Sacrificing Good Controls for "Game Feel?"

[cambamuniverse]

I was thinking about this the other day:

Shinji Mikami (creator of the Resident Evil series) has said that he intentionally gave Resident Evil bad controls because it would make the game more scary (the same goes for Dead Space). So, if a monster attacked you, the controls would be bad enough that you'd have a hard time taking down even one enemy.

That's cool I guess, very interesting from a design point and I respect that. However, I was thinking about whether or not you could still create a scary game with GOOD combat controls.

Think about all of the "horror" games that have good controls and good camera angles. Dead Space wasn't considered scary, but the controls aren't as bad as, say, Resident Evil 1-3. Resident Evil 4 wasn't as scary as 1-3 but it had significantly better controls. And yes, I know that there are other reasons why these games aren't considered scary, but I feel as though it might be more of an accomplishment to make a scary game that has good controls. For instance, if you die in RE 1, it's completely understandable for you to blame the controls. The game doesn't control well at all.

But in a game like, say, Penumbra, or Amnesia, the controls are spot on, so the only reason you would ever die would be your own inability to escape a threat (or other areas of bad design) but I feel that it's almost more of an accomplishment to not give the player disabilites just for the sake of making the atmosphere different.

Last thing: The same goes for the Silent Hill series. I've never played any of the games, so I guess I don't have too much experience, but after watching an LP of SH 3, I noticed several moments where the player is forced to walk through corridors without being able to see what was in front of them. Not because it was dark, but because the camera was pointed in another direction. From the character's point of view, this is actually kind of strange. They would definitely be able to see down the hallway, so whenever you accidentally walk into an enemy, you feel cheated. It really wasn't YOUR fault, the game should've showed you in my opinion.

What do you think?

 

[Remaiki]

Shinji (and other devs, of course) seems to be using a cop-out argument when he realised that the controls he made were shit. If he wanted to achieve the 'difficult to fend off effect', he should of placed a barrier in between the character the player's controlling and the enemy, rather than placing a barrier in between the player and the character.

I don't really have much to say about this, but it really riles me when people try to get out of doing a bad job.

 

[shrekfan246]

Fixed camera angles are the bane of a video game's existence.

There are certain arguments that can be made for them, and they arguably work all right in games like Devil May Cry or God of War, but especially in games like Resident Evil or Silent Hill where the tank controls will screw you over after an angle change, it's just inexcusable. It's not adding real tension to the game, it's purposely hiding parts of the game from the player.

That's not even to mention that tank controls are probably the worst thing developers ever came up with.

"Let's make a tense game where the player frequently will need to quickly move away from enemies, and then make them slowly amble backwards or spend half an hour getting their character turned around so they can sprint."
"GENIUS!"

Again, not real tension. Artificially hamstringing the player in every way doesn't make the game scarier, it just makes it tedious and frustrating.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I wouldn't take Shinji's word for it at all. Every single PS1 title with fixed camera angles operated the same (crap) way back in 1996, there was nothing novel about Resident Evil playing as crappy as every other game. Shinji's just retconning history, the same way film directors will say "it was supposed to be campy/kitsch/corny/satirical" of their earlier work. I do not doubt for a second that RE's current action-packed iterations were what he was aiming at his whole life. He was pretty creative back in the day with what little he had, but come on, NO DEV EVER intentionally goes for crap controls.

Regarding Silent Hill... I've played most games, sucky Book of [slash]Diablo[/slash] Memories aside. The games have considerably better controls than the first RE titles. SH4 is widely panned as having the most awkward controls in the series. Everything onwards has been consistently more action-packed, with Homecoming ripping off RE4's system et al. About the camera thing you mentioned in SH3... I personally like fixed camera angles. I don't think the decision is anything but artistic, much like rooms will greet you with the camera facing the player, or edit around corners at odd angles to highten suspense. You can tell they weren't forced into it due to constraints of any kind, since other portions of the game (hell, even earlier, older games) operate on a normal 3rd person POV. I like film grammar in games, especially for building up suspense, which is arguably cinema's nature, what with parallel/alternate montage and all that.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well that bad controls thing was probably a failed way of explain their intent(or a failed atempt at implementing it), gameplay can still be silky smooth if the character acts at a pace where monsters get the better of him.

But if you really want scary then combat shouldn't be a viable option at all, it should always be a case of "I'm fighting to run away", because each time you are allowed to fully overcome the enemy that overall tension drops and sooner or later people will just run around like it's some disneyland pillow fight.

 

[cambamuniverse]

Well that bad controls thing was probably a failed way of explain their intent(or a failed atempt at implementing it), gameplay can still be silky smooth if the character acts at a pace where monsters get the better of him.

But if you really want scary then combat shouldn't be a viable option at all, it should always be a case of "I'm fighting to run away", because each time you are allowed to fully overcome the enemy that overall tension drops and sooner or later people will just run around like it's some disneyland pillow fight.

Well, I would argue that scary COULD exist with combat, but implementing it would be a lot harder. Penumbra: Black Plague was scarier than Penumbra: Overture because PBP did not have combat. However, PO was still a scary game, and it scares the hell out of me despite having the option to smash the shit out of wolves with a hammer and a pick-axe.

I don't think every horror game should drop combat.

 

[burningdragoon]

It's very easy for "good" mechanics to clash with disempowerment. It's why even though most will agree the RE4 has better controls than the previous games, and is often considered the best in the series, it's also a very different experience.

 

[hazabaza1]

It's kind of an issue in horror games, where you don't want to make it too easy to control, because otherwise the scary stuff gets easy to avoid and not scary, but you don't want to make it too hard because , well... dying isn't scary. Being chased, scary, the process of being killed, maybe scary, but dying and getting put back to the "try again" screen? Not scary.

If the controls are shitty enough to keep things hard but good enough to prevent constantly dying so long as the player is skilled then you've got the near perfect combination.