesting and require some competence - if it doesn't, it's basically just a chore that you must complete to continue on with the game. rather than a part of the experience.
that being said, the Tomb Raider reboot games do provide some interest to non Combat actions. it could be more... complex, but non Combat doesn't feel like a chore.
Yeah but if they made the climbing more complex, they could dial back the combat and give the player more variety. Also it would make the climbing sections feel more like a game, the way it is right now in games like tomb raider and Uncharted, climbing might as well be a cutscene or just removed entirely outside of combat scenarios cause it adds zero to the game
Games that are about more than one thing (in this case, traversal and combat) often alternate these things as a way of controlling the pacing. After a big gun fight, you may be asked to do some traversal, which while tense at times, is at least built in discreet sections which you can take at your own pace. Basically, not having someone shooting at you is more relaxing.
The decision the TR devs face is... just how relaxing do we WANT these sections to be? Is it just a stroll through the park where the player can breathe easy and absorb some of the pretty scenery? Is it something they *watch* more than play?
It's okay if the answer to these questions is "yes," but in TR I wonder if that is often at odds with the themes of the game. Playing as an explorer uncovering wondrous ancient ruins, I expect those ruins to be hard to reach, otherwise, I kind of don't care... the sense of reward for turning a corner and finding a fabulous temple deep in a mountain cave is diminished when all I had to do to get there is hold "forward." If traversal instead required a mastery of a well conceived system of mechanics, the reward would land better.
basically, a game that is about getting to cool places should have gameplay focused around.... getting to cool places. Guns are the side-note (as they were in the early TR games). The new TRs continue to have temples and ruins and cliffs and ledges and all that, but their role has been swapped. In the old days, traversal challenges were punctuated with simple combat. Now, combat challenges are punctuated with simple traversal.
In a similar manner to I Am Alive, I love Breath of the Wild's climbing system. While it's incredibly simple to use, it's made much more engaging with an unforgiving stamina system. It causes you to think "how will I scale this cliff with the stamina I have" and basically makes you try your best at conserving stamina so you can reach the top. Things like "will jumping up allow me to get there better than simply climbing" or "where's a spot that's less straining on my stamina" or "do I have any supplies to refill my stamina if I need it" all make for a deceptively deep climbing system when all you're really doing is using the control stick and maybe pressing X occasionally.
The coolest movement system ever for me is rocket jumping. Team Fortress 2 has a community of mapmakers and players dedicated to obstacle courses for rocket jumping. And pulling off a sick rocket jump in game (which requires practise, thought and planning) feels amazing. It's an optional feature so those who don't want it don't suffer, but for the players who want to push at the limits of the game it raises the possibility ceiling massively. And it's bloody good fun.
+jellyberg What is frustrating in TF2 is that you need to crouch-jump to be able to jump on a simple crate while you could simply use your hands to climb on it in any other game (or even in real life). Movements in TF2 (or any valve game) are fun, but they don't feel natural because it is too mechanical and relies only on physic: the character is nothing but a mass with momentum. It is not a big problem for a game like TF2, but I think that Portal would be more interesting with some sort of climbing system (and maybe the ability to see your feet).
+jellyberg Wow, just checked out some rocket jump maps. This is crazy cool!
La Lison This is an interesting point. I definitely agree that crouch jumping is a peculiar thing, but I think it is an intentional design decision from Valve to not include ledge climbing mechanics. Their movement system is simple and universal - all you need to know is forward, back, strafe, look and crouch. These actions all work at all times in game. Introducing situational movement mechanics like ledge climbing muddies the waters and makes things less mechanically elegant in my opinion.
Whether that is a good thing or not is, as you say, debatable.
As a side note - I think every FPS should allow you to see your feet.
rocket jumping I think that was first in mario sunshine
@@heatxtm , people in these comments are mentioning Counter Strike's bunny hopping and Team Fortresses rocket jumping. If only they knew about QUAKE. You know, the reason those games and mechanics exist.
This may not be a game built purely around traversal, but I’ve always loved how Mega Man X handled movement with wall jumping and dashing. As a child, I had never played a game that had both horizontal and vertical levels. That game made jumping across pits and dodging enemy fire just as much of a priority (if not more) than the traditional jump+shoot style of gameplay found in mega man games.
Wall jumping and bomb jumping in super metroid feels very rewarding, only in a more sequence breaking sort of way
amen! i felt it was even more rewarding in the GBA remake of the original metroid (zero mission)
it's faster paced than super metroid so feels a bit less floaty and really tests your timing, especially if you don't have the high jump boots yet, the way you need to steer in the other direction to slide off the wall just before jumping really takes some getting used to, in a really good way :)
both are amazing games, and ofc super metroid is longer so still wins for me there
I thought the way you have to brace yourself in Death Stranding was pretty neat. It definitely made you more involved instead of just pushing the stick forward.
