I love it when a video game kicks off and makes you go wow! When your eyes are amazed at what's before you and you find yourself completely absorbed into a beautiful new world. I love peering up round the edge of a dark canopy and being blinded by the digital sunlight streaming down on you, with perfect fluffy clouds drifting overhead. Or when you hurl your car around a corner and gravel shoots from your spinning tyres while reflections flash over your bonnet and light bounces off your windscreen. It's amazing! So many techniques are being employed by artists working on video games these days. Light, shadow, reflection, textures, transparency, cloud, water, gravity...the list goes on for varieties of visual representation and, when it's all done well, an interactive game becomes truly immersive.
Many of the above mentioned things are done brilliantly and, in many games, I wouldn't dare fault anything. The brilliance of some optical aspects can, however, highlight the weakness in other areas. One thing games developers seem to struggle with still is modeling decent faces. I have seen this done well, Fight Night Round 3, for example, has some superb fighter models. The skin is perfectly matte, until they start sweating (genius!), and the shape and detail of their faces is just like their real-life counter-part. But far too many games present characters with skin and face like a mannequin. They are far too shiny- the contrast between light and dark is far too great, and they have generic features that look like they're plucked from a fashionably attired shop window. If I draw a face without referencing somebody real, I can only create something that looks like this, however hard I try. I'm not a professional artist but I still feel like it would be harsh to expect anyone else to produce a believable face from their own mind. But why, if this is the problem, don't they just use a model? Grab mister Calvin Klein and replicate his face for a more believable .
Hair seems to be another issue. There are plenty of nice examples of flowing long hair that moves quite believably but once the hair is cropped a bit shorter it suddenly becomes rock solid and usually shaped into some horrible blocky concoction. I would love to see a football game where the players hair changed as soon as they got sweaty. So we could see a fluffy, fair-haired striker gradually become darker and straighter once he's made a few runs. That would be great!
Another item on my personal wish list is a realistically animated fighting game. We have some fine spectacles in this genre with Soul Calibre IV and Virtua Fighter 5 which both have some gloriously shiny, flashy aesthetics, but what we don't have is a more simulation-style fighting game. I would love to see the kind of gritty, faded colours from Gears of War and Ghost Recon, accurately modeled characters and a completely different approach taken towards the animation. Most fighting games have a very arcade-ey style with lightning quick animation.
When you batter several buttons, your character hurls limbs about at such speed you can barely appreciate the fluidity of it. And it doesn't look remotely real, particularly when flashing green explosions light up the fighters when a blow hits home. I'd like to see some real-time, smooooth animation that looks like an actual fight! So when a weighty blow lands on your opponent it really makes you flinch. I want to see blows causing impact wherever they land and visual clues as to the severity and location of injuries. Fights can be quick and responsive but with slight delays for recovery of balance and poise. I wouldn't mind at all sacrificing a little immediacy of control for some more realistic movement.
The reward for seeing a poorly timed swing putting your opponent off-balance and unable to recover before a kick to the back of the leg sent his knee to the floor, would be enormous! A believable exchange with timing, technique and decision-making being the winning traits and everything played out like a pub brawl or an artful competition would be awe-inspiring. This must be a hefty challenge because I've never seen anything remotely like what's playing though in my head, but one day it must surely happen.
| Ryan is an expert Research and Travel consultant. His current interest is in Airport Parking |
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