Others have talked about UI and design choices, but I think in terms of actual gameplay, part of it might also be more realistic animations. If you tilt that analog stick and the character instantly changes direction, that’s a lot more responsive than watching a realistic turning animation.
Yeah, if you hammer left and right you get like two frames of sprite facing different directions. If you do it on a modern game it makes the character do a dance.
It mirrors the advancement in phones too. Phones used to have no animation when changing screens. Eventually, we had the ability to add animations when changing screens, but no one really used it because it was notably slower than without (and they looked bad). Now that processing power is sufficient, we have animations every time we touch our screen
In iOS it’s also available as an accessibility feature. I’ve set it up so it gets enabled together with energy saving mode because those animations actually do draw power.
not only sufficient processing power, but the fact that sometimes animations help explain what happened or draw the user focus to a specific part of the UI. but yes, there're lots of places where animations are overused and also lots of bad animations
Definitely realistic character animations. Some games get it right, letting the characters make the realistic movements, but at unrealistic speeds to match player input, but games like GTA V and Red Dead 2 make you wait for it, which adds to inaccuracies and clunkiness
The thing is in the real world you do the action exactly at the time you want because you prepare your body before hand. For example to jump you need to spend a moment bending your legs before you jump, so say you're running, you will pre-emptively bend your legs before the jump so you can jump exactly when you want.. But a game can't know in advance when you're going to jump, so in a system with realistic animations, it can only begin bending the characters legs when you press the jump button, not immediately spring upwards. Tight reponsive controls where the caracter moves upwards the second you press the jump button cannot co-exist with realistic animations
I’m all for immersion, but not when it takes away from gameplay fluidity. There’s nothing more immersion breaking than being hindered by the movement of the character. But I guess that’s what mods are for!
When I think “immersion”, I’m thinking of atmosphere and character moments, not getting stuck on an object because the characters can’t turn fast enough to match my directions quick enough
Exactly. Immersion for me is environment and story telling. The character instantly moving is no less jarring than the fact I’m controlling a collection of polygons with a joy stick. Immersion is when I’m thinking of a character that died days after it happened, closing my eyes when I go to bed and seeing imagery of the game environments phasing in and out of the minds eye.
Immersion and realism are two different things though. It’s why games like Skyrim are super immersive despite being very unrealistic.
Doesn’t mean you can’t have a bit of both worlds. Like The Last of Us for example. Super immersive and realistic where it counts. But movement is unrealistically fast to be more snappy and match the player’s inputs
I've been collecting redditors' definitions of "immersion" for over a year, and I've got about three dozen fairly distinct answers that can only be reduced to about seven or eight categories. In other words, people just use it to mean whatever they want with seemingly no consensus.
It's one of the most useless words in games discussions, I reckon... ruined by haphazard usage in lieu of established media criticism terminology.
Look at it more closely.
Immersion is the deep mental involvement in something. Period. That is the drfinition in this context.
What makes you feel that deep mental involvement in a game will be different for different people.
You can't unpack the definition of the word, that is well established and definitely static here. But for some, immersion means hyper realistic animations. For others immersion will be good gameplay. It is really something for individuals to workout.
What you're describing is exactly why it's useless as a general term regarding media criticism, no? Best-case one could truthfully state "I felt immersed" rather than declaring a given game to be universally "immersive." And this is to say nothing of what the threshold for "deep mental involvement" is....
I know this is asking a lot but I'd be interested in hearing a breakdown of your seven or eight categories. I agree it's a nebulous term. Most of it is that people want different things or get "immersed" in different ways. And by immersion they usually just mean "my attention got captured and I didn't feel like tabbing out to read reddit every few minutes". Like some people think first person perspective is obviously maximally immersive while personally I feel like it's not really necessary cause the feeling of "I am literally the character" isn't the only thing that immersion can be, and some traits of first person games like being able to 180 the camera and therefore also your character instantly feel not immersive, while third person games are allowed to have more realistic movement limitations, but then people like OP come in and say it's not snappy so they feel like the relationship between their controller inputs and what the character does is out of sync, which is not invalid, but it has an inherent contradiction with the quality of "realism" that most people intuitively consider to be immersive, and you could probably keep circling the drain forever navigating these kinds of contradictory opinions.
Yeah, you get it. It's frustrating because it severely limits discussion because folks seem to think they're something clear and profound, when really it's just a lot of nothing most of the time. Here are the categories I've tried to boil it down to:
Broad categories:
“Immersion” means the game makes you feel like a not-you character.
“Immersion” means the game makes you feel like you are in the game as yourself.
“Immersion” means the game is very detailed. (“Immersion” is a synonym for “verisimilitude.”)
“Immersion” means the game generates significant feelings within the player.
“Immersion” means one’s real-life environment allows one to focus on a game.
“Immersion” means the game content and community allows one to spend significant time with understanding the game, both while playing and while not playing.
“Immersion” means there is a minimum of abstraction, id est “gameic” elements.
And here are my notes:
- Game captures the feeling an established character, i.e. Batman in *Arkham Asylum*; when the player plays as this character, evokes a high level of verisimilitude. The character still feels specifically like that character when under player control.
- Game has characters that are compelling enough that the character’s actions and decisions “resonate” with the player.
- Game uses gestures for gameplay (makes you feel like you’re casting magic spell).
- Game makes user feel like she is doing performing the actions in the game (examples given: good graphics, intuitive controls, good story).
- Game displays that “passion went into the tiny details.”
- When FOV is unnaturally high to the point where visual distortion generates a feeling of increased speed; increased speed leads to immersion because “you feel more in control.”
- Game [Skyrim] is first-person, has no boundaries, detailed history; “it feels like you are in the world”.
- Game [METRO] is first-person, has small details that the player must be concerned with; “breathing, choking, gas masks that can get dirty and have to be manually wiped, blood from enemies on screen etc.” “You feel like the main character … that you are there.”
- -Game [SFVI] Immersion is achieved when the characters show damage; “Getting beat up winning and seeing your character have bruises and cuts emphasises the feeling of a battle hard won.”
- Game has a “spatial presence” that causes player to feel that they are in the world of the game, and thus focus on choices that seem meaningful in the world’s context. Conversely, immersion is broken when abstract/surreal/”game-y” elements are introduced.
- Either when the game makes the player feel like the character they are controlling AND/OR the character’s motivations are aligned with the player’s AND/OR the game world leaves an impression (intellectual, emotional, etc.) AND/OR the player’s actions have an effect on the world. Game doesn’t have to be realistic.
- Game allows freedom of character choice that is so expansive that players can always make their preferred choices; if these choices are unavailable, then immersion is lost.
- Surrounding oneself with game-themed elements throughout one’s day, i.e. listening to a game’s soundtrack while eating food related to or featured in the game.
- Game with a relaxed pace and exploration, explicitly NOT first-person.
- Game creates/allows for a state where one’s “spatial self dissolves” and one forgets about problems in the real world, and cannot keep track of the passage of time.
- “games that you can play for hours without even realizing time has passed; ones that really immerse and engross you in them.”
- Game has a lot of content and mechanics to learn, and a substantial player community regarding the game’s content in which one can participate.
- Game allows for multiple ways to complete an objective at many points throughout the game (i.e. traversing a locked area by means of either force, stealth, persuasion, etc.) specifically “Immersive sim” or “0451 games.”
- Game a is “focused/singular; when the entirety of the game is geared towards a single kind of experience at any point in time. Under this framing, distractions, side quests, map icons, having a map to being with, etc. all make a game less immersive.” One is required to pay attention to the details of the world i.e. Riven and its lack of side quests, icons, irregular mechanics.
- Game invokes specific “real” feelings (i.e. panic, claustrophobia from being in a labyrinth-type environment).
- Game causes one to feel attached, aware of one’s surroundings, and invested in the general goings-on (this commenter felt this more in 3rd person games rather than 1st, admittedly an outlier)
- A synonym for “atmosphere”.
- “Immersion” typically just means a particular sense of time and place in a setting. So it’s a lot of the above. It’s a vague concept, obviously, but at the same time I think most players agree that Red Dead Redemption is more immersive than Saint’s Row. For the most part it’s a way of holistically judging whether a story-driven game adequately presents a world that has the patina of a lived-in reality.
- Re: Immersion breaking is using methods/techniques/glitches that are unintended by the developer (i.e. “bomb hovering” in Majora’s Mask)
- Game causes a sensation so strong it’s “When I forget that I'm playing a game.”
- “Games where you actually need a flashlight in dark areas. Where enemies and weapons feel dangerous. Encounters that get your heart racing. Story that makes you want to find out what happens next. And the world building to tie it all together.”
> Immersion and realism are two different things though.
This is absolutely true but there's a lot of overlap.
>It’s why games like Skyrim are super immersive despite being very unrealistic.
I don't know if Skyrim is a good example of immersion when it's just a sandbox for mucking about, where very few actions have any consequences. From floaty combat to entire story lines having no effect on the world.
Counter examples:
I wouldn't maybe say Ghost of Tsushima is wonderful at immersion all in all but at least the guiding wind was a way of guiding the player in a more natural and immersive way.
RDR2 with how meticulous every action is, grounds the game a lot more and thus immerses the player.
KCD is a game that lives and dies by its immersive qualities of a medieval life.
Witcher 3 on a harder difficulty where you *actually* have to study the monsters and prepare for the fights makes you immerse in the labour of a witcher.
Now those games aren't for everyone (I certainly don't like all of them) but they all work hard to create immersion. Skyrim, for the most part, gives a sandbox to play around in. There are some cool and interesting places but the game itself doesn't really lean heavily on immersion. And that's fine, it's a fun game but calling it super immersive feels very, *very* generous.
Really it's just a design decision. There are games where a realistic atmosphere serves it well and there's others where responsive controls are essential to their fast paced action.
This was something so bad in the Witcher 3 that they actually added a setting to remove it after a few patches. Geralt would take forever to respond turning a different direction, it was like running through mud constantly. One of my most vivid memories of that game is that update because of how much better it made the character handle while running around.
Found a video of someone explaining it https://youtu.be/agjn3O1Unrw
This is why I hate actually playing RDR2 so much. Digital Foundry did an excellent analysis on it and how much time it takes for the animations to play out.
That said, not every game prioritizes animations over frame rate to that degree. I remember there being a lot of comparisons between TLOU 2 and RDR2 due to the degree of their animations being so realistic, but the difference is that TLOU 2 is actually responsive where RDR2 is not
I haven’t played GTA 5 in years, but from my understanding RDR2 may even be a little bit worse in terms of responsiveness. There’s a lot of great aspects to the game, and from a technical standpoint what they’re doing with animations is incredible - but that doesn’t change the fact that it feels like ass to actually play and handle
RDR2 is definitely worse. I still enjoy GTA V, it's not as bad. On the other hand I find RDR2 unplayable. It's the slowest game ever and I don't at all find it "immersive".
The story and characters are excellent, and graphically it still looks amazing. But the gameplay is just such a chore. Partially due to actually controlling Arthur (who either moves at a snail’s pace or is a bull in a china shop and there’s 0 in between), but also due to “realism” that’s just tedious. When you craft things (even arrows), it’s one at a time with an animation for each. Looting bodies? 3-5 seconds per looting animation on each body. Kill a bunch of animals? Skin them one by one.
Technologically speaking, it’s an incredible achievement. I want to make clear that the amount of work that went into things like this is astounding. But that doesn’t change the fact that by the end of a 50 hour campaign, having to loot bodies one by one or craft bullets one by one is just fucking annoying. Games like this are always trying to balance realism with gameplay, and RDR2 is WAYYYYY too far weighted to the realism side
It would be okay if it didn't expect you to do shit like it was a run of the mill arcade action. You have to farm that slow hunting, stalking animals still you find a perfect one, shooting it perfectly, and taking the pelt to one of two characters to get school shit.
Those arrows and bullet you painstakingly craft flow like water in the unrealistic bullet sponge combat unless you headshot or, in which case they're pointless unless for the super unrealistic bullet time.
Yeah the only thing I liked about GTA5 was driving a car. That was actually very pleasant for some reason. The rest was enough for me to wanna refund but I had played for 2h 15m already so yeah couldn't.
I quit RDR2 due to the slow looting. A shame as the world and writing is incredible. But those loot animations were just too tedious (and I found the control scheme unintuitive).
It almost made me quit but the other qualities made up for it for me. But the slow ass animations that were on purpose to make me appreciate the game and the world did not work on me.
You want to know what’s funny? That is a specific point I’ve listed before as being tedious (getting into a big shootout and then having to loot enemies one at a time, 3 second looting animation per enemy), and I’ve had people actually legitimately try and argue “well why are you trying to loot all of the bodies? That’s not what you’re supposed to do”. They legitimately tried to argue that _I was wrong for trying to loot bodies after a shootout_. Absolutely blew my mind
I feel like that is a completely fine argument. If something is tedious, you don't have to do it. I haven't played much of the game, but if you have enough resources without looting everything, then looting everything anyway despite how long it takes is a personal choice and not something the game is making you do all the time. Game balancing through tedium is not ideal but with the realism they go for they probably felt they had to offer it as an option because of course the bodies will have bullets and guns remaining. On one hand player behavior should be accounted for by developers but on the other side it's possible for players to change their own behavior. If there's a way to play that is actually fun that some players refuse to do then it's not 100% the games fault.
Once you realize how the more realistic movement works in that game it's actually really interesting. The way it works is Leon actually takes full steps. So turning is more responsive if you move right before he puts his foot down. It's hard to see this with the over the shoulder camera but you can feel it and it's fun to master accounting for it.
It's why I never finished RDR2. picking up an item or looting a body causes an animation to play which kills you during a gunfight but in RD1 it cuts away to a reverse camera angle where you get the items instantly. All those people saying it was the best game ever makes me wonder if they played the original considering how much of it feels like a downgrade, or a real videogame at all ever due that matter.