I lowkey always likes assassin's creed 2 more than other ac games but i could not make other people understand why but your points nailed it! Altough games are getting prettier and more Graphical but the controls are getting way easier and small details are completely forgotten(farcry2 vs farcry5)
OH MY GOD! I had to stop and pause because i can't believe you referenced "I am Alive" that game while not quite up to polish was actually really good! That's all, I continue watching the video now.
Grow Home is an underrated gem. It feels like BOTW climbing and gliding but made 10x more fun
A Story About My Uncle is an incredible game when if comes to controlling movement. There are 4 variants for the jump (Normal jump while walking, power jump while walking, normal jump while sprinting, and power jump while sprinting.) the game emphasizes this by having a section where you're challenged to not use the grappling hook, which took me 15 to 20 minutes to beat, but was incredibly fun. Then there's the grappling hook, and the jet boots, both of which give you enough control for failure to be your fault, but not so much it's easy. It's just really fun to soar through the skies, and while the game is quite linear it's very fun to get around.
4:40 GhostRobo! I haven't watched him since he hit 1 mil, but I loved his videos!
I truly hope that one day a popular game designer sees your videos and they make the most well rounded game with immersion and difficulty of dark souls and the Dynamics of all these other games; possibly creating one of the most difficult and satisfying game ever created! Fantastic video. Keep up the great work!
2:41 Wow...
That "achievement" couldn't have been more awkward for this kind of topic.
Lmao true
Tomb Raider Underworld had so many various mechanics in term of platform, it was really rewarding to find your way through the environment AND to be able to use all those mechanics to reach your destination. Every jump needs precision, and the levels were well-built around that challenge in mind.
Favorite Tomb Raider game, a great quintessence of Crystal Dynamics' work to bring the classic Tomb Raider formula to modernity without losing its soul.
Counter Strike and titanfall seem to have simple movement from the outside but once you get in, you know there is much more depth to find. And those 2 are fps games, you know, the genre that people constantly say has pretty generic movement
After the original Mirror's Edge, my favourite climbing game is Windlands on PSVR, especially when played with the Move controllers. Like with Grow Home it has very primitive graphics, but I tried it just the other day and man, the sense of physically hauling yourself up to the top of high structures is unlike any other game I've played.
There isn't much plot or enemies trying to kill you- just you, your dual grappling hooks, some chilled out music and a series of towering Jack-and-the-Beanstalk sized plants disappearing into the sky. I never though I could have such a profound feeling from a game with graphics that look like they belong on a PS1, but I guess it's all about the execution.
Great video by the way. Your channel rocks!
I've been watching a few of your videos, and something I've noticed is that you seem to always appreciate the complex over the simple. I think something you're missing (in some cases) is that simpler movements make for a lot of freedom, and something being more streamlined and accessible doesn't mean it's worse. In example say, Hero Factory having less pieces than a Bionicle was a poor transition in that regard and missed that half the fun is putting them together, however in the example of Tomb Raider, not worrying so much about how many buttons you have to remember to press to get somewhere and rather just freely progressing along the platforming can add a nice sense of flowing progression rather than the platforming feeling like a puzzle in itself beneath your fingers. Platforming is about moving somewhere, not problem-solving. I'm not saying it's wrong to have complexity, but there's points where it's good to have simplicity.
Fucking love this video. It outlines exactly why the transversal from AC2 to 3 was so morbid for me personally, and it also goes into how traversal can be a good alternative to senseless violences! More like this, pleeease!
Him: “just imagine the hardest climbing game ever”
Me: “it would be more realistic... I’m already excited because that sounds terrifyingly EPIC, you could literally make a game based on that... thanks for the idea”
It already has a name: "Getting over it" *suppresses rageful memories*
So glad you mentioned I Am Alive! Right from the start I was thinking about that game and how it uses stamina to add tension to the climbing. It was a new twist on the game mechanic that really stayed with me. You often have to study a climb very carefully and plan out your route beforehand to make sure you won't run out of stamina rather than just diving in without a moments thought. I love that once your stamina runs out it starts to take your health away; it adds an element of risk/reward when you're considering whether or not to scale a big wall for the sake of exploration. It made every climb give me that same kind of feeling you mentioned when jumping across the bridge in the original Tomb Raider. I loved I Am Alive, I think it's an often overlooked little game and, it wasn't perfect, but it did have a couple of really good ideas that I wish more people had taken note of. Anyway, another great video, thanks!
