... and I would walk/run/drive/fly/grapple/teleport 500 miles - by Thirith
Thirith on 10/4/2017 at 10:01
I'm currently playing Mirror's Edge Catalyst as well as Gravity Rush (the PS4 remaster), two games that are very much about modes of traversal; most of the fun in both of these games comes from the way they allow you to engage with the places they create through movement. In MEC's case, that's freerunning, while in Gravity Rush you can change the direction gravity works for you, so you can fall into the sky, reverse gravity, run along the side of a building or the underside of a floating isle.
I love games largely for the spaces they create, so traversal is often central to the games I enjoy most (though not always - I enjoy RPGs, but while they tend to create grand worlds, traversal is rarely one of their best parts). Which is why I was wondering what games people here like best for the way they let you move through them, whether that is by plane, train, automobile, horse, broomstick or split-toe running shoes. I'll start with some of my own favourites:
* Mirror's Edge (both games): the freerunning isn't perfect, but when it works, I love it. When I'm in the zone, I feel like ME is one of the best games ever. And then something happens to break the flow and I bitch and curse the game - but next time I'm in the zone and hear the sound of Faith's breathing and her feet on the ground, and I'm in love with the game again, for those moments of perfection.
* GTA: San Andreas: I've enjoyed movement in most GTA games, but my favourite moments are when I'm on a bike in Los Santos, just racing through the 'hoods, or when I've grabbed a Vespa-alike and zoom around San Fierro's hills.
* Arma (mainly A2 and Operation Arrowhead): I liked helicopters in the Arma games from the beginning, but I came to love them when I got a TrackIR. With headtracking, I very much enjoy just flying around; I made myself several missions consisting of nothing other than ferrying soldiers from one place to another. Getting better at flying helicopters is great fun. I'd love to do more of this in actual combat missions, but I suspect I'd be shot down very quickly. (I might have to create a couple of small-scale missions along these lines to fulfill that wish.)
I'm sure that the moment I post this I'll think of a dozen other, better examples, but this is mainly to get the ball rolling.
Sulphur on 10/4/2017 at 10:36
Heh, when I saw the thread title I thought it was going to be about Just Cause. Just Cause 3 does about everything named in it (yes, including teleporting).
I've always liked platformers for the sense of zen-like flow they can put you in, where you're interpreting environments as you race through them on the fly, chaining movement and action in lockstep to execute perfectly timed loops of acrobatic grace.
Mirror's Edge 1 was the first game to make me actually dread falling, because the sound of the wind whistling past your ears followed by the visceral *thunk* of a body meeting asphalt followed by a black screen translated my mild real-world acrophobia into a palpable heart-skip in-game.
Anyway, Just Cause 3 does movement in just about the least realistic fashion possible (rivalled only by Saints Row 4), which is why I love it. It's very Mediterranean (a given for a placed called Medici), so there's lots of sparkling blue ocean and azure sky, verdant forests, and towns and cities built into the sides of sloping cliffs. It's beautiful and bland all at the same time.
Where the game is excellent, though, is in letting you use its infamous grapple to soar into the air and then deploy your parachute to float over to where you want to go; it's a game in itself piecing together the environment to get to the nearest bit of land that can pull you up to a higher altitude, until you're scraping the side of a mountain.
'course, if that bores you, you can just press Y on your gamepad and deploy your wingsuit to skim over the surface of the Earth. And yes, you can use the grapple to pick up speed, but only if you time and angle it correctly -- if you don't, it's essentially death by headbutting the ground at terminal velocity.
The cars and boats and planes handle like they're made of lead, of course, but they're fun enough for the few minutes you need to get enough speed before jumping off to zoom through the landscape like a human bullet.
There's DLC that straps a jetpack onto your back and lets you essentially become a human bomber, complete with machine gun and recharging guided missiles. It's more of a cheat, but it's just another option to let loose, and the game's explosions would make even Michael Bay weep at the sight of it all.
All in all, it's a good game to just faff around in and waste time engaging with the interlocking systems for half an hour, while maybe destroying things to unlock the next main mission. The meat of it for me isn't actually shooting all the things, it's the experience of being a tourist on fast-forward.
Thirith on 10/4/2017 at 10:48
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Mirror's Edge 1 was the first game to make me actually dread failing, because the sound of the wind whistling past your ears followed by the visceral *thunk* of a body meeting asphalt followed by a black screen translated my mild real-world acrophobia into a palpable heart-skip in-game.
They removed that *thunk* in
Mirror's Edge Catalyst. If it could be modded back in, I'd do so in a heartbeat. It's exactly that visceral full stop of a sound that's missing for me. At the very least I wish they'd made it optional, but I guess it was considered *too* visceral.
I should probably check out
Just Cause 3 at some point, but I didn't particularly enjoy the second game. It was good, but I didn't *love* it; so often, the more sandboxy a game is, the less it pulls me in.
One other note about traversal in games: I've found that games where I enjoy movement get even better if they offer coop. Driving somewhere in a car with my coop mates in
GTA V was always more enjoyable than just driving there in SP, even if I was just sitting in the back, enjoying the scenery and the banter. The long drives at the beginning of a mission did get a bit old after a while, mind you.