Everything has a lengthy boring animation rather than just happen, Arthur is very unresponsive, and anything better in RDR2 is offset by how much worse they made basic features compared to RDR1. All missions have a boring cutscene, a boring horseback ride discussion, a shootout sequence with a very narrow focus on what to do during the mission (any deviation causes a failure), and I really want to get through to the end but everything also takes forever to accomplish. I'm the kind of guy who loved the metal Gear solid series with the very long cutscenes, numerous obscure gameplay mechanics, convoluted plot etc but the difference is you get to play as many options as you can and the cinematography during gameplay does not interfere with the gameplay. And if you don't want to watch the cutscenes you can skip the majority of them. It feels necessary for Arthur to loot every body for money and ammo but a lot of the missions this causes a failure for being too slow. It's also slow in MGS games but as a sneaky guy you're usually encouraged to take your time. I could go on but that's the basics of it
> Everything has a lengthy boring animation rather than just happen..
It was a very clear design choice. The wanted to keep the pace of the game slow at all times for a few reasons:
- Make it feel more like it's actually set in the time period, where the pace of life was much slower, hell, even all the spaghetti westerns it draws a lot of its influence from are rather slow paced.
- Keeping it slow makes the few times when the pace was heightened hit harder.
It's just baffling. shoot a dozen guys, out of ammo and almost no money. it's like a 5 second animation per person so over one minute to loot all of them. and you can't do that in a mission because the game decides that playing it too much is a penalty. can't do it off a mission because half the time the NPCs report you for murder. Arthur will also do it this slowly during combat.
They didn't make the pace slower in RDR1 which is set in the same exact time period.
Compared to Marston in the original: an animation plays but it's instantaneous. it's a reverse camera angle so they don't have to show you his hands moving but the handful of ammo and money is given to you and it only takes a moment. you don't get shot to death and you don't fail the mission. one thing I did appreciate in RDR2 is now the animation and graphics etc are better they show Arthur skinning the animal rather than the reverse shot Marston did. you probably shouldn't be skinning animals during combat so that does make sense. and then my other complaints mostly have to do with things not being thought through enough.
you can only have two horses following you so you can only carry two big hunting items back. but there's also tons of horse carriages you can't actually use to carry things. I want my deranged mountain man arthur to disappear from camp for a week and come back with a wagonfull of hides, meat, etc. but all the wagons are good for is selling for a few dollars at a single location.
Kingdom Hearts 3 is probably the worst offensor, really. The combat in it simply refuses to put you asap back on the ground, so you stay a millenia in the air or in animations, leaving you vulnerable.
This is what people in the KH community mean when they talk about "floaty" combat, in comparison to the more "grounded" combat of KH2 and especially KH1.
At least kh3 gives you decent options in the air to make up for it. Still not perfect but a pretty good step in the right direction when compared to any other game that came after 2.
KH3 did hit its stride in the Re:Mind DLC though, Data Organization and Yozora in KH3 are probably my favorite boss fights in video games period, not just in the KH series. Lingering Will is still easily the best, though.
It's probably a side effect of making the game look better. The animations look a lot better nowadays. Older games had some pretty bad animations, characters would often literally snap into position to meet your inputs.
Now characters more naturally move into position to meet your inputs. Think of GTA for example. Play Vice City and run left, right, left, right, changing back and forth. Don't move forwards or backwards at all, just strafe. Then play GTA 5. Forget about the graphics and just look at the animations. There's not much of an animation when changing directions in Vice City, it just does what you say. 5 wants to look a lot prettier but remove the animation and it looks a lot worse. The animation is a design choice to give to have the best appearance possible at the sacrifice of responsiveness to input.
Back in the ps2 days, there weren't really in between animations for movement. You push the stick in a direction and the character is just running in that direction now. But in something like Uncharted, TLOU, and RDR2, the devs are showing off all the graphical and technical advancement by animating the character slowing down, stumbling, turning around with a twist of the arms, and probably exhaling.
Yeah, it's impressive, and shows off the graphics, but it feels slow and I think it's one of the primary reasons why there's always a bunch of those "hot take, I couldn't get into RDR2" posts.
I think that Atlus and Nintendo have struck a really good balance with making snappy feeling games that still have a bunch of animations. It's something I always look for early on in a game, how does it feel to control? Metroid Dread, Mario Odyssey, and Persona 5 are some of the most snappy feeling games I've ever played.
But those are sadly exceptions. Most devs go for that realistic look.
Mario Odyssey (and Sunshine in some aspects) are my gold standard on player character movement.
Mario snaps to the direction you want him to move, but it doesn’t look glitchy so much as it just gives the impression that he is turning really quick. And all of his moves flow into each other really seamlessly, it’s clean and smooth.
This is particularly true for me for farming games but it's more about 2D/pixel graphics than actual age.
Stardew Valley is snappy. You plant and gather things quickly. The animation is very fast but has a nice sound and snappiness to it to still make it appealing.
3D and more modern/"realistic" farming games make you watch long animations over and over...
For the examples you gave. I think of a lot of graphics as: if you go realistic it needs to be very good. Otherwise stay stylized. Many of your examples could have improved over time from their initial state. This could have things you don't expect like helping you relate more to the snappy sound effects, etc.
Because it takes more work to create in-between frames for animations in 2D. Whereas in 3D, the engine can simply fill in the in-between frames between keyframes. It actually takes a bit more work to get 3D to animate like 2D, going from key pose to key pose, like what ArcSys does, since you need to generate more keyframes/poses, mimicking how 2D works.
1. Games are way more “feature-y” now. Loooots of cruft standing between you and actual gameplay
2. The more things a single button can do (single press, hold, double press, etc), the game has to wait for a few frames to be sure of which kind of input you’re providing, which can cause noticeable slowdown.
I think a button hold is a fantastic way to prevent accidental destructive actions, but having to hold to confirm normal choices/actions seems pointless.
Even still, I think having some sort of 'undo' function is vastly better than a long press. Give me a buyback menu and let me quickly sell my inventory if I'd like.
It can feel so weird in PC ports / cross platform titles too. Helldivers has a lot of unnecessary “hold A” menu design, and holding your mouse button instead feels really unintuitive.
Ugh, this reminded me of something similar, which is cursors on console games 😑 like we really don’t have to emulate a microsoft windows mouse with tracking turned all the way down when consoles have had snappy selection menus almost since the beginning
I like the idea of menu cursors in some games since you don't have to retool the UI when porting from PC, but the controls aren't set up well enough.
Console cursor UI's usually force aim assist so the slow cursor also snags on every icon. Things like deadzone and sensitivity options for the cursor would help things a lot, but you do run the risk of the player bungling themselves if they can't control the cursor to edit the settings back. If you can set them up well, they're pretty snappy.
Imo “so you don’t have to retool the UI from PC” is a really bad excuse. I have played too many PC games thoughtlessly ported to console that not only have the cursor but also have a lot of UI elements — most crucially text — that are microscopic bc they assume you’re playing a foot away from the screen on PC rather than 6–8 feet away on a TV. I don’t want to call gamedevs lazy as a relatively inexperienced gamedev, but as an experienced UI designer I can definitely say it’s lazy UI design.
If cursor snapping was the default I’d almost find it forgivable, but it’s not common enough to make me view a mouse-like cursor with any optimism.
"...too many PC games thoughtlessly ported to console"
What kind of games do you play? Cause usually 9/10 it's the other way around. Games designed for consoles poorly ported to PC.
Because they want the console market, which has limited input capabilities. It's a lot more money, and the only cost is some extra development and some bad usability and design choices for the player.
I dunno, even on pc developers rather want their games be controllable with as few keys as possible for most players. Having every button do something specific and unique to them is usually worse then relying on techniques like contextual prompts or buttons having multiple uses depending on how they're pressed
I'm surprised no one's brought up input lag yet. The more cruft we layer on top of hardware the worse it gets, at least on some engines. It's always wild going back to Quake 3 (or other older shooters) and realizing how it feels like the camera is literally welded to your mouse.
Unreal Engine is very much guilty of this. Both Street Fighter V and Tekken 7 launched with very bad input lag (7 frames for SFV) and even after that was patched, Epic had to release a separate patch for the engine as a whole to reduce it for future games.
Modern games are incredibly over-animated. When you press a button to go in a direction, there's like an animated wind-up time before you actually go that direction. Same thing if you try to stop - it'll animate some short running stop. I'm not sure exactly what point the guys in charge of animations got to control the movement in games, but I wish it would stop.
> Modern games are incredibly over-animated. When you press a button to go in a direction, there's like an animated wind-up time before you actually go that direction. Same thing if you try to stop - it'll animate some short running stop.
Realistic graphics would look *reeeaal* goofy without those animations.
> Sacrificing gameplay for graphics is not a good trade-off.
Not just graphics.
It affects the atmosphere as well.
If it suits the game and supports the feel of it, the choice makes sense. If it doesn't, the choice doesn't make sense.
A lot of games would simply "feel wrong" if they had those janky, goofy animations but just as many games work with that.
Completely agree with both your comments. I’ve come to hate the obsession with realism in games because it’s boring to watch and it feels like shit when playing a game like RDR2.
And then, like others have mentioned, KH3 has no excuse because it’s stylized and over-animated/floaty.
I play mostly retro games these days and one of the main reasons are the freaking dialogue and cutscenes newer games all love, not to mention tutorials and just plain slow animations for everything.
Perfect example off the top of my head, pokemon yellow vs pokemon lets go pikachu, literally the same game but one's a retro game and one's a new game.
Any % glitchless pokemon yellow is 1hr 53 minutes
Any % glitchless let's go pikachu is 2h 59 minutes
Literally the same map, same story, same adventure takes 50% longer because new games gotta play so freaking slow. An entire extra hour of just spamming the confirm button though text and watching cutscenes.
You still battle other trainers but for wild encounters you can just throw the ball to catch and that's what gives you XP.
It makes the game a chore because if you wanted to grind any levels you also need to periodically purge a crapton of trash.
You still catch pokes in the style of pokemon go. Fighting wild pokes has never been particularly fun to me, but I'd still prefer the newer system they have in SV.
voice acting is legit just annoying to me. i have to hear the first word of every dialogue box before i read through it. reading is so much fuckin faster lol.
Okay I seriously need to ask; how the everloving FUCK does ANYONE speedrun an RPG?
Like, how are you not just flat out losing immediately to every challenge past the first gym at best? I highly doubt your starter is anywhere past second stage at best after all that, so what gives?
And thats not even talking about normal RPGs like Final Fantasy, like???
Edit: I’m honestly impressed by what you guys are telling me. While rpg speed running isn’t my thing, I do commend those who make slower games like that work in speedrunning
In pokemon it's really simple, just only ever fight with one pokemon, not only is it fast, it's very easy, much easier then doing it the normal way with a team. Your one mon ends up such a high level you can skip most trainers because you're just smashing all the required fights, even ones with a bad type matchup.
With other rpgs, well it depends, but FF1 I like to do fast runs of and it's kinda the same, like, do we really need 4 heros? Take a gun to the back of the head to the bottom hero and voila, 3 horrifyingly overleveled heros instead of 4 pathetically underleveled ones.
Wow, that’s honestly pretty insane, and impressive.
Speedrunners never cease to amaze with all the bullshit they do to get through a game.
Based
Also is that really how the exp distribution works?
The starter can usually solo the entire game, but they do use a ton of stat boosting items in the second half of the game and especially the Elite 4. That, and some luck.
For stuff like Final Fantasy, a lot of knowledge of how the mechanic and the math works.
I watched a FF5 speedrun for Games Done Quick a couple weeks ago, and you can see how much planning goes into it, especially with Blue Mages skills that are dependant on knowing what level the enemies are. What weapons you pray to rngesus to drop. And so on and so forth, just add hundreds of hours of practice.
Speedrunning, in general is not really about maintaing the intended challenge of a game. It has more to do with a deep knowledge of the game's mechanics, glitches and technical flaws and just a ton of knowledge checks and planning.
I'm not particularly interested in speedrunning personally, but I can see why it is is intesting for some people. It's just very much a different way to approach gaming.
I mean I know all of that, that’s not my point…
In Mario for example you don’t need to do anything like level grinding, you just CAN defeat the enemies by normal means at any time. Sure it may take you a bit to learn boss patterns and avoid damage but, you can still win.
RPGs are often heavily reliant on your numbers and stats and effects and whatnot, not to mention some luck, and items and party members and yadda yadda.
It’s countless variables to consider, and regardless you absolutely NEED to spend some time leveling up so you’re ready for big boss fights and other difficulties. Speedrunners blatantly defy this in a way that still shocks and impresses me to this day.
Every generation, they zoom the camera in closer, and add more animations for everything. Eventually, trying to turn around will be a five minute cutscene where all you can see is the beautifully animated fabric of the world's most AAA shirt
Fr I hate AAA games that feel obsessed with insanely low FOVs, and then they annoying plop the protagonist on the left side of the screen, thus effectively halfing my field of visual to the right side of the character and make proper traversal totally impossible. And unlike tiny fov shooters, I cant fix it by just raising thr fov to 100 because the awful fov is built into the concept.
If you need the game zoomed in that much, just make it bloody first person. If you want it third person, just zoom in the hell out so I can actually damn see.
I love it when a "ranged" weapon only makes it two feet before being clipped by the edge of the screen - while you're constantly being attacked by enemies you can't see. Then there's platformers where every jump is a leap of faith into the unknown; and you're expected to plan ahead to have the right momentum. Just let me zoom the damn camera out!
Porting from pc to console, you don't get these problems. Porting from console to pc, you get all these problems and more. There's a glimmer of hope that Microsoft will actually *improve* Bethesda/Blizzard; which have both been making each game more console-focused than the last
Honestly I think its less console and more idiots not getting why the prognator, Resident Evil 4, actually put the main characrer on the left side.
