The stupidity inherent in video games

[unixronin]

Stupid inconsistencies in video games annoy me.

Take Halo, for example.  It's, god knows, the 35th Century or something, we have faster-than-light starships that can jump across significant parts of the galaxy in weeks, we have fully self-aware AIs on a chip, we have cyborgs in powered battle armor with built-in energy shields, ... but that powered battle armor doesn't have night vision?  Come ON.

This is a common thread in almost every shooter.  (The only exception I'm personally aware of is Ghost Recon.)  Either there is no night vision gear, or there's night vision gear but its batteries last 30 to 45 seconds and then it has to recharge for 2-4 minutes.  As game detail, it's pathetically lame, and as a gameplay device, it's a cop-out at best.  Fer crissakes, we had working, usable night vision gear forty years ago in Vietnam.  It's still chic in many circles to look down our noses at Russian military hardware, but if any Russian equipment designer had dared to offer the Russian military night vision gear that crappy, they would have stood him up against a wall and shot him.

(Naturally, the darkness never impedes the attacking enemies in the least.)

Come on, game designers.  We're talking present-day-to-futuristic here, not THAG BASH THINGS WITH ROCK.  Give it a rest and join the 1990s at least.  If the only way you can achieve the game balance you want is to leave the player stumbling around in the dark, squinting into the monitor trying to see anything more than six feet in front of him, you have failed at game design.

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Comments

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

To some respect, playing an FPS is already like playing with NVGs on.

In real life, my field of view is extremely large. I can make big, almost random changes in orientation and never lose track of where I am, because I've seen enough of the world to have a mental picture assembled even of the things I haven't looked directly at yet. This is a phenomenally cool evolved capability for hunting.

Put on NVGs, though, and your field of vision gets reduced by at least half. Peripheral vision? What's that? Subconscious auto-orientation in surroundings? Nah.

One of the reasons I really dislike outdoor FPSes is for any realistic portrayal of terrain, the number of places someone can hide is so large, and the amount of territory you can see is so small, that to spot any sniper would require divine intervention. If you can see the sniper, then the game fails its realism check. If you can't, then the game fails its playability check.

[luke-jaywalker.livejournal.com]

The usual workaround with snipers - see, Crysis - is to have NPC ones able to seriously hurt you (say, 50% of your full health), but never a one-shot kill unless you're already significantly weakened.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Very true. Though on the latter point, I think Ghost Recon strikes a very workable balance. It can be very hard at times to tell where you're taking fire from.

[databeast.livejournal.com]

most PC game engines will actually allow you to go to console, and set the field-of-view yourself.. usuability of results not guaranteed..

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

well, SOME PC game engines will. But that's still not at all the same. The closest you can get is three or more widescreen monitors in a wrap-around configuration, if you have a game and a video card that supports such a configuration.

[databeast.livejournal.com]

hence the 'usability' remark

3x monitors would be pretty awesome.. one of these days I'll get to try that out