Disappointed that there's zero mention of Bunnyhopping or FPS shooter movement here, the change from high speed movement to simple CoD sprinting, to Titanfall reintroducing verticality into modern level design's vocabulary.
Titan Fall 2 just kicks so much ass
*proceeds to phase shift, jump to the bottom of the map, wallclimb back up, activate smart pistol, and die from a kraber-wielding god*
You sir are the voice of authentic gaming. Please keep on dissecting contemporary gaming culture for the construction of this industry. We desperately need it. Badly.
So glad I'm not the only one who laments the decrease in skill based movement in Tomb Raider. I ended up in a discussion with someone just about a week ago claimingt that Tomb Raider has only improved with later installments and all I could do was facepalm as he kept defending the latest two main installments while bashing the old classics for being "simply bad games of an old age held back by bad technology"... When did people become so lazy that they can no longer appreciate having to learn game mechanics in order to succeed rather than holding up on the stick and occasionally pressing A?
To The Top is a VR game with an excellent movement system mostly focused on maintaining speed and making big jumps, though also with some minor climbing. What makes it work well is that it makes full use of having two pointing devices (the VR wands), but in a non-gimmicky way (no gestures). It convinced me that it's possible to make non-gimmicky games that are simply much better in VR than they would be without.
While it's a little dated, remember Jak 2? You had a high jump if you crouched and then jumped, a long jump if you rolled and then jumped, and you could do a small flutter mid-air by using a melee attack. It's not revolutionary but those small additions to platforming did make a huge difference to how acrobatic you felt climbing the terrain. Prince of Persia's wall running also goes a long way. I'd love to see an old school 3D platformer like that come back, combining all these moves. And while it was a bit of a clunky mess, Sonic Lost World did feel more acrobatic with the added parkour mechanics, ie, the wall run, wall jumps, being able to spindash while running up a wall to gain more distance and I like how parkour was designated its own button, although I personally think games like Saints Row IV and Prototype did it much better. I was recently playing a fangame called Sonic World, and there is a modded level called Emerald Ridge that does something really interesting; It scatters small shuttle loops, but doesn't automate them. You have to build up speed and if you curl up into a ball, it increases your acceleration coming out. And while running up the shuttle loop always decreases your time, it creates a risk reward system by putting rings along the path of the shuttle loop, so you have to decide between extra rings for a second extra added to your time, or if you're going to ignore the loop and continue the path of least resistance to the goal. Then there is of course, Mario's triple hop thing. Consecutively jump thrice and each jump will increase in height, with the third being the highest. Mario also had a crazy amount of ways to jump in Mario 64 so that's always something worth considering.
Loops are something that Sega's struggled with since 1999. In the 2D games, they were obvious chokepoints that forced you to get up to a minimum speed to clear. In 3D, first of all you can circumvent the loop easily by going around it or through the middle. That's why every loop in the early 3D games has dashpads on it, to push you along the intended route, and why the Hedgehog Engine games keep loops to 2D sections. Another problem is that finding a good angle for a 3D camera during a loop is hard without either disorienting the player or losing the kinetic feel of the rolling.
It's why I loved Grow Home so much last year because of the feeling of tactility those climbing controls created. It's really about harnessing the power of input unique to video games to create that greater physical connection between player and game that gives us that sense of empowerment.
It's the same reason I loved Brothers the year before because it used it's own controls to increase that feeling of tactility and by doing so helped strengthen the player's emotional connection to the characters creating one potent combination wholly unique to this interactive medium. We need more of that innovation in this industry!
I get goosebumps every time when I hear that Mirror's Edge intro theme :}
Same, I love the soundtrack of Mirror’s Edge
I know this is the second time I've brought up Assassin's Creed in your comment section, but Assassin's Creed 1/2/B/R had a lot of these finely tuned movement mechanics. You mention the grasp mechanic, and it went so much deeper than that. Sometimes, if a ledge near a corner is too high to reach by running up the wall at it, you can run up the opposite wall, then at the apex, jump off the wall left or right toward the original ledge. This gives you a minor bit of extra height you wouldn't have had before.
You can also use a combination of side jump and grasp to quickly change your horizontal position upon scaling a face, effectively doubling your movement speed. Or, if you're hanging at a position beside a standable surface, you can sidejump to immediately put yourself onto it. Throw these tricks into the mix of regular climbing techniques, and you can effectively double your scaling speed in some cases.
In parkour, you really need to think in three dimensions, because sometimes, the fastest route between two points isn't a straight line. Sometimes, you need to take detours. And that's why I also love Mirror's Edge so much, but that's another rant for another time!
Very interesting and thank for subtitles !!!