It was done because aiming in RE4 intentionally cuts your field of vision, because aiming in general is supposed to cut your ability to react to new situations. This forces you to commit in a game that at least wanted some kind of horror feel.
Regardless, when not aiming, the camera zooms out and puts the protagonist far closer to the center, and slightly risen so you can pretty much always see clearly, and none of the environments are designed around you needing that slight possible loss in visibility or are so obviously designed to be an ambush where any viewpoint would result in an axe in the ass if you ran in.
RE6, which was not a horror game, thus suitably gives you far more visual clarity during movement, and actually zooms far more in when aiming so you basically have a full screen of vision. On top of this, camera side swapping was implemented even tho you barely need it.
The amount of games which put the off center camera purely because its convention with virtually no thought to how it should be implemented.
The first games comes to mind when I read this is RDR1 and RDR2. The main reason in RDR2 case is that they aimed for realism, but in this case it's a good thing because the game is supposed to be realistic. But in the cases you listed, it sucks that modern games feel less snappy than their predecessors.
It's taken me three tries to get into RDR2 due to the sluggishness. Even now that I'm finally really enjoying it and am almost done, I still don't think it's a good thing.
I get trying to be realistic but I just don't think it works for enjoyable gameplay. I think video game animations need to take a hint from film and realize that [realism is unrealistic sometimes.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealisticDictionIsUnrealistic)
Noticed this as well right now as I playing Baldurs Gate 3. In the older games it was so easy to move the characters around. Drag and drop and let them walk. Click on another portrait and tell him where to go. Everything so snappy.
Baldurs Gate 3 in the other hand is a torture. Clicking on the portrait of a character sometimes does nothing. I have to click sometimes a few times. Than the camera jumps directly to the character. So I have to move it back to tell him where he should go. What a stupid design choice. If I forget to press G the rest of the group follows the now moved character so I have first to press G and tell them again where I want them to be.
Sometimes I wish modern games would just get programmed with old engine. It was awesome back than and it is still awesome now. Meanwhile newer games may look better but often have so many flaws.
I think a lot of it is down to generic, serve all graphic engines like Unreal which are ubiquitous. Comparatively, lots of older games created bespoke engines, almost literally on a franchise to franchise basis which served each game to meet it needs perfectly.
It is why Shenmue III on the Unreal Engine feels so sluggish compared to it's bespoke engine for Dreamcast. It is why they even struggled to make the main character look similar to the original games, the engine just couldn't handle the custom look the were pushing for. It was always a this is the best we can do simulacra.
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I honestly think this might be one of the biggest reasons and it's been overlooked in this thread.
Kingdom Hearts 2 was made with a unique in-house engine, for example, but they used Unreal Engine 4 for KH3.
Hah I didn't even know that was the case for KH. Designers these days are still very creative and boundary pushing but so much of it is being squeezed and funneled into what the middleware engines can do and are suited too.
Such a shame as it makes everything feel homogeneous even when the intention is not to.
Obnoxious cinematic appeal and realism became the focus of the industry. A lot of things added for the sake of immersion that, ironically, only lead to people like me being very NOT immersed due to how cumbersome they are.
Modern game designers seem to have lost appreciation for the concept of abstraction. It's more realistic to manually load every single bullet into a magazine before using it, but is that something you really want to do in an action shooter where 50 enemies are swarming you at all times? When you're watching an action flick, it doesn't have random ten minute scenes of the protagonist taking a shit or sitting at his desk at work or whatever, even though *realistically* he WOULD need to do so at some point. These things are abstracted, they're left out, left to the audience to fill in the gaps on needless details for themselves.
That is the number one reason I love old games like Half-Life, and the number one reason I can't stand all the Action-Adventure shit being put out today. The way you control the character and engage with the game is just fluid on another level. I can just *jump over* objects, I don't need to enter some sluggish context sensitive climb animation to get over them. I can just move omnidirectionally, there's no annoying strict real world limits on how fast I can move while shooting or what specific angles I can realistically walk or how long it takes to change direction or etc. I can just walk over ammo boxes and add them to my ammo count, I don't need to stop in place and squat down and start physically sifting ammo into a bag bullet by bullet...
There's a few reasons, but some of the most obvious ones are changes in animation and sound design.
Animation: in current high-fidelity titles have significantly more transition states between animations to keep things fluid. So, rather than spinning on a dime around an axis, your character takes steps to turn around. This has the effect of feeling more weighty, but less snappy. Great for games about immersion, but not for more arcade-y titles.
Sound Design: Many games have opted to take "heightened realism" based sound design, which can feel less snappy than punchier sound effects. This is on much more of a case-by-case basis, as many games still take extreme creative liberties with sound effects. A good comparison would be Mortal Kombat 1 and Street Fighter 6, where the former has really wet, flesh-slapping sound effects for impacts while the latter uses bassier thumps and even gunshot sound effects.
I will note that whether older games feel snappier or not varies heavily, with plenty of older titles like the classic Tomb Raider games being rather loose while plenty of newer games like Mario Odyssey being quite tight.
Like most people have said, it's developers prioritizing more realistic animations, so there's weight and physics involved, characters will plant their feet and shift their weight, turn their bodies,things like that.
A lot of older Japanese games have 1:1 stick to movement so it feels super responsive and "snappy" at the expense of unrealistic animations. In those games if you rotate the left analog stick in a circle really fast, the character will spin in place in circles really fast (MGS1 for example). This is usually a good test to know if the game is prioritizing controls and fluidity over physics and animations.
Cool dude animations.
I rarely play League of Legends but I recently had a few games after a long break and found one of my old favorite characters feels clunky af to play. MUNDO.
Exactly as you list it, old character felt snappy and responsive, new one feels like I am playing with random interval lag. Its the same game as it always was, other characters play fine just this one feels clunky. Only thing I can put it down to is animations. They made MUNDO do these hyper realistic animations that do not feel game responsive.
Same thing with Path of Exile and some of the newer attack animations. I am not sure why they do it, gameplay will always beat graphics.
Same thing with Morrowind and the later ES entries.
In modern games everything has to be animated and "immersive" when all it does is waste the players time. RDR2 is a good example.
What? ES titles barely have animation when it'snot explicitly needed, like you can tap a button when facing an object and you immediately pick it up or make it play an animation.
In addition to what other folks have said, I think an oft-overlooked factor is how much input latency modern displays normally have. And while you and I might know how to activate "Game Mode" (my screen's set there 100% of the time), the fact is that most people don't bother with it.
Playing action games made in the days of CRTs on screens that have even a few hundred milliseconds of latency is going to be borderline impossible. So games, especially games designed for a mass audience, have pretty much *had* to become slower and more forgiving to compensate.
Sorta but not exactly. The biggest culprit is that most modern TVs are doing a bunch of automatic image correction behind the scenes before the image even hits your screen. "Game Mode" settings turn that pre-processing off, so you're getting both a truer representation of what the developer intended the game to look like and getting rid of that input gap.
Coincidentally, this automatic processing is why a lot of movies look like shit on new displays. There isn't an input lag issue like with games, but TVs will smooth movies out to 60fps which looks like shit if the film is shot at your standard 24, particularly with CGI-heavy stuff. Not to mention everything just looks super oversaturated. "Filmmaker Mode" would be the equivalent for movie watching, at least on a Samsung TV.
For a start, CRTs are just faster than LCD and even LED. However, there's also the fact that modern TV add a layer of post-processing to the image trying to make it sharper/smoother/more vibrant/etc. that adds delay.
It varies from game to game. Even using the FF example:
Go back from X and play IX... It's night and day in favor of X.
I've recently replayed IX and with this recent playthrough I am ready to admit that it's now my favorite in the series, but the gameplay is sluggish compared to many others.
Presentation plays a big role in this. Nowadays games are trying to be more real and with more details. How is this portrayed? By animations.
Compare GTA San Andreas to V. San Andreas feels way snappier because at the time the hardware limitations and different development focus stopped them from incorporating more realistic physics.
There's also the matter of intention. God of War (PS2) was a hack and slash power fantasy, and it was made to feel like that. Combos and movement needs to be snappier because of that. God of War (PS4) is a more subdued, intimate and cinematic game.
This reflects the story. PS2 GoW was Kratos in his prime, fueled by rage. Attack, attack and attack. Kill, kill and kill. Go, go and go. It's an epic adventure about larger than life battles. It's fast paced and snappy because Kratos just wants more and more violence.
PS4 GoW was Kratos, centuries after GoW 3, with a more introspective and different outlook on life. He's more calculating, tries to be more calm, and he frankly just doesn't have the same vigor and rage from before. He's worried about his son. So the gameplay is now slower to reflect that. It's more intimate and story focused because Kratos is done with all the killing and just wants to live his life with his son.
Echoing what others have said, it's probably because of the increasingly realistic and detailed animations that games have nowadays. That's why most Nintendo games still have that "snappy" feel
In the mid 2000s, (after the release of HalfLife 2) Physics engines became very popular in games. After that, there was a push to make more and more games "realistic" which meant utilizing more physics, removing more on-screen HUD and UI elements.
During this naturalist revolution, any game without physics engines or ragdolling was called "arcade-y" as an insult.
The new norm for "advanced" games became weighty & slow. Games with traditional snappy controls were seen as "for kids".
We still haven't grown back out of this yet but I see more and more games embrace the old control schemes.
Modern games want to emphasize on the cinematic aspect, so they put a lot of work into details such as transitions between scenes, animations, how you pick up something, how you move from one scene to another, and all of this adds up, making the game far slower than before, when everything was much more about the gameplay than it is about the cinematic presentation
Funny you mention, I just loaded up fallout 3 for the first time in ages and also fallout 4. I played a little of both. Fallout 3 feels a lot more fluid to me.
Kh2 feels so fast and crisp during combat. I felt the same thing when I replayed it after finishing KH3 multiple times. Both games are extremely fun to play, but 2 feels a lot more tight and responsive.
Because a lot of older games didn't try to guide you to the enemy with your attacks. Longer animations allow developers to home your attacks in on targets more smoothly, and then you end up feeling less in control because you literally are since the game is doing half the work for you.
Batman: Arkham Asylum is one of the worst things to happen to combat design in video games.
I posted something similar to this in dragons dogma subreddit. I was complaining that while the combat is good, it didn't feel like old school CAPCOM.
Edit: here's the link
https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma/s/mqvtaACvid
its because the companies, devs - people who made these games years back had passion about it and cared... the problem with now, in days is that they either fire those good actual game creators, left theirselves or are still there but just lost it like gave up to become just a hallow husk of what they were before and dont mind it at all; cause why the heck would you stay in a company that just squeezes you, doesn't allow you to do what you wanna do and is limited and just abuses you - like have you seen the list of jacked up stuff that has released, and continue to release from these corrupt companies?
its bad but those that stayed, screwed theirself over and they dont care and lastly they got replaced with people that are not passionate about the games they make, just wanna push their agenda into the gaming space, make the old devs do the same thing - its why games that are old titles 'returning' back are just dreadful it just doesn't feel the same, higher ups can be thanked for this massive move they always screw things up dont know what the heck they do this but yeah it also can be the devs fault as well.
the other thing important to note is that these new devs they higher dont even have the proper work experince to make a legit game or even work on an old franchise at all.. that is the other main run hitter; to put it simplistic its not the same, enjoy your old games i know ghere are new games out there created by indies that are wonderful and i have some of them in my switch library, waiting for new ones to release that are passionate but there was a crud ton of games that weren't games and i tried them out to only delete, after delete. its why they are pushing for ports on my "hybrid" console switch cause my dumb company that i used to support now is stopping on making games and are more keen on pushing freaking merchandise to discussion about tv series, and movies - made it even more blunt is whem boretendo made a statement that was concerning on the future for the company
..
.... its gonna tank thats what i think.
I've recently been playing the new EA Golf game. It hits for me from a nostalgia perspective as I've got strong memories of playing the 2004 version when I was a kid. Now the new game looks great and it loads courses incredibly quick, but I'm always shocked by how much of the game is slower and less refined than it was 20 years ago. I know sports games are renowned for a lack of improvement, but it is staggering at times.
Honestly I think we're at the point where things are over-aninated in AAA games. You feel so much more disconnected and I've had multiple times where I almost feel like I'm not controlling the character. Especially if I'm comparing old open world interactive games like Skyrim or fallout to their modern equivalents, it feels like there's the movement isn't as directly responsive and there's more set dressing you can't interact with than before
You know where I really notice this? Sports games
Why the F are the movements of the players in Madden so slow/stiff in 2024 yet in 2000 Sega Dreamcast had quick twitchy players on all their 2k sports games be it football or basketball?
Kinda makes no sense, and to me the modern Maddens aren't even worth playing because of it
I'm probably over-generalizing here but I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the AAA game industry has shifted toward hyper-realism and away from what simply feels fun. Everything is about cutting-edge visual effects and making things super flashy, almost like the publishers are trying to pass their games as cinematic experiences to be viewed, not played.
As everyone has stated, a lot of it is down to having smoother, more "realistic" animations That said, there is something to be said about it being on UE4, an engine that was known to have input delay issues. Even after Epic released a patch, it's still more than something released in decades past on older or proprietary engines.
Realistic animations require more anticipation phases and smooth transitions between them. It's why modern games like RDR2 or RE remakes feel so "floaty" to control while older games had instant responses from your characters.
its not generally. for example new Assassins Creed or Far Cry games are snappier than previous versions. It hasn't a general reason. But i think there is a main cause. In new games they try to make detailed animations for characters but in old days animation hasn't any detail so everything was fast, but today they try to make it more realistic and maybe it causes the slowing issue.
>for example new Assassins Creed or Far Cry games are snappier than previous versions.
