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[xix]

sega, I don't know if you know it, but you're talking like an artist.

HO SHIT!

By the way, this thread is going really well. I am going to throw a curveball and ask what you guys think of "Jetpack" games.

[sega]

May I assume that "HO SHIT!" means the same thing as "OH SNAP!"?

By the way, this thread is going really well. I am going to throw a curveball and ask what you guys think of "Jetpack" games.

hmm, I think you'll have to be more specific.  I like "jetpack" games like I like "car" games, "spaceship" games, and "foot" games.  It depends on the game.  It can be good or bad.  The "jetpack" game I probably played the most was Armored Core.  That game used every button available, and did not feel good to control until you mastered everything there was about movement.

I don't have anything against controlling a character wearing a jetpack, but I don't believe I've ever orgasmed from jetpacking either.  Like I said earlier, there's a lot of things involved in making movement feel good.  So I think you might have to bring up a specific game or design.  The only thing inherent to jetpacks, is that the character moves up when accelerating, and gravity pulls down when not.  Nothing inherently good or bad about that.  It's all about execution.  Same goes for driving, swimming, or jumping.

[Alec]

"Jetpack" makes me think of SNES Pilotwings, which had some interesting control. I remember as a kid not being able to control the plane AT ALL. Which made it feel a bit like I was flying a real plane, which I would likely also crash into the ground often.



I think we had the most fun with the rocket belt parts ... they really felt scary, especially trying to land on the moving bonus platform while risking falling in the water. There was a real freaky sense of inertia.

I think I always found the weird mix of laid back music with the beepy warning sound to be really disconcerting. Like the character is trying to keep it together, but partially losing it.

[sega]

You know, I still haven't played Pilotwings for more than 5 minutes total.  I played it once when my friend first got the SNES, and never again.  It always looked fun though.  Did you play Pilotwings 64?  How did that stack up to the SNES game?  That sounds cool about the music and sound effects.  I should fire up an emulator and check that out.

[Alec]

Man, I loved PilotWings back in the day. My brother and I didn't get to play games for long at home, because our parents were concerned about it. I think it started out so that we'd have a 15 minute limit each per day. (so if we combined our 15 minutes, we'd get a half hour) It made playing games like FF6 together a lot of fun, because we'd have to work really hard to get to the next save point before our 30 minutes ran out.

In any case, our neighbor + friend's parents were slack on the video game regulation, so we'd go over there to play games. He had PilotWings, Star Fox... 3 player Bomberman was the best though.

Anyways, I did play Pilotwings 64 a bit when it first came out. I remember being disappointed in how it felt a bit over done, like there was too much going on at once, whereas the first game was more pure and focused. But I really want to try it again and see what I think, I haven't played it in years.

[rey-o]

Cave story had some satisfying movement/control.

There are a few different levels of jet pack upgrades. The jet packs, or boosters, made the caves all the more inviting and fun to explore. I especially liked how you could point the machine gun downwards giving you the ability to hover around - it reminds me of the rationale I had as a kid when I was playing with toys.

[Bezzy]

Lots of examples of good movement here. I'd like to add my fascination with Tribes and the quake series for unintended but awesome movement approaches (skiing and strafe jumping/rocket jumping).

I know people hate "bunny hopping" purely because it makes the game "unrealistic", but it is a skill, rewarded with extra speed, so at a purely mechanical level, it's a wonderful mistake to have made. I always thought that you'd be able to mediate the metaphorical dissonance of hopping around for speed by changing the animation for bunny hopping/strafe jumping into large running gaits... so every bound you take in a sequence of bunny hops is just a large step. Erm. What I'm a long way from explaining very clearly is that there's a very clear way to explain bunny hopping in a way which doesn't seem compleeeetely unrealistic: long steps.

That's a digression. I find I get a little frustrated at games which cap my speed too obviously, because I'll get up to top speed, and will be asked to travel to some distant location, and all I can really do is monitor my heading, and make adjustments while I go there. It's like Penn and Teller's game about the tour bus travelling across the nevada desert. It's really not that interesting. Plus, having such sudden caps on speed feels somehow... arbitrary. I'd much rather have movement which has a sense of "deminishing returns", in that you're approaching a kind of terminal velocity, which you might even exceed briefly with impulses from other things (like explosions, or kicks off walls or whatnot). I think the reason I prefer this is because it feels like a more natural constraint, synonymous with the concept of "drag force". Capping speed immediately feels like a totally fake way of doing that, I guess.

But yeah, if you're going to get me to travel really far, give me something I can do to speed myself up during the journey, like rebounding off a wall, or rolling into a jump, or dashing forward, or strafe jumping, or sliding on the ground, or wallrunning, or vaulting over edges for a speed boost... anything to make me feel like I can "attack" the distance I have to cover, or at the very least, *something* to occupy me during a dull voyage - beautiful scenery to sight-see, or an errant horse to try command. I don't want to be stuck holding W and nothing else.

The next game we do will be focussed on movement like this... an ode to motion. Got to make the first game, though, or it'll never happen.

[Xion]

By the way, this thread is going really well. I am going to throw a curveball and ask what you guys think of "Jetpack" games.

You mean that old DOS game where you were a dude with a jetpack who flew around and zapped bricks and stuff? Yeah, man, that was cool. I liked the christmas edition where you played Santa.

I must agree with Bezzy in that I loved skiing in Tribes. It made me feel like a fucking lightningbolt with ammo or something, just to blaze through the fray and guerrilla the enemy, then before their bullets reached me I was up over the next ridge and, preeeeoowwww, GONE, BABY!


Uh...What was that game with the rabbits posted on TIGS a while ago? Lugaru or something? Yeah, I really liked the way that game handled. I mean, I feel like I felt exactly how the game wanted me to feel: Like a ninja-jackrabbit. I only played the demo, but after you get used to things the fights just seem pretty slick and natural without losing their challenge. And I played those little mission scenario things a couple times each just to see how many ways I could take out the baddies: unseen, one-on-one, all at once, high-speed chase, etc. Just running around was a high-inducing experience.

[Dust]

I agree with you there. when playing that game it just had that feeling which was great along with all the sound and music. (It gives me the same feeling when thinking about Donnie Darko or the village). Though i remember the movement being slidy, not so stable as Mario 64.

I might bring this up but what about say, web slinging (like in spider man games) where else has this been used cos i always used to enjoy flying around a level using ropes

[GP Lackey]

I've heard "jetpack" refer to games where holding the jump button determines your height (like mario) rather than just reaching a fixed height when you press it.  A lot of platform games do this.

I like the differences in control between Prince of Persia and Sands of Time.  In Prince of Persia the protagonist is so fragile.  Every motion needs to be done cautiously.  The Prince seems kind of clumsy with his long, sliding turns and wild flying leaps.  By comparison Sands of Time gives you much more freedom and more opportunities to save yourself.  Not just with the time-reversing ability but with a lot of situations where you don't instantly die by missing a jump.  He also has much more fluid movement and this gives you more control over the environment.

I don't prefer one over the other.  Just that the labyrinths in the original Prince of Persia seem much more deadly, where Sands of Time seems to have a much more confident and in control hero.