+Alexandre Abellan Thanks for watching! I can only take credit for the English ones - thanks to my incredible viewers for contributing all the others.
Just started pretty much binge-watching your Toolkit series - they really make me appreciate (or remind me of my experiences with) gaming and its mechanics again. For example: I had pretty much forgotten how much I had adored the first three Assassin's Creed games. Especially the first one, which added repetition to my vocabulary but felt extremely challenging during my first playthrough. At the time, I hadn't played any recent game on PC and AC made me want to scream when I messed up a jump or wasn't fast enough scrambling up a wall. And even on console, I loved climbing, even when they added trees to the mix in AC3 - just something about the animations of Connor, the almost sloppy movements... I really need to look more closely at stuff like that. Thanks for reminding me :)
BREATH OF THE WILD! It does climbing amazingly and adds on top of it with its' other mechanics like combat. I would love to see Assassin's Creed take a modern shot at more nuanced climbing.
Really though, the only interesting thing Breath of the Wild did with its climbing mechanics are (1) the dynamic climbing animations, and (2) the commitment to letting the player to climb (almost) any and every surface in the game at any time.
@@Stratelier Which I believe is a feat in itself because I can't really name any other big AAA game that allows that sort of freedom in climbing.
@@Stratelier also the slipping/sliding during rain was really neat too.
@@chasefischer7612 A lot of critiques hate the rain mechanic and how much climbing was made useless. Which was mostly bs tbf and its the sake of finding something to critique. On the other hand, I much enjoyed it especially the entire start of the Vah Ruta arc where the entire area is in constant rain and it gives the player a challenge to try and navigate the entire area where they cannot climb and have to deal with enemies with a lot of shock arrows.
Vah Ruta's inside itself is a good critique tho and its fair enough that the puzzle isn't complicated as per previous Zelda games however, a good counterpoint is that the entire Zora's domain can be said that it is a puzzle as a whole rather than dividing it into several sections. Same with the other bosses.
If we're talking about movement systems in video games, I think it's worth mentioning Just Cause 2. In that, you're given infinite grappling hooks and parachutes to zip around the terrain. You can grapple towards something, then pull the parachute out mid-flight to essentially glide using the momentum from the grapple. While parachuting you can grapple surfaces to give yourself a boost. With practice, you can basically use these two simple tools (the grapple and the parachute) to practically fly all over the map. I always found it to be a really satisfying movement system because it still allows you to get places easily (which is important in a game that emphasizes you being able to do whatever the hell you want), but it doesn't make things too simple, and instead of having some separate mechanic for scaling cliffs and such, it works naturally from a combination of two mechanics already present in the game.
i personally love beign able to turn on a dime, if i can see it coming and my character is slow and cant move out of the way i get frustrated
I recently stumbled upon this channel and have been watching a bunch of these videos, they are great! Tip top production quality! This video is cool to watch because if this video was redone this year, you could talk about Snake Pass, because that game is literally only about movement, and the movement in it is super fun!
There’s this one time I was stuck in Rise of the Tomb Raider:
I was stuck in an area surrounded by buildings, with a door on one of those buildings. Behind the door was a box that looked explosive, and, when I looked really hard, I found a bad guy.
I tried several things to explode the thing and open the door; Fire arrows, Incendiary shells... I could not open it.
But then I walked up in a certain way and Lara opened the door automatically...
Finally someone who commented on the "mechanics erosion" from the first few Tomb Raiders to the newer ones. When I played Tomb Raider Anniversary I remember there was an option to turn off the need for a "grip button", and it made me think about how holding it in the old games communicated this sense of exertion to hang on to ledges, and a real feeling of, well, realism to the mechanics. Without it, that sense of exertion is lost.
The streamlined climbing controls aren't my problem with modern Tomb Raider (well, maybe a little). A part of it is the gritty atmosphere. Gaming nowadays seems to have this need to be "dark" and "mature." Tomb Raider didn't need to become that. Tomb Raider used to be beautiful and majestic. You may occasionally find yourself wandering through the dirty London underground, but then you'll find yourself in beautiful forests and intricate tombs. Modern Tomb Raider... you're mostly just traversing a large garbage pile. Rise of the Tomb Raider fares a little better because the snow covers up some of the rubbish, but it doesn't hide that face that it looks like the mountain was turned into a dumping ground for human waste.
No, my biggest gripe is how Lara no longer controls like Lara. They ditched the acrobatic arcade action for a generic third person cover shooter character. For me, that took away a lot of what made Lara Croft feel like Lara Croft. Even Tomb Raider Legend, as blasphemous as that should be because it's so goddamn linear, still feels more like a Tomb Raider game than the modern series. At least Legend has the majestic atmospheric quality and Lara Croft can stylistically mow down enemies in superhuman fashion.