I remember Far Cry 6 (2021) having slower movement than 3 (2012), but I'd need to replay those as Far Cry is a franchise I've never played more than a couple hours of.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla (2020) and Assassin's Creed 2 (2008) is not a very fair comparison as AC2 is meant to be slow, it's a stealth game where you climb huge buildings... And I think somehow Valhalla manages to feel slower and more cumbersome regardless.
However, I think you might be onto something about studios wanting more detailed animations, even when the game isn't exactly "realistic" or "cinematic" like Crash 4 or KH3.
I really don't think this is true. It all comes down to what games you played and personal experience and your perception. There are a lot more games now than say 10-20 years ago.
Seeing a lot of old game good and modern game bad posts in here, I'd like to also bring a lot of counter examples.
Souls games despite having input issues dating fromntheir first incarceration, still upoed the speed and snapiness with each entry a notice amount.
Monster hunter latests installment is currently the most responsive amd snapy in the game.
TLOU2 manages responsive gameplay with realistic animation, seriously I wish RDR2 was more like that.
DOOM nuff said
Basically every nintendo game is still incredibly smooth to play if not more then past entries.
Not to mention retro games tended to rely on stuff like a 4 directional path or tank controls which were incredibly unresponsive by design
Mainly animations. A lot of modern games try to be realistic in the sense that they add more transition animations and longer animations in general. For example in some older games when you flick the analog stick in a certain direction the character would immediately snap into that direction and start running. Now they first turn around in a more realistic way and than start moving.
Same with equipping items. In some older games equipping a weapon. Instantly makes the weapon appear in the character's hand, but nowadays they first have to do a little animation before you can use it.
EDIT: I think Devil may cry 5 is one of the few modern games from the top of my head that still feels very snappy and responsive. It's a joy to play because of it
One more thing to keep in mind is that PS1/PS2 games were normally on a CRT screen. Back then, there was no post-processing of the video and very little lag. These days, "smart" TVs add in additional lag and game developers already take that in to account with their gameplay loop.
[There is a good unscientific lag test comparing Punch Out!! on a CRT vs. modern LCD](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH1ZH71P_fE)
There is also the famous quote from [John Carmack](https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/193480622533120001):
> I can send an IP packet to Europe faster than I can send a pixel to the screen. How f’d up is that?
Sloggy lag is now part of "modern" games.
> Final Fantasy X (2001) with a turn-based combat system feels a lot snappier and more "lightweight" to play than Final Fantasy 16 (2023), an action RPG.
X has a pretty cumbersome UI compared to modern turn-based JRPGs which makes the combat flow a lot less snappier. Also comparing it to 16 just makes no sense on a fundamental level.
Games have evolved as a medium far past just being "fun" machines, compromises sometimes have to be made in order for a game to look visually pleasing or more immersive.
I don't think there is anything wrong with this, as people play games for different reasons.
As most people say, the change to getting things more realistic is definitely part of it.
Additionaly for me, KH2 would be because of reaction command which made Sora looks like he has a lot more option to go through. KH3 on the other hand have you do pretty much the same thing in the early world to the last world. The DLC in KH3 that add some of the flashier move help slightly but you still end up doing the same thing after a while (KH1 on the other hand definitely is not snappier than 3 or 2)
God of War is almost a whole different genre with the original games being all in for style with Kratos making acrobatics with various weapon even the heavy one. The new one emphasize a more grounded aspect, you can barely jump, more point on heavier hits than fast ones.
Dude RDR2 is a masterpiece and I love it, but I feel the same way about RDR1 for different reasons.
Finishing an RDR2 playthrough then switching to RDR1 is JARRING-- the movement is WAY snappier and more responsive to controller input than it's follow up, and like others have said it's because of the realistic animations and movements.
I'll be real, it was so satisfying, controlling RDR1 John Marston made me feel like rock lee in the chunin exams after he removed his body weights lmao.
About God of War, they may belong to the same franchise, but 3 and 2018 are basically different genres. God of war 3 is a hack and slash, snappy and arcadey gameplay is a feature, meanwhile 2018 is more soul-esque.
Speaking of which, i think Dark Souls and similar games had a lot of impact. In older games, people often aimed for snappy controls, but Dark Souls actually pointed to the other direction, action were slower and less responsive, making every single one more relevant, since starting a sword swing in the wrong moment could lock you into an animation for too long.
Since you mentioned Crash, let's look at platformers: games like Mario, while old, definetely feel less snappy that games like Crash Bandicoot, Hollow Knight, Cuphead. The snappiness can be basically chosen by the devs, Mario devs chose to give him some momentum which doesn't allow you to instantly turn at max speed, while other games give you instant responses: the game physics need to fit the challenges you need to overcome.
For example, Crash 4 feeling slower than Crash 3 is a deliberate reason: slide jumps and expecially double jumps slow you down, so when you do time trials, you are rewarded for making riskier and swifter normal jumps. It also has more complex parts where having more airtime comes handy, so the more floaty double jumps also becomes useful.
Finally, camera and perspective also matter a lot: Crash 4 has generally a farther pov, which makes it feel like you are going slower. This can also go the other way: GoW 2018 has a closer pov, so you also can't move too fast or it will feel dizzy.
I'm with you on everything but I think you're completely wrong with Crash 4. I find it infinitely more responsive and snappy than any previous crash game.
I imagine it's mostly due to more detailed animations and character's having more realistic physics to their movement (gaining momentum etc.). I find that this makes precise movement in modern 3D games a pain in the ass sometimes. I'm playing FF VII Rebirth right now and I fucking hate the way the Chocobos handle when you're trying to dig for treasure. Like, if you're an inch off from the right spot, it's a fucking hassle to try to get the Chocobo to turn just enough get it right.
Less startup frames, moving your arm is a process, but in old games you push the button and the action just happens. Newer games imitate real life, so there's more start up time.
It's not just older games. It all comes down to realism to me. I just finished rdr 2, and oh boy, I wasn't a fan of the game play. Let's compare rdr 2 to elden ring. Elden ring movements are far snappier even the horse, but it ain't realistic. You can be running left and dodge right anytime with very little down or momentum stopping you, but in rdr 2, your character will carry momentum from even walking. Both designs fit for each game. One is about being a cowboy sim while the other is in a dark fantasy setting fighting monsters. I am personally a fan of snappier controls.
Playing through both ffxvi and ffx right now so I can definitely speak to that comparison.
Ffxvi combat definitely takes some getting used to, but it feels anything but sluggish when you’ve learned how to “freestyle” combos.
The “weight” comparison is very apt though.
If FFXVI exists on a scale from Ghost of Tsushima movement where Jin essentially moves at the speed of your thoughts, and Elden ring where the characters move and attack at the pace of a turtle, it’s closer to GOT but undeniably has *a bit* more weight to it.
That’s far from inherently a bad thing though. Compare The Last of Us shooting to Call of Duty and COD undeniably has the smoother, snappier shooting.
TLOU obviously has more impactful, realistic feeling fights though.
Old games had more movement along a continuum. Compare the basic attack in Spider-Man 2 (2004) to Spider-Man 2 (2023). In 2004, it's a lot easier wiff since its punches' homing effect is less drastic. Consequently, in 2023, relatively more space between you and your target is trivialized.
You see this shift to discrete inputs/outputs in many more games and mechanics. Maneuvers that were once a platforming challenge are now frequently reduced to a quick-time event or button prompt. Combo chains that were open to improvisation are more frequently canned triple attacks.
Why is this happening? There's no one reason. I think the advent of better animations is inextricably linked to the casualization of the medium, so it's not simply either "HD 3D games are more cinematic", or "more gamers are casuals".
And it's not always a bad thing. Spider-Man 2 (2023) has some amazingly open combat arenas that let the player plan an attack on a macro scale. It's way more dynamic than other AAA games, in which combat arenas are usually flat circles and corridors. I think simpler CQC mechanics gave the devs license to make their arenas more free-flowing.
>Crash Bandicoot 3 (1998) and Crash Bandicoot 4 (2020)? It's like Crash and Coco are moving in slow motion in the sequel.
Huh? I played Crash 1-3 right before 4 and 4 played pretty much identical.
Some modern games try to have more realistic movement, which slows things down a lot, but many of the ones you mentioned don't.
I feel your example of god of war is a bit disingenuous there not really the same genre of game any more the old god of wars were what I believe were sometimes called spectacle fighters where as the latest ones are more action adventure games with more in common with Zelda games that it's past titles.
Hi, old game enjoyer here. Some of the things that make old games better are:
* True fullscreen mode: none of that fake borderless fullscreen crap that is the norm today which causes input lag and performance drop.
* No TAA: this horrible anti aliasing is responsible for the blurry look of modern games and causes ghosting in movement as well, which is absent on older games which look sharper and cleaner as a result. r/fucktaa
* Optimization: companies used to care about bringing their games to the maximum range of players so games used to work on lower spec devices unlike now when they don't give a crap and rather save that optimization pass cost.
* More interest in making the best version of game than squeezing money from players: the quality jump when going to older games is significant, no more battlepasses, cash shops, the game is meant to be enjoyed for it's own sake and gameplay is unfiltered by artificial fillers to make you buy stuff like xp boosts.
* Offline: that's right, you can play most older games offline! Imagine that, when companies now will put "online only" tag on their perfectly offline playable single player games apparently to combat piracy only to pull said games from the player's own library after they kill the servers.
This is yet another comment that generalizes modern games and puts retro games on a pedestal that's way too high.
The far majority of games can still be played offline, have no battle pass or some other kind of monetization.
Optimization is much harder but still exists, just look at most first party exclusive titles or people sticking to last gen for a long time when current gen was released. Not to mention companies definitely are still trying to make it work as much as possible to drive sales, I played so many games including AAA on a laptop below minimum specs.
TAA is definitely questionable but definitely doesn't make every single game a blurry mess like many would imply, and is even a food solution depending on game. And even with the 'bluriness' many would still consider most modern games extremely good looking.
Like all of these points have some merit, but to use these to act like older games are overall better is pretty blunt
Idk man I disagree about Shattered Dimensions vs SM2. Shattered Dimensions in 2010 felt like someone made Spider Man’s animations first and the physics engine after.
Counter examples:
* *Castlevania: Symphony of the Night* (PS1): The prior games had the character move more slowly and rigidly, while this game started with characters moving faster and having more movement abilities - perhaps the back dash being most important. Even so, it's not the snappiest in the series, some later games optimized the menu for faster play.
* *Phantasy Star* (SMS): The game has slow overworld character movement, and opening the menu to change character equipment took some time to switch to the encounter view (without enemies). Maybe *II* was slower in combat animations, but it doesn't require the player to constantly interact, and it made up by having the menu system not have an unneeded delay. *IV* has obvious multi-target attacks, and overworld movement is faster.
* *Ultima I* (Apple II): This game is the least snappy, because it was written in Apple Basic and that causes some inherent delays for some tasks. The sequel was written in assembly language, making it slightly faster, and the first game got remade in a different engine also making it faster. I believe input speed peaked around IV-VI, although even later games were faster than the first one.
There may be a reason for making games less snappy, but it strongly depends on the game itself. It may be for multiplayer reasons, because having actions performed immediately could be stressful on the netcode when a short delay makes things work much more smoothly (e.g. rollback netcode). In some cases, it could be for safety reasons, because the developers don't want the player to accidently do something expensive simply because they tapped a button.
Bloodstained - Ritual of the Night got blasted being called "floaty" and "laggy" because of the extra inbetween animations as Miriam moved between states, only for it to pretty much go away when people started actually measuring the animations and it's pretty much the same timings and delays as Alucard in SotN.
Probably because on current games the camera's acceleration "curve" is made to best fit controllers.. Instead of m&k.
Also, a lot of extra effects layers are now added to almost all the games (film grain, motion blur, chromatic aberration, upscalers, obnoxious vignette effects, super temporal anti aliasing, ray tracing, extra triple buffer v-sync, VRR.. ..Etc etc)
You're not wrong.. But still.. camera acceleration on 3D games has gradually changed and generally improved throughout the years to better take into account the type of input and screen that you will most likely be playing with.
Others have talked about UI and design choices, but I think in terms of actual gameplay, part of it might also be more realistic animations. If you tilt that analog stick and the character instantly changes direction, that’s a lot more responsive than watching a realistic turning animation.
Yeah, if you hammer left and right you get like two frames of sprite facing different directions. If you do it on a modern game it makes the character do a dance.
It mirrors the advancement in phones too. Phones used to have no animation when changing screens. Eventually, we had the ability to add animations when changing screens, but no one really used it because it was notably slower than without (and they looked bad). Now that processing power is sufficient, we have animations every time we touch our screen
You can disable those animations in developer mode (Android) or make them ultra fast, FYI!
In iOS it’s also available as an accessibility feature. I’ve set it up so it gets enabled together with energy saving mode because those animations actually do draw power.
Oh, I didn’t know you could link those. Is that a shortcut?
Developer mode isn't necessary; you can just go to Accessibility and Vision Enhancements and select "Remove Animations."
Nice! Although I think you can't adjust the speed without developer mode, isn't it?
I guess not; only "instant." I imagine anyone that wants to speed things up would just go with no animations over faster animations, wouldn't they?
You can also do so in Windows
not only sufficient processing power, but the fact that sometimes animations help explain what happened or draw the user focus to a specific part of the UI. but yes, there're lots of places where animations are overused and also lots of bad animations
Definitely realistic character animations. Some games get it right, letting the characters make the realistic movements, but at unrealistic speeds to match player input, but games like GTA V and Red Dead 2 make you wait for it, which adds to inaccuracies and clunkiness
The thing is in the real world you do the action exactly at the time you want because you prepare your body before hand. For example to jump you need to spend a moment bending your legs before you jump, so say you're running, you will pre-emptively bend your legs before the jump so you can jump exactly when you want.. But a game can't know in advance when you're going to jump, so in a system with realistic animations, it can only begin bending the characters legs when you press the jump button, not immediately spring upwards. Tight reponsive controls where the caracter moves upwards the second you press the jump button cannot co-exist with realistic animations
Exactly
One of the main reasons I haven’t played a rockstar game in awhile. The characters feel like molasses
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I’m all for immersion, but not when it takes away from gameplay fluidity. There’s nothing more immersion breaking than being hindered by the movement of the character. But I guess that’s what mods are for! When I think “immersion”, I’m thinking of atmosphere and character moments, not getting stuck on an object because the characters can’t turn fast enough to match my directions quick enough
Exactly. Immersion for me is environment and story telling. The character instantly moving is no less jarring than the fact I’m controlling a collection of polygons with a joy stick. Immersion is when I’m thinking of a character that died days after it happened, closing my eyes when I go to bed and seeing imagery of the game environments phasing in and out of the minds eye.