Malf on 10/4/2017 at 11:57
While I bitched and moaned about Breath of the Wild over Mumble to the TTLG co-op crew on Saturday, its decision to let you climb anywhere right from the get-go is incredibly liberating. Similarly, the early acquisition of a glider to traverse long distances (after climbing to high locations), is great. It gets a lot of other stuff wrong, but these two things it gets very, very right.
New Doom's fast-mantle and double-jumping make that game a joy to play, and as with most id games, just feels right (even though the mantling very occasionally fails).
And then Shadow Warrior 2 goes to the extreme, with sprints, double-jumps, charges and combinations of all three, all with air-control to boot. Removing all reality from movement in much the same way that Saints Row IV and Prototype did really makes for some fun.
I'll always love the swinging in the 3D Bionic Commando. While it could be frustrating initially, once you got the hang of it, it was incredibly rewarding, and the lethality of the combat on the higher difficulty levels required you master the swinging in order to become a hard target to hit.
Of course, another game that's all about movement is the rather spiffy Clustertruck, which is like a more formalised version of Quake 3's Defrag mod. Death-defying, physics-breaking, time-critical jumps from truck-to-truck, where the ground or anything else not a truck is death.
And yeah, Quake 3's movement will always have a special place in my heart, especially when it came to OSP's Clan Arena mode, where falling and self-damage were removed, promoting insane, rocket-jump propelled combat. Double, even triple rocket-jumps were common place as you'd zip around the levels. While e-sports are dominated by things like Starcraft, Overwatch and Rocket League these days, I always thought some of the best "Cyber-athletes" were the De-Frag experts. I can spend hours watching the balletic movements of these guys in videos like (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vouYkAiBCE) Maze - Hud.
Ooo, and I've just remembered that I like any game that gives me a degree of control while sliding down a slope, such as skidding down mountains in Witcher 3, shield-surfing in Breath of the Wild and snowboarding in 1080° on the N64. I spent HOURS in the half-pipe stunt mode of that game.
demagogue on 10/4/2017 at 12:13
I like GTAV and Skyrim for this.
On Mirror's Edge, that you feeling you describe is why I spent so much time doing speed runs, just so I could hone that perfect flow so I could maintain it over a whole race. Feels good, man.
Malf on 10/4/2017 at 12:37
Ooo, Dying Light too!
When that flows right, it's great. Nowhere near as detailed a Parkour model as Mirror's Edge, but still very fun. Plus, grappling hooks!
Weasel on 10/4/2017 at 13:49
There's an indy game called Windlands that is pretty much all about traversal. You have two grapple arms, making it kind of a Spider-Man simulator in first person. There's also crazy running and wall-jumping, with plenty of moments that made my toes curl and my hands sweat.
I've only played it in VR, which is a whole other level of awesome! It does support regular screens as well, but anyone who likes traversal should definitely give VR (in general) a try.
Renault on 10/4/2017 at 14:41
Malf beat me to it on Breath of the Wild, but I'll 2nd the motion - it's really cool being able to climb any obstacle/terrain in the game, right from the start. Just think if you could do that in Skyrim. And paragliding is super fun, in addition to being a great way to get around.
This thread made me think of two other games, Infamous and Crackdown, which are big and open world, and the player has various ways through powers and tools to get across the city quickly via the rooftops and streets. I own some of them, haven't played either one extensively, but after just now watching some Infamous vids on youtube, it make me want to fire it up again.
Thirith on 10/4/2017 at 15:09
Quote Posted by Weasel
There's an indy game called Windlands that is pretty much all about traversal. You have two grapple arms, making it kind of a Spider-Man simulator in first person. There's also crazy running and wall-jumping, with plenty of moments that made my toes curl and my hands sweat.
I've only played it in VR, which is a whole other level of awesome! It does support regular screens as well, but anyone who likes traversal should definitely give VR (in general) a try.
I've got it, and I should play more of it, but so far I've mainly found that I suck at being an off-brand Spiderman. Every time I've played
Windlands, I ended up dangling at the bottom of a tree. It's the whole staying in motion thing that I haven't figured out how to do yet; perhaps it's that I hang on too long, rather than letting go when I'm at the highest point.
McTaffer on 10/4/2017 at 15:24
Dishonored and its sequel both have a movement system that feels really good, especially with the mobility upgrades blinking around is always fun, and even after the novelty wears off it's still incredibly useful as a stealth or escape tool.
Portal and Portal 2 also feel great, especially since they have momentum down pretty well. The fact that you don't ever die from fall damage makes it even better since it means that you're never really consgrained by the thought of "will this stupid and dangerous stunt get me killed?"
I'm also a fan of TG's movement, although it's mainly because of the quirks of the early Dark Engine. The bunnyhopping is ridiculous, and in places like the Little Big world you can practically break the sound barrier if your timing's good enough. Also, with NewDark (this applies to T2 as well), the mantling feels more like stealthy climbing around and less like throwing yourself at a wall with all the grace of a wet sack of cement. Rope arrows are always great too, but that pretty much goes without saying.