Going back the streamlined controls. Yes, they made platforming easier in the Legend/Anniversary/Underworld trilogy, but I wouldn't say it was always easy. There are some really bitchy moments that still require spacial awareness, aiming, and timing skills. Like this bit in Egypt where you have to use the grappling hook to swing yourself across walls and jump to the opposite side, hoping that you have enough altitude and avoiding many spinning blades in the process. It still haunts me! They made up for the easier controls with deadlier traps, meaning it's still up to the player's skills to perform stunts successfully.
I don't know, I've tried to like the new games. The openness is a cool change of pace from the standard level progression, but they removed just about everything that I loved about Tomb Raider and what made it so special. As much criticism as the Legend/Anniversary/Underworld games get, those are the last Tomb Raider games in my book (and in my opinion, genuinely fun games, too!).
There is a huge list of traversal games that I admire, but one of the ones that others will probably not mention is The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction by Radical Entertainment. There were many different modes of movement of in he game. Running up the sides of buildings, Jumping, and bus surfing. One of my favorite traversal games for sure.
+Robert Headley Spiderman 2 has amazing web swinging and a wall crawler mechanic.
+SimmosFace everyone knows that game is great though.
+Robert Headley I thought that Ultimate Destruction was widely popular too.
radical made the prototype games which are like the hulk ultimate destruction
Have you played Miasmata? It has some of the best movement mechanics I've ever experienced. You need to slow your descent down hills by pushing backwards or by heading down the slope backwards or sideways. Otherwise you'll fall over and hurt yourself. Meanwhile slopes are hard to climb without persistence and planning your route. It makes the world feel big, as getting around it (especially around hills and mountains) is tough.
+baxopoka98 I have, yes! I talked about it in the previous episode. And yeah, it's kind of weird at first but it really adds to the survival feel of the game. And is much more realistic than, like, awkwardly bunnyhopping up mountains in Skyrim. Definitely an interesting one.
Game Maker's Toolkit Oh now I feel stupid alright. I watched that video and it persuaded me to play the game, then I forget I watched it and recommend the game to you! Wow. :P
And definitely. That, combined with the monster and getting lost means I'm often scared to travel a few hundred feet to the next campsight I can see.
+baxopoka98 The momentum in Miasmata works so well as a survival horror mechanic - I still remember the first time I scaled to the top of a mountain, quietly picked out silhouettes against the skyline until hearing footsteps behind me and launched myself off the mountainside without thinking about the consequences.
The guys at Frictional talk about this pretty often - most horror games use mechanics to tell you how scared you (or your character) are and it can draw the player out of the experience, these often come in the form of a sanity meter or the like. But Miasmata uses your fear to punish you and make you panic more, because if you run into the creature and react by freaking out and running the opposite way you are more likely to do something stupid and trip, but if you react calmly and back away and hide or flee you stand a much better chance. Sometimes you have no other options and are forced to tumble face first down a cliff, but if you panic or hesitate you are less likely to survive, it's all about creating moments of rapid improvisation an I really wish more games explored these ideas and mechanics.
TheDominitri Exactly. Panicked improvisation like that is something I've only rarely had to do in other games. Might have a few times in Far Cry 3 and games like that for example, but even there the stakes weren't as high. Miasmata's limited saves meant you *really* didn't want to die after a long period mapping out and exploring the wilderness. Other games might scare you or kill you if you fail to improvise, but you could just go back to your last save 5 minutes ago.
My favourite story was when I ran from the monster up a hill (after backing away from him with a burning stick until it burnt out), then crouched down so I could detect his location with the screen move thing. He was still behind me at a greater distance, so I started backing away with my screen still tracking him. Then I fell backwards down the hill! I had a fever and was totally lost, but managed to find my way to a camp I knew via the one known landmark I could see.
I can't comment on the Frictional games, as I haven't played them, but they seem a bit simpler and more limited in how you avoid the monsters.
This is one of my favorite TH-cam channels, I absolutely love the insight you bring to every game design concept you cover!! Also, to answer the question, I loved the feel of parkour and movement in the Fancy Pants games as a kid, and continue to enjoy it to this day.
“You know, traversal has become so disengaging lately.”
Enter Kojima and Death Stranding.