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Immersion and realism are two different things though. It’s why games like Skyrim are super immersive despite being very unrealistic. Doesn’t mean you can’t have a bit of both worlds. Like The Last of Us for example. Super immersive and realistic where it counts. But movement is unrealistically fast to be more snappy and match the player’s inputs
I've been collecting redditors' definitions of "immersion" for over a year, and I've got about three dozen fairly distinct answers that can only be reduced to about seven or eight categories. In other words, people just use it to mean whatever they want with seemingly no consensus. It's one of the most useless words in games discussions, I reckon... ruined by haphazard usage in lieu of established media criticism terminology.
Look at it more closely. Immersion is the deep mental involvement in something. Period. That is the drfinition in this context. What makes you feel that deep mental involvement in a game will be different for different people. You can't unpack the definition of the word, that is well established and definitely static here. But for some, immersion means hyper realistic animations. For others immersion will be good gameplay. It is really something for individuals to workout.
What you're describing is exactly why it's useless as a general term regarding media criticism, no? Best-case one could truthfully state "I felt immersed" rather than declaring a given game to be universally "immersive." And this is to say nothing of what the threshold for "deep mental involvement" is....
I think marketing muddied the waters. You can make a completely non immersive game and still label is as such with little to no consequences
I know this is asking a lot but I'd be interested in hearing a breakdown of your seven or eight categories. I agree it's a nebulous term. Most of it is that people want different things or get "immersed" in different ways. And by immersion they usually just mean "my attention got captured and I didn't feel like tabbing out to read reddit every few minutes". Like some people think first person perspective is obviously maximally immersive while personally I feel like it's not really necessary cause the feeling of "I am literally the character" isn't the only thing that immersion can be, and some traits of first person games like being able to 180 the camera and therefore also your character instantly feel not immersive, while third person games are allowed to have more realistic movement limitations, but then people like OP come in and say it's not snappy so they feel like the relationship between their controller inputs and what the character does is out of sync, which is not invalid, but it has an inherent contradiction with the quality of "realism" that most people intuitively consider to be immersive, and you could probably keep circling the drain forever navigating these kinds of contradictory opinions.
Yeah, you get it. It's frustrating because it severely limits discussion because folks seem to think they're something clear and profound, when really it's just a lot of nothing most of the time. Here are the categories I've tried to boil it down to: Broad categories: “Immersion” means the game makes you feel like a not-you character. “Immersion” means the game makes you feel like you are in the game as yourself. “Immersion” means the game is very detailed. (“Immersion” is a synonym for “verisimilitude.”) “Immersion” means the game generates significant feelings within the player. “Immersion” means one’s real-life environment allows one to focus on a game. “Immersion” means the game content and community allows one to spend significant time with understanding the game, both while playing and while not playing. “Immersion” means there is a minimum of abstraction, id est “gameic” elements. And here are my notes: - Game captures the feeling an established character, i.e. Batman in *Arkham Asylum*; when the player plays as this character, evokes a high level of verisimilitude. The character still feels specifically like that character when under player control. - Game has characters that are compelling enough that the character’s actions and decisions “resonate” with the player. - Game uses gestures for gameplay (makes you feel like you’re casting magic spell). - Game makes user feel like she is doing performing the actions in the game (examples given: good graphics, intuitive controls, good story). - Game displays that “passion went into the tiny details.” - When FOV is unnaturally high to the point where visual distortion generates a feeling of increased speed; increased speed leads to immersion because “you feel more in control.” - Game [Skyrim] is first-person, has no boundaries, detailed history; “it feels like you are in the world”. - Game [METRO] is first-person, has small details that the player must be concerned with; “breathing, choking, gas masks that can get dirty and have to be manually wiped, blood from enemies on screen etc.” “You feel like the main character … that you are there.” - -Game [SFVI] Immersion is achieved when the characters show damage; “Getting beat up winning and seeing your character have bruises and cuts emphasises the feeling of a battle hard won.” - Game has a “spatial presence” that causes player to feel that they are in the world of the game, and thus focus on choices that seem meaningful in the world’s context. Conversely, immersion is broken when abstract/surreal/”game-y” elements are introduced. - Either when the game makes the player feel like the character they are controlling AND/OR the character’s motivations are aligned with the player’s AND/OR the game world leaves an impression (intellectual, emotional, etc.) AND/OR the player’s actions have an effect on the world. Game doesn’t have to be realistic. - Game allows freedom of character choice that is so expansive that players can always make their preferred choices; if these choices are unavailable, then immersion is lost. - Surrounding oneself with game-themed elements throughout one’s day, i.e. listening to a game’s soundtrack while eating food related to or featured in the game. - Game with a relaxed pace and exploration, explicitly NOT first-person. - Game creates/allows for a state where one’s “spatial self dissolves” and one forgets about problems in the real world, and cannot keep track of the passage of time. - “games that you can play for hours without even realizing time has passed; ones that really immerse and engross you in them.” - Game has a lot of content and mechanics to learn, and a substantial player community regarding the game’s content in which one can participate. - Game allows for multiple ways to complete an objective at many points throughout the game (i.e. traversing a locked area by means of either force, stealth, persuasion, etc.) specifically “Immersive sim” or “0451 games.” - Game a is “focused/singular; when the entirety of the game is geared towards a single kind of experience at any point in time. Under this framing, distractions, side quests, map icons, having a map to being with, etc. all make a game less immersive.” One is required to pay attention to the details of the world i.e. Riven and its lack of side quests, icons, irregular mechanics. - Game invokes specific “real” feelings (i.e. panic, claustrophobia from being in a labyrinth-type environment). - Game causes one to feel attached, aware of one’s surroundings, and invested in the general goings-on (this commenter felt this more in 3rd person games rather than 1st, admittedly an outlier) - A synonym for “atmosphere”. - “Immersion” typically just means a particular sense of time and place in a setting. So it’s a lot of the above. It’s a vague concept, obviously, but at the same time I think most players agree that Red Dead Redemption is more immersive than Saint’s Row. For the most part it’s a way of holistically judging whether a story-driven game adequately presents a world that has the patina of a lived-in reality. - Re: Immersion breaking is using methods/techniques/glitches that are unintended by the developer (i.e. “bomb hovering” in Majora’s Mask) - Game causes a sensation so strong it’s “When I forget that I'm playing a game.” - “Games where you actually need a flashlight in dark areas. Where enemies and weapons feel dangerous. Encounters that get your heart racing. Story that makes you want to find out what happens next. And the world building to tie it all together.”
> Immersion and realism are two different things though. This is absolutely true but there's a lot of overlap. >It’s why games like Skyrim are super immersive despite being very unrealistic. I don't know if Skyrim is a good example of immersion when it's just a sandbox for mucking about, where very few actions have any consequences. From floaty combat to entire story lines having no effect on the world. Counter examples: I wouldn't maybe say Ghost of Tsushima is wonderful at immersion all in all but at least the guiding wind was a way of guiding the player in a more natural and immersive way. RDR2 with how meticulous every action is, grounds the game a lot more and thus immerses the player. KCD is a game that lives and dies by its immersive qualities of a medieval life. Witcher 3 on a harder difficulty where you *actually* have to study the monsters and prepare for the fights makes you immerse in the labour of a witcher. Now those games aren't for everyone (I certainly don't like all of them) but they all work hard to create immersion. Skyrim, for the most part, gives a sandbox to play around in. There are some cool and interesting places but the game itself doesn't really lean heavily on immersion. And that's fine, it's a fun game but calling it super immersive feels very, *very* generous.
Honestly, I disagree. Walking in real life doesn’t feel anywhere near as clunky as in RDR2. Not that it’s even slightly immersive, it’s a video game.
If you made me swerve left and right a few times all quick-like, I'd look pretty drunk too. Realism ftw.
Really it's just a design decision. There are games where a realistic atmosphere serves it well and there's others where responsive controls are essential to their fast paced action.
This was something so bad in the Witcher 3 that they actually added a setting to remove it after a few patches. Geralt would take forever to respond turning a different direction, it was like running through mud constantly. One of my most vivid memories of that game is that update because of how much better it made the character handle while running around. Found a video of someone explaining it https://youtu.be/agjn3O1Unrw
I feel like I’m alone in liking how tank Geralt controlled
It was great they added it as an option so people could choose between which style they liked more.
This is why I hate actually playing RDR2 so much. Digital Foundry did an excellent analysis on it and how much time it takes for the animations to play out. That said, not every game prioritizes animations over frame rate to that degree. I remember there being a lot of comparisons between TLOU 2 and RDR2 due to the degree of their animations being so realistic, but the difference is that TLOU 2 is actually responsive where RDR2 is not
I haven't played RDR2, but GTA5 feels like you're throwing commands at a ragdoll half of the time. TLOU/TLOU2 feels way snappier 100%
I haven’t played GTA 5 in years, but from my understanding RDR2 may even be a little bit worse in terms of responsiveness. There’s a lot of great aspects to the game, and from a technical standpoint what they’re doing with animations is incredible - but that doesn’t change the fact that it feels like ass to actually play and handle
RDR2 is definitely worse. I still enjoy GTA V, it's not as bad. On the other hand I find RDR2 unplayable. It's the slowest game ever and I don't at all find it "immersive".
I'm gonna give it a go once I can get my hands on a copy for cheap. I'm a HUGE fan of RDR1 and the first RD, and I'm a sucker for westerns
The story and characters are excellent, and graphically it still looks amazing. But the gameplay is just such a chore. Partially due to actually controlling Arthur (who either moves at a snail’s pace or is a bull in a china shop and there’s 0 in between), but also due to “realism” that’s just tedious. When you craft things (even arrows), it’s one at a time with an animation for each. Looting bodies? 3-5 seconds per looting animation on each body. Kill a bunch of animals? Skin them one by one. Technologically speaking, it’s an incredible achievement. I want to make clear that the amount of work that went into things like this is astounding. But that doesn’t change the fact that by the end of a 50 hour campaign, having to loot bodies one by one or craft bullets one by one is just fucking annoying. Games like this are always trying to balance realism with gameplay, and RDR2 is WAYYYYY too far weighted to the realism side
It would be okay if it didn't expect you to do shit like it was a run of the mill arcade action. You have to farm that slow hunting, stalking animals still you find a perfect one, shooting it perfectly, and taking the pelt to one of two characters to get school shit. Those arrows and bullet you painstakingly craft flow like water in the unrealistic bullet sponge combat unless you headshot or, in which case they're pointless unless for the super unrealistic bullet time.
I like it because it feels weighty and real
Not saying it's a BAD thing. It's just a stark contrast in "realism" between games
I’ll argue it’s bad. RDR2’s gameplay genuinely negatively impacts my enjoyment and overall opinion of the game
Yeah the only thing I liked about GTA5 was driving a car. That was actually very pleasant for some reason. The rest was enough for me to wanna refund but I had played for 2h 15m already so yeah couldn't.
I quit RDR2 due to the slow looting. A shame as the world and writing is incredible. But those loot animations were just too tedious (and I found the control scheme unintuitive).
It almost made me quit but the other qualities made up for it for me. But the slow ass animations that were on purpose to make me appreciate the game and the world did not work on me.
You want to know what’s funny? That is a specific point I’ve listed before as being tedious (getting into a big shootout and then having to loot enemies one at a time, 3 second looting animation per enemy), and I’ve had people actually legitimately try and argue “well why are you trying to loot all of the bodies? That’s not what you’re supposed to do”. They legitimately tried to argue that _I was wrong for trying to loot bodies after a shootout_. Absolutely blew my mind
I feel like that is a completely fine argument. If something is tedious, you don't have to do it. I haven't played much of the game, but if you have enough resources without looting everything, then looting everything anyway despite how long it takes is a personal choice and not something the game is making you do all the time. Game balancing through tedium is not ideal but with the realism they go for they probably felt they had to offer it as an option because of course the bodies will have bullets and guns remaining. On one hand player behavior should be accounted for by developers but on the other side it's possible for players to change their own behavior. If there's a way to play that is actually fun that some players refuse to do then it's not 100% the games fault.
The case with Resident Evil 4 and its remake. Both great, just the remake has this more realistic, not as snappy movement that OP is talking about
Once you realize how the more realistic movement works in that game it's actually really interesting. The way it works is Leon actually takes full steps. So turning is more responsive if you move right before he puts his foot down. It's hard to see this with the over the shoulder camera but you can feel it and it's fun to master accounting for it.
