Does anybody prefer lock-on cover systems over passive cover systems in third person games?

[Chaos Isaac]

The splinter cell method of having a cover button is what find to be best.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

I've always liked the sticky cover method. Games that come to mind that use it and I think feel really nice and tactile are Gears, Splinter Cell (Blacklist since it's the most recent) and Vanquish. I just like the snappy feel of being stuck, hard, in cover and then not having to deal with the floaty half animations and being forced to leave my state of cover up to the game's systems. I hated the passive cover in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Like most of the other aspects of that game I found it distinctly average.

 

[nomzy]

One in particular that comes to mind is Rainbow Six Vegas 2. It was an FPS but when you got close to cover you just had to hold right click to get into cover and it went 3rd person, I always found it quite smooth especially with the way you'd peek out of cover in increments depending where you aim. It didn't have the problem that I have with many other cover based systems where they felt too "sticky", transitions were fairly seamless in and out of cover.

As far as cover based shooting systems go its probably my favourite.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

Okay, a lot of you are describing something different to what I mean by passive cover systems.

With the passive systems I'm thinking of, the player character never actually sticks to cover. That's kind of the point.

I was very deliberate with my examples of Tomb Raider 2013 and The Last of Us. To my knowledge they're the only games to have used what I'm talking about.

Okay, that explains it. I didn't play neither TLoU, nor the latest Tomb Raiders, so i have no comparison. Sorry for any confusion.

Playing Mass Effect 3 multiplayer and (take this how you will) because of stupid porting and console button limitations: RUN, USE, REVIVE, COVER, VAULT are all the same single button. So try to revive a friend? Cling to a wall, trying to run away? Cling to a wall, then another.

Right, those are a different kind of boogers that games deal with. Contextual controls their name is i believe, and they aren't much of a problem if assigned to a reasonable number of actions that cannot be performed in the same moment. But if you won't meet those conditions you'll get a huge pain in the ass, similar to some cover systems.