Oddly enough, I've always found the jump and pseudo-platforming of Borderlands to be amazing fun. You leap abnormally high into the air on each bound, making every jump fun and crazy, and in the less open areas, such as dungeons or towns (especially Overlook), there are secrets and objects placed that require you to master the sprint-midair-jumping madness. Whenever I'm in Overlook, I love going from the centre of town to the exit without touching the ground, each jump being a fluid transition into the next. I know it's not what you focused on in this episode, but I've been playing Borderlands 2 recently, and I can't stop smiling every time I do this semi-parkour.
the new Doom game is also a worthy mention
(long post ahead)
Okami. I loved the running system in that game. You had three different running speeds and as you maintained speed while running you'd sort of shift gears and become faster. There was a visual effect to indicate it and everything. It turned traveling through the world and levels into a sort of mini game for me since I'd try to keep max speed as long as humanly possible.
The sequel, Okamiden, lost that mechanic (probably due to hardware limitations since it came out on the DS instead of a console) and you'd run full tilt all the time.
I have a friend who liked the change because it meant you were always going the fastest speed possible but to me it removed a lot of the momentum and weight from your movements and completely took me out of the experience. I felt weightless and slippery as a result. The movement mechanics in the original game definitely contributed to my immersion more than I realized. Without them I actually lost a lot of enthusiasm for the game. I still haven't gone back and beat it.
It's a thing I have trouble explaining to people when I talk about games. I love games that are fun to move around in so I really respect it when games give me more options with how I choose to interact with the level or show a degree of finesse in their movement mechanics.
Journey had a stage early on where you had to rebuild this broken bridge and there were all these small sand dunes. I realized you could kind of surf from dune to dune if you moved the right way and I wasted a bunch of time seeing how long I could maintain the surf instead of actually progressing to the next part of the game.
Last thing that comes to mind is Mario 64. It had several animations for moving depending on how much you tilted the control stick. So if you tilted it slightly forward Mario would walk slowly on tip toe. Add a bit more tilt and he'd speed up into a walk and, eventually, into all out running.
Yeah, it was always fun leaping over a river or over a small mountain in Okami. Something about it felt really good.
This was part of my philosophy in designing Sonic Utopia's motion. There's the old adage, "Speed should be earned, not given." But it runs much deeper than just that. The pre-alpha demo only had running and rolling, and yet these were enough to engage players for hours more than I even anticipated.
When the game's core mechanic is robust and emergent, even if simple, the player creates the fun for themselves.
No mention of Mount Your Friends?
+Andrew “Covarr” Covarrubias And it's the sexiest example.
+Mastu Denton Haha, was just about to say the same thing. :D
We need more of that in games. Just imagine Dead or Alive Extreme 4: Co-ed edition.
That was AWESOME! Thanks for this video. Being an old-time gamer, the first thing I noticed when I played Assassin's Creed for the first time was how trivial and boring movement was: all the climbing and tricking sure LOOK amazing, but they don't FEEL amazing, basically because you simply hold up and the character does everything.
Just wanted to say I enjoyed this!
Well thank you!
The first few Crystal Dynamics games had an option for expert controls that added a mandatory grip button and reduced air control. It was the best way to play, and allowed overrides of the system to allow glitch moves or bypassing grabs.
I really liked the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time for its acrobatics for getting about
actually imagining a game with such a mishmash of traversal techniques (done well of course) gave me chills
What about elite dangerous? All those movement options you can bind to an axis. Travelling long distances with the frame ship charge also requires finesse when you have to calculate the speed and distance when to drop out of it. It can be a bit too much of a simulation but it still has lots of freedom to go where ever you want to. Might not have The most varied missions or engaging story / lore, but your actions still can change things in the world around you.
A somewhat related thing -- not climbing, but also within the realms of traversal: ironically balancing on narrow beams in demon's souls was absolutely terrifying. There was no contextual animation, no left analog stick balancing mechanic, no just walked through it and if you step just a little over the narrow hitbox, you fall and die. It was awesome and nerve racking. Compared to uncharted with its dedicated balancing mechanic, contextual animation all to which, everytime you fail, Drake automatically grabs onto the beam and climbs it again, it's a world of a difference.
While I love your channel, my one complaint is that in every video you seem to wave your finger at developers for using the simple mechanic over a more complicated, but engaging version while not pointing out the merit that the simplified versions have in regards to gameplay pacing and storytelling. In this specific video, all the games you gave as examples of motive done right were games based entirely around that idea, while you contrasted it to game like Uncharted and more recent Tomb Raiders in which climbing is only one of the games' many focuses. The difference is one that you never point out, that having the same climbing mechanic as Grow Home in Rise of the Tomb Raider would significantly slow the pace of the game, something that just wouldn't fit with the tone and pacing that Crystal Dynamics intended and would end up affecting actual development by either shortening the climbing sections of the game or vastly changing them in some other way.