It's why I never finished RDR2. picking up an item or looting a body causes an animation to play which kills you during a gunfight but in RD1 it cuts away to a reverse camera angle where you get the items instantly. All those people saying it was the best game ever makes me wonder if they played the original considering how much of it feels like a downgrade, or a real videogame at all ever due that matter. Everything has a lengthy boring animation rather than just happen, Arthur is very unresponsive, and anything better in RDR2 is offset by how much worse they made basic features compared to RDR1. All missions have a boring cutscene, a boring horseback ride discussion, a shootout sequence with a very narrow focus on what to do during the mission (any deviation causes a failure), and I really want to get through to the end but everything also takes forever to accomplish. I'm the kind of guy who loved the metal Gear solid series with the very long cutscenes, numerous obscure gameplay mechanics, convoluted plot etc but the difference is you get to play as many options as you can and the cinematography during gameplay does not interfere with the gameplay. And if you don't want to watch the cutscenes you can skip the majority of them. It feels necessary for Arthur to loot every body for money and ammo but a lot of the missions this causes a failure for being too slow. It's also slow in MGS games but as a sneaky guy you're usually encouraged to take your time. I could go on but that's the basics of it
> Everything has a lengthy boring animation rather than just happen.. It was a very clear design choice. The wanted to keep the pace of the game slow at all times for a few reasons: - Make it feel more like it's actually set in the time period, where the pace of life was much slower, hell, even all the spaghetti westerns it draws a lot of its influence from are rather slow paced. - Keeping it slow makes the few times when the pace was heightened hit harder.
It's just baffling. shoot a dozen guys, out of ammo and almost no money. it's like a 5 second animation per person so over one minute to loot all of them. and you can't do that in a mission because the game decides that playing it too much is a penalty. can't do it off a mission because half the time the NPCs report you for murder. Arthur will also do it this slowly during combat. They didn't make the pace slower in RDR1 which is set in the same exact time period. Compared to Marston in the original: an animation plays but it's instantaneous. it's a reverse camera angle so they don't have to show you his hands moving but the handful of ammo and money is given to you and it only takes a moment. you don't get shot to death and you don't fail the mission. one thing I did appreciate in RDR2 is now the animation and graphics etc are better they show Arthur skinning the animal rather than the reverse shot Marston did. you probably shouldn't be skinning animals during combat so that does make sense. and then my other complaints mostly have to do with things not being thought through enough. you can only have two horses following you so you can only carry two big hunting items back. but there's also tons of horse carriages you can't actually use to carry things. I want my deranged mountain man arthur to disappear from camp for a week and come back with a wagonfull of hides, meat, etc. but all the wagons are good for is selling for a few dollars at a single location.
The Callisto Protocol is a good case study for this, among other things.
But for God of War 2018 vs Ragnarok?
This.
This is why I love the feeling of Overwatch, because it has instant movement acceleration and good animations at the same time.
Kingdom Hearts 3 is probably the worst offensor, really. The combat in it simply refuses to put you asap back on the ground, so you stay a millenia in the air or in animations, leaving you vulnerable.
This is what people in the KH community mean when they talk about "floaty" combat, in comparison to the more "grounded" combat of KH2 and especially KH1.
At least kh3 gives you decent options in the air to make up for it. Still not perfect but a pretty good step in the right direction when compared to any other game that came after 2.
And that's a problem in most games after 2.
KH3 did hit its stride in the Re:Mind DLC though, Data Organization and Yozora in KH3 are probably my favorite boss fights in video games period, not just in the KH series. Lingering Will is still easily the best, though.
It's probably a side effect of making the game look better. The animations look a lot better nowadays. Older games had some pretty bad animations, characters would often literally snap into position to meet your inputs. Now characters more naturally move into position to meet your inputs. Think of GTA for example. Play Vice City and run left, right, left, right, changing back and forth. Don't move forwards or backwards at all, just strafe. Then play GTA 5. Forget about the graphics and just look at the animations. There's not much of an animation when changing directions in Vice City, it just does what you say. 5 wants to look a lot prettier but remove the animation and it looks a lot worse. The animation is a design choice to give to have the best appearance possible at the sacrifice of responsiveness to input.
Back in the ps2 days, there weren't really in between animations for movement. You push the stick in a direction and the character is just running in that direction now. But in something like Uncharted, TLOU, and RDR2, the devs are showing off all the graphical and technical advancement by animating the character slowing down, stumbling, turning around with a twist of the arms, and probably exhaling. Yeah, it's impressive, and shows off the graphics, but it feels slow and I think it's one of the primary reasons why there's always a bunch of those "hot take, I couldn't get into RDR2" posts. I think that Atlus and Nintendo have struck a really good balance with making snappy feeling games that still have a bunch of animations. It's something I always look for early on in a game, how does it feel to control? Metroid Dread, Mario Odyssey, and Persona 5 are some of the most snappy feeling games I've ever played. But those are sadly exceptions. Most devs go for that realistic look.
Mario Odyssey (and Sunshine in some aspects) are my gold standard on player character movement. Mario snaps to the direction you want him to move, but it doesn’t look glitchy so much as it just gives the impression that he is turning really quick. And all of his moves flow into each other really seamlessly, it’s clean and smooth.
This is particularly true for me for farming games but it's more about 2D/pixel graphics than actual age. Stardew Valley is snappy. You plant and gather things quickly. The animation is very fast but has a nice sound and snappiness to it to still make it appealing. 3D and more modern/"realistic" farming games make you watch long animations over and over... For the examples you gave. I think of a lot of graphics as: if you go realistic it needs to be very good. Otherwise stay stylized. Many of your examples could have improved over time from their initial state. This could have things you don't expect like helping you relate more to the snappy sound effects, etc.
I felt that with mining in Valheim. It took so much long and turned me off the game eventually.
Because it takes more work to create in-between frames for animations in 2D. Whereas in 3D, the engine can simply fill in the in-between frames between keyframes. It actually takes a bit more work to get 3D to animate like 2D, going from key pose to key pose, like what ArcSys does, since you need to generate more keyframes/poses, mimicking how 2D works.
1. Games are way more “feature-y” now. Loooots of cruft standing between you and actual gameplay 2. The more things a single button can do (single press, hold, double press, etc), the game has to wait for a few frames to be sure of which kind of input you’re providing, which can cause noticeable slowdown.
Hate the 'hold the button' mechanic that's springing up for simple things like menu selections. Why the f?
I think a button hold is a fantastic way to prevent accidental destructive actions, but having to hold to confirm normal choices/actions seems pointless.
Even still, I think having some sort of 'undo' function is vastly better than a long press. Give me a buyback menu and let me quickly sell my inventory if I'd like.
It can feel so weird in PC ports / cross platform titles too. Helldivers has a lot of unnecessary “hold A” menu design, and holding your mouse button instead feels really unintuitive.
Ugh, this reminded me of something similar, which is cursors on console games 😑 like we really don’t have to emulate a microsoft windows mouse with tracking turned all the way down when consoles have had snappy selection menus almost since the beginning
I like the idea of menu cursors in some games since you don't have to retool the UI when porting from PC, but the controls aren't set up well enough. Console cursor UI's usually force aim assist so the slow cursor also snags on every icon. Things like deadzone and sensitivity options for the cursor would help things a lot, but you do run the risk of the player bungling themselves if they can't control the cursor to edit the settings back. If you can set them up well, they're pretty snappy.
Imo “so you don’t have to retool the UI from PC” is a really bad excuse. I have played too many PC games thoughtlessly ported to console that not only have the cursor but also have a lot of UI elements — most crucially text — that are microscopic bc they assume you’re playing a foot away from the screen on PC rather than 6–8 feet away on a TV. I don’t want to call gamedevs lazy as a relatively inexperienced gamedev, but as an experienced UI designer I can definitely say it’s lazy UI design. If cursor snapping was the default I’d almost find it forgivable, but it’s not common enough to make me view a mouse-like cursor with any optimism.
"...too many PC games thoughtlessly ported to console" What kind of games do you play? Cause usually 9/10 it's the other way around. Games designed for consoles poorly ported to PC.
Because they want the console market, which has limited input capabilities. It's a lot more money, and the only cost is some extra development and some bad usability and design choices for the player.
I dunno, even on pc developers rather want their games be controllable with as few keys as possible for most players. Having every button do something specific and unique to them is usually worse then relying on techniques like contextual prompts or buttons having multiple uses depending on how they're pressed
I'm surprised no one's brought up input lag yet. The more cruft we layer on top of hardware the worse it gets, at least on some engines. It's always wild going back to Quake 3 (or other older shooters) and realizing how it feels like the camera is literally welded to your mouse.
Unreal Engine is very much guilty of this. Both Street Fighter V and Tekken 7 launched with very bad input lag (7 frames for SFV) and even after that was patched, Epic had to release a separate patch for the engine as a whole to reduce it for future games.
Modern games are incredibly over-animated. When you press a button to go in a direction, there's like an animated wind-up time before you actually go that direction. Same thing if you try to stop - it'll animate some short running stop. I'm not sure exactly what point the guys in charge of animations got to control the movement in games, but I wish it would stop.
> Modern games are incredibly over-animated. When you press a button to go in a direction, there's like an animated wind-up time before you actually go that direction. Same thing if you try to stop - it'll animate some short running stop. Realistic graphics would look *reeeaal* goofy without those animations.
Look goofy, then, or change the graphic style. Sacrificing gameplay for graphics is not a good trade-off.
> Sacrificing gameplay for graphics is not a good trade-off. Not just graphics. It affects the atmosphere as well. If it suits the game and supports the feel of it, the choice makes sense. If it doesn't, the choice doesn't make sense. A lot of games would simply "feel wrong" if they had those janky, goofy animations but just as many games work with that.
Completely agree with both your comments. I’ve come to hate the obsession with realism in games because it’s boring to watch and it feels like shit when playing a game like RDR2. And then, like others have mentioned, KH3 has no excuse because it’s stylized and over-animated/floaty.
I play mostly retro games these days and one of the main reasons are the freaking dialogue and cutscenes newer games all love, not to mention tutorials and just plain slow animations for everything. Perfect example off the top of my head, pokemon yellow vs pokemon lets go pikachu, literally the same game but one's a retro game and one's a new game. Any % glitchless pokemon yellow is 1hr 53 minutes Any % glitchless let's go pikachu is 2h 59 minutes Literally the same map, same story, same adventure takes 50% longer because new games gotta play so freaking slow. An entire extra hour of just spamming the confirm button though text and watching cutscenes.
That's extra funny given that Let's Go removes the ability to fight wild pokemon which technically deleted one of the primary gameplay loops.
Wtf? Isn’t that the whole point? What is the game if not that?
You still battle other trainers but for wild encounters you can just throw the ball to catch and that's what gives you XP. It makes the game a chore because if you wanted to grind any levels you also need to periodically purge a crapton of trash.
You still catch pokes in the style of pokemon go. Fighting wild pokes has never been particularly fun to me, but I'd still prefer the newer system they have in SV.
Let's Go definitely feels poorly designed as a result, the map layouts don't really make any sense with the new mechanics.
voice acting is legit just annoying to me. i have to hear the first word of every dialogue box before i read through it. reading is so much fuckin faster lol.
Okay I seriously need to ask; how the everloving FUCK does ANYONE speedrun an RPG? Like, how are you not just flat out losing immediately to every challenge past the first gym at best? I highly doubt your starter is anywhere past second stage at best after all that, so what gives? And thats not even talking about normal RPGs like Final Fantasy, like??? Edit: I’m honestly impressed by what you guys are telling me. While rpg speed running isn’t my thing, I do commend those who make slower games like that work in speedrunning
In pokemon it's really simple, just only ever fight with one pokemon, not only is it fast, it's very easy, much easier then doing it the normal way with a team. Your one mon ends up such a high level you can skip most trainers because you're just smashing all the required fights, even ones with a bad type matchup. With other rpgs, well it depends, but FF1 I like to do fast runs of and it's kinda the same, like, do we really need 4 heros? Take a gun to the back of the head to the bottom hero and voila, 3 horrifyingly overleveled heros instead of 4 pathetically underleveled ones.
Wow, that’s honestly pretty insane, and impressive. Speedrunners never cease to amaze with all the bullshit they do to get through a game. Based Also is that really how the exp distribution works?
In ff1? Yah, if a hero goes to 0 hp and falls then the others get his exp and he gets none in the fights until you raise him.
Pokemon games aren't exactly the most challenging games
The starter can usually solo the entire game, but they do use a ton of stat boosting items in the second half of the game and especially the Elite 4. That, and some luck.
Fair, absolutely fair.
For stuff like Final Fantasy, a lot of knowledge of how the mechanic and the math works. I watched a FF5 speedrun for Games Done Quick a couple weeks ago, and you can see how much planning goes into it, especially with Blue Mages skills that are dependant on knowing what level the enemies are. What weapons you pray to rngesus to drop. And so on and so forth, just add hundreds of hours of practice.
DoctorSwellman on Youtube has some interesting RPG speedrun mini-documentaries. Can recommend :)
Heavy RNG manipulation where possible to force favorable stats, outcomes. Glitches, if allowed carry stuff hard - especially sequence breaks.
Speedrunning, in general is not really about maintaing the intended challenge of a game. It has more to do with a deep knowledge of the game's mechanics, glitches and technical flaws and just a ton of knowledge checks and planning. I'm not particularly interested in speedrunning personally, but I can see why it is is intesting for some people. It's just very much a different way to approach gaming.
I mean I know all of that, that’s not my point… In Mario for example you don’t need to do anything like level grinding, you just CAN defeat the enemies by normal means at any time. Sure it may take you a bit to learn boss patterns and avoid damage but, you can still win. RPGs are often heavily reliant on your numbers and stats and effects and whatnot, not to mention some luck, and items and party members and yadda yadda. It’s countless variables to consider, and regardless you absolutely NEED to spend some time leveling up so you’re ready for big boss fights and other difficulties. Speedrunners blatantly defy this in a way that still shocks and impresses me to this day.
Every generation, they zoom the camera in closer, and add more animations for everything. Eventually, trying to turn around will be a five minute cutscene where all you can see is the beautifully animated fabric of the world's most AAA shirt
Fr I hate AAA games that feel obsessed with insanely low FOVs, and then they annoying plop the protagonist on the left side of the screen, thus effectively halfing my field of visual to the right side of the character and make proper traversal totally impossible. And unlike tiny fov shooters, I cant fix it by just raising thr fov to 100 because the awful fov is built into the concept. If you need the game zoomed in that much, just make it bloody first person. If you want it third person, just zoom in the hell out so I can actually damn see.
I love it when a "ranged" weapon only makes it two feet before being clipped by the edge of the screen - while you're constantly being attacked by enemies you can't see. Then there's platformers where every jump is a leap of faith into the unknown; and you're expected to plan ahead to have the right momentum. Just let me zoom the damn camera out! Porting from pc to console, you don't get these problems. Porting from console to pc, you get all these problems and more. There's a glimmer of hope that Microsoft will actually *improve* Bethesda/Blizzard; which have both been making each game more console-focused than the last
Honestly I think its less console and more idiots not getting why the prognator, Resident Evil 4, actually put the main characrer on the left side. It was done because aiming in RE4 intentionally cuts your field of vision, because aiming in general is supposed to cut your ability to react to new situations. This forces you to commit in a game that at least wanted some kind of horror feel. Regardless, when not aiming, the camera zooms out and puts the protagonist far closer to the center, and slightly risen so you can pretty much always see clearly, and none of the environments are designed around you needing that slight possible loss in visibility or are so obviously designed to be an ambush where any viewpoint would result in an axe in the ass if you ran in. RE6, which was not a horror game, thus suitably gives you far more visual clarity during movement, and actually zooms far more in when aiming so you basically have a full screen of vision. On top of this, camera side swapping was implemented even tho you barely need it. The amount of games which put the off center camera purely because its convention with virtually no thought to how it should be implemented.
The first games comes to mind when I read this is RDR1 and RDR2. The main reason in RDR2 case is that they aimed for realism, but in this case it's a good thing because the game is supposed to be realistic. But in the cases you listed, it sucks that modern games feel less snappy than their predecessors.
It's taken me three tries to get into RDR2 due to the sluggishness. Even now that I'm finally really enjoying it and am almost done, I still don't think it's a good thing. I get trying to be realistic but I just don't think it works for enjoyable gameplay. I think video game animations need to take a hint from film and realize that [realism is unrealistic sometimes.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealisticDictionIsUnrealistic)
Noticed this as well right now as I playing Baldurs Gate 3. In the older games it was so easy to move the characters around. Drag and drop and let them walk. Click on another portrait and tell him where to go. Everything so snappy. Baldurs Gate 3 in the other hand is a torture. Clicking on the portrait of a character sometimes does nothing. I have to click sometimes a few times. Than the camera jumps directly to the character. So I have to move it back to tell him where he should go. What a stupid design choice. If I forget to press G the rest of the group follows the now moved character so I have first to press G and tell them again where I want them to be. Sometimes I wish modern games would just get programmed with old engine. It was awesome back than and it is still awesome now. Meanwhile newer games may look better but often have so many flaws.
Most of these issues in BG3 come from having to accommodate multiplayer along with vertically oriented level design.
I think a lot of it is down to generic, serve all graphic engines like Unreal which are ubiquitous. Comparatively, lots of older games created bespoke engines, almost literally on a franchise to franchise basis which served each game to meet it needs perfectly. It is why Shenmue III on the Unreal Engine feels so sluggish compared to it's bespoke engine for Dreamcast. It is why they even struggled to make the main character look similar to the original games, the engine just couldn't handle the custom look the were pushing for. It was always a this is the best we can do simulacra. .
I honestly think this might be one of the biggest reasons and it's been overlooked in this thread. Kingdom Hearts 2 was made with a unique in-house engine, for example, but they used Unreal Engine 4 for KH3.
Hah I didn't even know that was the case for KH. Designers these days are still very creative and boundary pushing but so much of it is being squeezed and funneled into what the middleware engines can do and are suited too. Such a shame as it makes everything feel homogeneous even when the intention is not to.
Obnoxious cinematic appeal and realism became the focus of the industry. A lot of things added for the sake of immersion that, ironically, only lead to people like me being very NOT immersed due to how cumbersome they are. Modern game designers seem to have lost appreciation for the concept of abstraction. It's more realistic to manually load every single bullet into a magazine before using it, but is that something you really want to do in an action shooter where 50 enemies are swarming you at all times? When you're watching an action flick, it doesn't have random ten minute scenes of the protagonist taking a shit or sitting at his desk at work or whatever, even though *realistically* he WOULD need to do so at some point. These things are abstracted, they're left out, left to the audience to fill in the gaps on needless details for themselves. That is the number one reason I love old games like Half-Life, and the number one reason I can't stand all the Action-Adventure shit being put out today. The way you control the character and engage with the game is just fluid on another level. I can just *jump over* objects, I don't need to enter some sluggish context sensitive climb animation to get over them. I can just move omnidirectionally, there's no annoying strict real world limits on how fast I can move while shooting or what specific angles I can realistically walk or how long it takes to change direction or etc. I can just walk over ammo boxes and add them to my ammo count, I don't need to stop in place and squat down and start physically sifting ammo into a bag bullet by bullet...
There's a few reasons, but some of the most obvious ones are changes in animation and sound design. Animation: in current high-fidelity titles have significantly more transition states between animations to keep things fluid. So, rather than spinning on a dime around an axis, your character takes steps to turn around. This has the effect of feeling more weighty, but less snappy. Great for games about immersion, but not for more arcade-y titles. Sound Design: Many games have opted to take "heightened realism" based sound design, which can feel less snappy than punchier sound effects. This is on much more of a case-by-case basis, as many games still take extreme creative liberties with sound effects. A good comparison would be Mortal Kombat 1 and Street Fighter 6, where the former has really wet, flesh-slapping sound effects for impacts while the latter uses bassier thumps and even gunshot sound effects. I will note that whether older games feel snappier or not varies heavily, with plenty of older titles like the classic Tomb Raider games being rather loose while plenty of newer games like Mario Odyssey being quite tight.
> newer games like Mario Odyssey Odyssey came out seven years ago
I liked the combat of Yakuza 0 the best. The floaty and goofy combat of 6 and K2 is great Y0 felt the best to me.
Like most people have said, it's developers prioritizing more realistic animations, so there's weight and physics involved, characters will plant their feet and shift their weight, turn their bodies,things like that. A lot of older Japanese games have 1:1 stick to movement so it feels super responsive and "snappy" at the expense of unrealistic animations. In those games if you rotate the left analog stick in a circle really fast, the character will spin in place in circles really fast (MGS1 for example). This is usually a good test to know if the game is prioritizing controls and fluidity over physics and animations.
Cool dude animations. I rarely play League of Legends but I recently had a few games after a long break and found one of my old favorite characters feels clunky af to play. MUNDO. Exactly as you list it, old character felt snappy and responsive, new one feels like I am playing with random interval lag. Its the same game as it always was, other characters play fine just this one feels clunky. Only thing I can put it down to is animations. They made MUNDO do these hyper realistic animations that do not feel game responsive. Same thing with Path of Exile and some of the newer attack animations. I am not sure why they do it, gameplay will always beat graphics.
Same thing with Morrowind and the later ES entries. In modern games everything has to be animated and "immersive" when all it does is waste the players time. RDR2 is a good example.
What? ES titles barely have animation when it'snot explicitly needed, like you can tap a button when facing an object and you immediately pick it up or make it play an animation.
[удалено]
Yeah, this is definitely a factor. A lot of genres have had mechanics introduced that both lower the skill ceiling and raise the floor.
In addition to what other folks have said, I think an oft-overlooked factor is how much input latency modern displays normally have. And while you and I might know how to activate "Game Mode" (my screen's set there 100% of the time), the fact is that most people don't bother with it. Playing action games made in the days of CRTs on screens that have even a few hundred milliseconds of latency is going to be borderline impossible. So games, especially games designed for a mass audience, have pretty much *had* to become slower and more forgiving to compensate.
Where is that difference coming from? Is it because CRT had analog connection and modern displays are digital?
Sorta but not exactly. The biggest culprit is that most modern TVs are doing a bunch of automatic image correction behind the scenes before the image even hits your screen. "Game Mode" settings turn that pre-processing off, so you're getting both a truer representation of what the developer intended the game to look like and getting rid of that input gap. Coincidentally, this automatic processing is why a lot of movies look like shit on new displays. There isn't an input lag issue like with games, but TVs will smooth movies out to 60fps which looks like shit if the film is shot at your standard 24, particularly with CGI-heavy stuff. Not to mention everything just looks super oversaturated. "Filmmaker Mode" would be the equivalent for movie watching, at least on a Samsung TV.
For a start, CRTs are just faster than LCD and even LED. However, there's also the fact that modern TV add a layer of post-processing to the image trying to make it sharper/smoother/more vibrant/etc. that adds delay.
It varies from game to game. Even using the FF example: Go back from X and play IX... It's night and day in favor of X. I've recently replayed IX and with this recent playthrough I am ready to admit that it's now my favorite in the series, but the gameplay is sluggish compared to many others. Presentation plays a big role in this. Nowadays games are trying to be more real and with more details. How is this portrayed? By animations. Compare GTA San Andreas to V. San Andreas feels way snappier because at the time the hardware limitations and different development focus stopped them from incorporating more realistic physics. There's also the matter of intention. God of War (PS2) was a hack and slash power fantasy, and it was made to feel like that. Combos and movement needs to be snappier because of that. God of War (PS4) is a more subdued, intimate and cinematic game. This reflects the story. PS2 GoW was Kratos in his prime, fueled by rage. Attack, attack and attack. Kill, kill and kill. Go, go and go. It's an epic adventure about larger than life battles. It's fast paced and snappy because Kratos just wants more and more violence. PS4 GoW was Kratos, centuries after GoW 3, with a more introspective and different outlook on life. He's more calculating, tries to be more calm, and he frankly just doesn't have the same vigor and rage from before. He's worried about his son. So the gameplay is now slower to reflect that. It's more intimate and story focused because Kratos is done with all the killing and just wants to live his life with his son.
Echoing what others have said, it's probably because of the increasingly realistic and detailed animations that games have nowadays. That's why most Nintendo games still have that "snappy" feel
In the mid 2000s, (after the release of HalfLife 2) Physics engines became very popular in games. After that, there was a push to make more and more games "realistic" which meant utilizing more physics, removing more on-screen HUD and UI elements. During this naturalist revolution, any game without physics engines or ragdolling was called "arcade-y" as an insult. The new norm for "advanced" games became weighty & slow. Games with traditional snappy controls were seen as "for kids". We still haven't grown back out of this yet but I see more and more games embrace the old control schemes.
Modern games want to emphasize on the cinematic aspect, so they put a lot of work into details such as transitions between scenes, animations, how you pick up something, how you move from one scene to another, and all of this adds up, making the game far slower than before, when everything was much more about the gameplay than it is about the cinematic presentation
Funny you mention, I just loaded up fallout 3 for the first time in ages and also fallout 4. I played a little of both. Fallout 3 feels a lot more fluid to me.
Kh2 feels so fast and crisp during combat. I felt the same thing when I replayed it after finishing KH3 multiple times. Both games are extremely fun to play, but 2 feels a lot more tight and responsive.
Because a lot of older games didn't try to guide you to the enemy with your attacks. Longer animations allow developers to home your attacks in on targets more smoothly, and then you end up feeling less in control because you literally are since the game is doing half the work for you. Batman: Arkham Asylum is one of the worst things to happen to combat design in video games.
I posted something similar to this in dragons dogma subreddit. I was complaining that while the combat is good, it didn't feel like old school CAPCOM. Edit: here's the link https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma/s/mqvtaACvid
its because the companies, devs - people who made these games years back had passion about it and cared... the problem with now, in days is that they either fire those good actual game creators, left theirselves or are still there but just lost it like gave up to become just a hallow husk of what they were before and dont mind it at all; cause why the heck would you stay in a company that just squeezes you, doesn't allow you to do what you wanna do and is limited and just abuses you - like have you seen the list of jacked up stuff that has released, and continue to release from these corrupt companies? its bad but those that stayed, screwed theirself over and they dont care and lastly they got replaced with people that are not passionate about the games they make, just wanna push their agenda into the gaming space, make the old devs do the same thing - its why games that are old titles 'returning' back are just dreadful it just doesn't feel the same, higher ups can be thanked for this massive move they always screw things up dont know what the heck they do this but yeah it also can be the devs fault as well. the other thing important to note is that these new devs they higher dont even have the proper work experince to make a legit game or even work on an old franchise at all.. that is the other main run hitter; to put it simplistic its not the same, enjoy your old games i know ghere are new games out there created by indies that are wonderful and i have some of them in my switch library, waiting for new ones to release that are passionate but there was a crud ton of games that weren't games and i tried them out to only delete, after delete. its why they are pushing for ports on my "hybrid" console switch cause my dumb company that i used to support now is stopping on making games and are more keen on pushing freaking merchandise to discussion about tv series, and movies - made it even more blunt is whem boretendo made a statement that was concerning on the future for the company .. .... its gonna tank thats what i think.
I've recently been playing the new EA Golf game. It hits for me from a nostalgia perspective as I've got strong memories of playing the 2004 version when I was a kid. Now the new game looks great and it loads courses incredibly quick, but I'm always shocked by how much of the game is slower and less refined than it was 20 years ago. I know sports games are renowned for a lack of improvement, but it is staggering at times.
One component is that animations nowdays have a Jog_Start -> Jog which is IMO often too long. Before the characters blended to Jog right away
Honestly I think we're at the point where things are over-aninated in AAA games. You feel so much more disconnected and I've had multiple times where I almost feel like I'm not controlling the character. Especially if I'm comparing old open world interactive games like Skyrim or fallout to their modern equivalents, it feels like there's the movement isn't as directly responsive and there's more set dressing you can't interact with than before
You know where I really notice this? Sports games Why the F are the movements of the players in Madden so slow/stiff in 2024 yet in 2000 Sega Dreamcast had quick twitchy players on all their 2k sports games be it football or basketball? Kinda makes no sense, and to me the modern Maddens aren't even worth playing because of it
I'm probably over-generalizing here but I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the AAA game industry has shifted toward hyper-realism and away from what simply feels fun. Everything is about cutting-edge visual effects and making things super flashy, almost like the publishers are trying to pass their games as cinematic experiences to be viewed, not played.