While I agree with you that more interesting is almost always better, I still do see the benefits of using more simplified systems. As you mentioned in another video, complicating some game mechanics can give the player the impression that they are more integral to the experience than the developers intend for them to be. In the case of the Tomb Raider franchise, as the traversal mechanics evolved and simplified over time, the shooting mechanics replaced them in terms of complexity, as you mentioned. That was a conscious decision by Crystal Dynamics to shift focus to a different mechanic that I think is perfectly valid.
I think you're wrong and TR could have greatly benefited from a more complex movement system and a higher skill-ceiling. Considering the new difficulty settings, I think CD is starting to understand that. This video could have made that game so much better.
the whole point of tomb raider is having a tomb full of dangerous platforming sections while combat is simply added to add even more danger and seem like the tombs have been overrun with wild life after centuries of having nobody in them
I didn't realize how old this video was. Still going to piggy back off this comment anyways.
I personally think the movement in Tomb Raider is just fine. But when they had that section that Mark talks about where you are climbing the tower and shes acting all scared but you are literally just holding up just kind of sucks me out of the experience. Again a majority of the game was okay but when they have those kind of "scary" segments, it just makes me kind of laugh at how it doesn't make me feel anything. It's kind of like how jumping between platforms in Zelda is just holding forward even though they are "treacherous gaps". If the game wants me to feel that way about its platforming, it needs to have a different system than hold up.
@@crimsonorbital Zelda was never about platforming though, the top-down games never had a jump button (besides via an item in Link's Awakening, the Roc's feather, but that was more about opening new routes). The auto-jump was a smart choice to maintain the feel of the game, especially with how janky early 3D platforming and cameras were.
Tomb Raider was built on climbing and jumping. That WAS the whole game. The new ones are Assassin's Creed (or whatever) starring Lara Croft.
At this moment in time, the favorite movement system in a game, probably goes to Warframe;
it actually gives you some options, for speedrunning through maps:
1: The most obvious, and simplest one, is to just use a frame, (class/job/character) that boost movement speed.
2: The most used one, and the one that every frame can use, is "parkour,"
this mechanic is easy to use, but has a high level of mastery attached to it.
3: Using your operator's (human counterpart) movement, as your operator has one of the longest dashes in the game;
this dash can be upgraded, both in the distance traveled, and the amount of dashes.
This mechanic can be used on it's own, whether it be to clear a single obstacle, or to clear the mission;
this mechanic can also be used to compliment/supplement your normal parkour movement, as you can trigger it mid-air.
Here's a rundown of the basics, of the movement system:
1: Walking/running (obviously)
2: Rolling
3: Crouching/Sliding
4: Jumping/double jump
5: Bullet jump (crouch + jump, increases jump speed + distance, has high acceleration, can be used as double jump)
6: Plunge attacks (melee while looking at the ground, mid-air)
7: Aim-gliding (Hover in air, keeping some of your momentum, but slowing you down, usually)
8: Ledge grab/climb (mostly automatic)
9: Void dash (the operator's dash, it can easily be used to change direction mid-air)
All of these can be used in tandem; per jump, you get:
One normal jump, one bullet jump, one roll, one operator swap, (for void dash) operator swap resets your jumps and roll,
but cannot be reset until you hit the ground or a certain timer which exceeds the normal,
and cannot be accessed without the use of abilities. My usual speedrunning movement combo is something like:
run > short slide > bullet jump > short aim-glide, followed by rolling, to keep momentum >
either double jump/continue aim-glide for extra distance, or slide to keep momentum & soften landing > repeat
While there is an element of repetition to this, what matters is how, and when you use different aspects of the movement system.
This is even without mentioning the mods, and all the different builds you can make by using them:
I (an end-game player) can optimize my builds to do one thing very well,
to the point where I can simply press one button to murder everything,
or to augment/increase certain aspects of the movement system, or something completely different.
Though, as this is about movement, I will focus on that:
So, I made a meme build, for the purpose of farming something, and it revolves around sliding and rolling,
instead of going the usual "simply run fast" option; so I decided to use a frame that has increased sliding capabilities as it's passive,
modded it for maximum running speed, maximum parkour velocity (rolling, sliding, jumping) and minimum friction
(negative turning radius and breaking capabilities, but increased top speeds.)
It's a fun build to use, but it's not really made for the standard maps, as all you'll do, is to crash with obstacles;
this is also one of the limiting, and harder things to master, as while the tiles-set of the maps are mostly the same,
the tiles are put together is unique ways, and are filled with different obstacles and traps.
Lastly, while falling out of the map isn't lethal, the respawning can be;
also, in this game, the ultimate defense is to optimize your use of the movement system,
due to enemies inability to track you precisely.