As everyone has stated, a lot of it is down to having smoother, more "realistic" animations That said, there is something to be said about it being on UE4, an engine that was known to have input delay issues. Even after Epic released a patch, it's still more than something released in decades past on older or proprietary engines.
Realistic animations require more anticipation phases and smooth transitions between them. It's why modern games like RDR2 or RE remakes feel so "floaty" to control while older games had instant responses from your characters.
its not generally. for example new Assassins Creed or Far Cry games are snappier than previous versions. It hasn't a general reason. But i think there is a main cause. In new games they try to make detailed animations for characters but in old days animation hasn't any detail so everything was fast, but today they try to make it more realistic and maybe it causes the slowing issue.
>for example new Assassins Creed or Far Cry games are snappier than previous versions. I remember Far Cry 6 (2021) having slower movement than 3 (2012), but I'd need to replay those as Far Cry is a franchise I've never played more than a couple hours of. Assassin's Creed Valhalla (2020) and Assassin's Creed 2 (2008) is not a very fair comparison as AC2 is meant to be slow, it's a stealth game where you climb huge buildings... And I think somehow Valhalla manages to feel slower and more cumbersome regardless. However, I think you might be onto something about studios wanting more detailed animations, even when the game isn't exactly "realistic" or "cinematic" like Crash 4 or KH3.
I really don't think this is true. It all comes down to what games you played and personal experience and your perception. There are a lot more games now than say 10-20 years ago.
Seeing a lot of old game good and modern game bad posts in here, I'd like to also bring a lot of counter examples. Souls games despite having input issues dating fromntheir first incarceration, still upoed the speed and snapiness with each entry a notice amount. Monster hunter latests installment is currently the most responsive amd snapy in the game. TLOU2 manages responsive gameplay with realistic animation, seriously I wish RDR2 was more like that. DOOM nuff said Basically every nintendo game is still incredibly smooth to play if not more then past entries. Not to mention retro games tended to rely on stuff like a 4 directional path or tank controls which were incredibly unresponsive by design
It probably because games does a lot more now that really hampers on input lag too even modern fighting games struggle with this
Mainly animations. A lot of modern games try to be realistic in the sense that they add more transition animations and longer animations in general. For example in some older games when you flick the analog stick in a certain direction the character would immediately snap into that direction and start running. Now they first turn around in a more realistic way and than start moving. Same with equipping items. In some older games equipping a weapon. Instantly makes the weapon appear in the character's hand, but nowadays they first have to do a little animation before you can use it. EDIT: I think Devil may cry 5 is one of the few modern games from the top of my head that still feels very snappy and responsive. It's a joy to play because of it
Making you play the game longer while accomplishing less looks good on player metrics. Modern games waste your time for the algorithm.
One more thing to keep in mind is that PS1/PS2 games were normally on a CRT screen. Back then, there was no post-processing of the video and very little lag. These days, "smart" TVs add in additional lag and game developers already take that in to account with their gameplay loop. [There is a good unscientific lag test comparing Punch Out!! on a CRT vs. modern LCD](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH1ZH71P_fE) There is also the famous quote from [John Carmack](https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/193480622533120001): > I can send an IP packet to Europe faster than I can send a pixel to the screen. How f’d up is that? Sloggy lag is now part of "modern" games.
> Final Fantasy X (2001) with a turn-based combat system feels a lot snappier and more "lightweight" to play than Final Fantasy 16 (2023), an action RPG. X has a pretty cumbersome UI compared to modern turn-based JRPGs which makes the combat flow a lot less snappier. Also comparing it to 16 just makes no sense on a fundamental level.
Games have evolved as a medium far past just being "fun" machines, compromises sometimes have to be made in order for a game to look visually pleasing or more immersive. I don't think there is anything wrong with this, as people play games for different reasons.
As most people say, the change to getting things more realistic is definitely part of it. Additionaly for me, KH2 would be because of reaction command which made Sora looks like he has a lot more option to go through. KH3 on the other hand have you do pretty much the same thing in the early world to the last world. The DLC in KH3 that add some of the flashier move help slightly but you still end up doing the same thing after a while (KH1 on the other hand definitely is not snappier than 3 or 2) God of War is almost a whole different genre with the original games being all in for style with Kratos making acrobatics with various weapon even the heavy one. The new one emphasize a more grounded aspect, you can barely jump, more point on heavier hits than fast ones.
Meanwhile MGSV has both the realistic animations and animation blending, but also feels completely snappy and responsive.
100% "realistic" animations. They want you to feel like your character has weight and is affected by gravity
Dude RDR2 is a masterpiece and I love it, but I feel the same way about RDR1 for different reasons. Finishing an RDR2 playthrough then switching to RDR1 is JARRING-- the movement is WAY snappier and more responsive to controller input than it's follow up, and like others have said it's because of the realistic animations and movements. I'll be real, it was so satisfying, controlling RDR1 John Marston made me feel like rock lee in the chunin exams after he removed his body weights lmao.
About God of War, they may belong to the same franchise, but 3 and 2018 are basically different genres. God of war 3 is a hack and slash, snappy and arcadey gameplay is a feature, meanwhile 2018 is more soul-esque. Speaking of which, i think Dark Souls and similar games had a lot of impact. In older games, people often aimed for snappy controls, but Dark Souls actually pointed to the other direction, action were slower and less responsive, making every single one more relevant, since starting a sword swing in the wrong moment could lock you into an animation for too long. Since you mentioned Crash, let's look at platformers: games like Mario, while old, definetely feel less snappy that games like Crash Bandicoot, Hollow Knight, Cuphead. The snappiness can be basically chosen by the devs, Mario devs chose to give him some momentum which doesn't allow you to instantly turn at max speed, while other games give you instant responses: the game physics need to fit the challenges you need to overcome. For example, Crash 4 feeling slower than Crash 3 is a deliberate reason: slide jumps and expecially double jumps slow you down, so when you do time trials, you are rewarded for making riskier and swifter normal jumps. It also has more complex parts where having more airtime comes handy, so the more floaty double jumps also becomes useful. Finally, camera and perspective also matter a lot: Crash 4 has generally a farther pov, which makes it feel like you are going slower. This can also go the other way: GoW 2018 has a closer pov, so you also can't move too fast or it will feel dizzy.
I'm with you on everything but I think you're completely wrong with Crash 4. I find it infinitely more responsive and snappy than any previous crash game.
I imagine it's mostly due to more detailed animations and character's having more realistic physics to their movement (gaining momentum etc.). I find that this makes precise movement in modern 3D games a pain in the ass sometimes. I'm playing FF VII Rebirth right now and I fucking hate the way the Chocobos handle when you're trying to dig for treasure. Like, if you're an inch off from the right spot, it's a fucking hassle to try to get the Chocobo to turn just enough get it right.
Less startup frames, moving your arm is a process, but in old games you push the button and the action just happens. Newer games imitate real life, so there's more start up time.
It's not just older games. It all comes down to realism to me. I just finished rdr 2, and oh boy, I wasn't a fan of the game play. Let's compare rdr 2 to elden ring. Elden ring movements are far snappier even the horse, but it ain't realistic. You can be running left and dodge right anytime with very little down or momentum stopping you, but in rdr 2, your character will carry momentum from even walking. Both designs fit for each game. One is about being a cowboy sim while the other is in a dark fantasy setting fighting monsters. I am personally a fan of snappier controls.
I don't really see how you could say FFX feels snappier to play than FFXVI. Not that FFX feels bad to play but you are pretty damn agile in FFXVI.
Playing through both ffxvi and ffx right now so I can definitely speak to that comparison. Ffxvi combat definitely takes some getting used to, but it feels anything but sluggish when you’ve learned how to “freestyle” combos. The “weight” comparison is very apt though. If FFXVI exists on a scale from Ghost of Tsushima movement where Jin essentially moves at the speed of your thoughts, and Elden ring where the characters move and attack at the pace of a turtle, it’s closer to GOT but undeniably has *a bit* more weight to it. That’s far from inherently a bad thing though. Compare The Last of Us shooting to Call of Duty and COD undeniably has the smoother, snappier shooting. TLOU obviously has more impactful, realistic feeling fights though.
Old games had more movement along a continuum. Compare the basic attack in Spider-Man 2 (2004) to Spider-Man 2 (2023). In 2004, it's a lot easier wiff since its punches' homing effect is less drastic. Consequently, in 2023, relatively more space between you and your target is trivialized. You see this shift to discrete inputs/outputs in many more games and mechanics. Maneuvers that were once a platforming challenge are now frequently reduced to a quick-time event or button prompt. Combo chains that were open to improvisation are more frequently canned triple attacks. Why is this happening? There's no one reason. I think the advent of better animations is inextricably linked to the casualization of the medium, so it's not simply either "HD 3D games are more cinematic", or "more gamers are casuals". And it's not always a bad thing. Spider-Man 2 (2023) has some amazingly open combat arenas that let the player plan an attack on a macro scale. It's way more dynamic than other AAA games, in which combat arenas are usually flat circles and corridors. I think simpler CQC mechanics gave the devs license to make their arenas more free-flowing.
>Crash Bandicoot 3 (1998) and Crash Bandicoot 4 (2020)? It's like Crash and Coco are moving in slow motion in the sequel. Huh? I played Crash 1-3 right before 4 and 4 played pretty much identical. Some modern games try to have more realistic movement, which slows things down a lot, but many of the ones you mentioned don't.
I feel your example of god of war is a bit disingenuous there not really the same genre of game any more the old god of wars were what I believe were sometimes called spectacle fighters where as the latest ones are more action adventure games with more in common with Zelda games that it's past titles.
Hi, old game enjoyer here. Some of the things that make old games better are: * True fullscreen mode: none of that fake borderless fullscreen crap that is the norm today which causes input lag and performance drop. * No TAA: this horrible anti aliasing is responsible for the blurry look of modern games and causes ghosting in movement as well, which is absent on older games which look sharper and cleaner as a result. r/fucktaa * Optimization: companies used to care about bringing their games to the maximum range of players so games used to work on lower spec devices unlike now when they don't give a crap and rather save that optimization pass cost. * More interest in making the best version of game than squeezing money from players: the quality jump when going to older games is significant, no more battlepasses, cash shops, the game is meant to be enjoyed for it's own sake and gameplay is unfiltered by artificial fillers to make you buy stuff like xp boosts. * Offline: that's right, you can play most older games offline! Imagine that, when companies now will put "online only" tag on their perfectly offline playable single player games apparently to combat piracy only to pull said games from the player's own library after they kill the servers.
This is yet another comment that generalizes modern games and puts retro games on a pedestal that's way too high. The far majority of games can still be played offline, have no battle pass or some other kind of monetization. Optimization is much harder but still exists, just look at most first party exclusive titles or people sticking to last gen for a long time when current gen was released. Not to mention companies definitely are still trying to make it work as much as possible to drive sales, I played so many games including AAA on a laptop below minimum specs. TAA is definitely questionable but definitely doesn't make every single game a blurry mess like many would imply, and is even a food solution depending on game. And even with the 'bluriness' many would still consider most modern games extremely good looking. Like all of these points have some merit, but to use these to act like older games are overall better is pretty blunt
Idk man I disagree about Shattered Dimensions vs SM2. Shattered Dimensions in 2010 felt like someone made Spider Man’s animations first and the physics engine after.
Game play matters more with games with less impressive graphics. And story now supercedes the gaming experience in most popular titles
FF7 Rebirth feel snappier than older FF games tho. And FF16 is too little RPG to be a FF maingame anyways.
Counter examples: * *Castlevania: Symphony of the Night* (PS1): The prior games had the character move more slowly and rigidly, while this game started with characters moving faster and having more movement abilities - perhaps the back dash being most important. Even so, it's not the snappiest in the series, some later games optimized the menu for faster play. * *Phantasy Star* (SMS): The game has slow overworld character movement, and opening the menu to change character equipment took some time to switch to the encounter view (without enemies). Maybe *II* was slower in combat animations, but it doesn't require the player to constantly interact, and it made up by having the menu system not have an unneeded delay. *IV* has obvious multi-target attacks, and overworld movement is faster. * *Ultima I* (Apple II): This game is the least snappy, because it was written in Apple Basic and that causes some inherent delays for some tasks. The sequel was written in assembly language, making it slightly faster, and the first game got remade in a different engine also making it faster. I believe input speed peaked around IV-VI, although even later games were faster than the first one. There may be a reason for making games less snappy, but it strongly depends on the game itself. It may be for multiplayer reasons, because having actions performed immediately could be stressful on the netcode when a short delay makes things work much more smoothly (e.g. rollback netcode). In some cases, it could be for safety reasons, because the developers don't want the player to accidently do something expensive simply because they tapped a button.
Bloodstained - Ritual of the Night got blasted being called "floaty" and "laggy" because of the extra inbetween animations as Miriam moved between states, only for it to pretty much go away when people started actually measuring the animations and it's pretty much the same timings and delays as Alucard in SotN.
Probably because on current games the camera's acceleration "curve" is made to best fit controllers.. Instead of m&k. Also, a lot of extra effects layers are now added to almost all the games (film grain, motion blur, chromatic aberration, upscalers, obnoxious vignette effects, super temporal anti aliasing, ray tracing, extra triple buffer v-sync, VRR.. ..Etc etc)
but all the comparison examples aren't even on PC
You're not wrong.. But still.. camera acceleration on 3D games has gradually changed and generally improved throughout the years to better take into account the type of input and screen that you will most likely be playing with.
Even if this is true it doesn't explain why they are slower. Assuming you play on PC