Toribash.
You could argue that it has terrible controls, and I will not oppose you, but I will however say that it has no limit to what you can do. Unlike the newer tomb raider games, you can choose to *not* grab a ledge, slap your friend, wallrun fall back. All the emotes and need for intentional movement from DarkSouls, all the movement from mirror's edge all of that in one game.. after you of course master moving every joint by itself.
Just getting to see this video- somehow missed it. I loved the new tomb raider but man you gave me chills towards the end. Wonderful video Mark!
I dont necesseraly think having more accessible movement is that bad, some players prefer to play the game and enjoy it through the thrillimg combat and exciting gameplay, than makimg every single aspect of the game a struggle.
+Nintenguy0 Surely you could make the opposite argument? some people enjoy it for the thrilling movement than making the combat a struggle.
Exactly, which is why having a different variety of games that focus on one of the two aspects is nice, rather than having all games focus more on movement.
I agree. However, what percentage of the playerbase of this game do you think would actually prefer combat over movement? I think when it comes to AAA titles the publisher always tries to cater to the majority.
Thanks to all these people every game is the same today.
agreed.
I know this video is old, but you should have titled it "The Mechanics of Climbing". Movement isn't just jumping/climbing.
There's so much you could talk about when it comes to movement in games:
- How the surfing (and strafing) mechanic came to life in source engine games.
- The level of intricacy in controlling you character's moves in games like Toribash.
- Developers that allow players to choose between simple or complex controlls. Where the simple controlls are easy to learn but slightly limited in what you can do, and the complex controlls can allow you to pull off crazy moves but are hard to learn and master.
That's just what I could think about up by myself, and I'm sure there's lots and lots of other stuff to discuss in such a video.
you just put in words why i like more the old lara and why i couldn't bring myself to care about the reboot
I think that adding the wingsuit to Just Cause 3 has made the game a great example of good traversal. Travel is dangerous if you mess up and learning and mastering the options of grapple+parachute+wingsuit is intensely satisfying.
My favorite traversal sytem is bethesda's mountain climbing.
Some of the trailers for Portal were very exciting. They were about placing portals while in mid-air to navigate traps and move through the world quickly and dynamically, which is a far cry from the video game's actual gameplay of "Let's see, we have a walkway there, a portalable surface there and there, and a box here, I don't see a button yet..."
They simplified the traversal in Tomb Raider and Uncharted so it can be used during combat sections aswell as normal platforming sections. If you had to press seven buttons to climb while trying to aim your pistol at the same time it would be awful.
+Strateqize But climbing and shooting at the same time is probably really hard IRL, and is probably not a good idea. The game developers would have to help you find ways to avoid these kinds of scenarios.
Ken Ambrose Yeah but, Uncharted isn't trying to be realistic, they basically admit that Nathan Drake has supernatural gymnastic skills and use it to make the combat arenas more vertical and dynamic therefore more fun.
+Strateqize That's fair =). I guess it's seems most strange when there is dissonance between the type of world feel that they are trying to create and the type of motion / combat.
That's a bit of a cop out though isn't it? Prince of Persia had complicated traversal which could be used in combat. Complicated doesn't mean seven buttons. It just means something that makes you think or at least requires you to master first, instead of just being automatic.
+Strateqize and therein lies the problem; Tomb Raider has gone from being a challenging platformer with light combat to being a mundane, run of the mill, third person shooter with light platforming. not every game has to be a solely about killing, sigh
I would love a game with a dynamic combination of those climbing mechanics. As someone who enjoys rock climbing, the challenge and position you have to move your body into makes it all the more rewarding when overcoming the obstacle. Honestly, it's something of a puzzle you solve with your body more than anything.
Mark. Mark there is an entire genre of video games based on jumping from platform to platform. They're called platformers.
From what I've seen, the old Tomb Raider games felt like the old Jak and Daxter. Exploring a dungeon, and using your mobility mechanics to help you explore more, or solve puzzles. If I look at the newer ones, I don't exactly see that.
Marvel’s spiderman literally says “Hold R2 to parkour” in one of the tutorials.
What was the game with Faith running around an abstract landscape? Or was that a tech demo for Mirror's Edge?
It's a DLC pack for Mirror's Edge that's all about speed running. Just abstract, floating platforms. Hope they make a return in ME2!
+Mark Brown Oh man! I can't wait for ME2. Hopefully they didn't dumb it down like most games are nowadays.
It's a challenge level in Mirror's Edge. Awesome game.
I have been binging your videos over the last couple of days and having a great time!
So, super late reply but I adore the feel of climbing in grow home and grow up.