Yeah, I have to agree that I hate when the cameramen from COPS decide to be outsourced to shooting sequences in video games. I think it supposed to be about immersion, but it is more about motion sickness. When the main character is running down a hall, and the camera sways back and forth to simulate the motion of running, isn't it redundant? We already know the character is running, we don't need some third party to show the effect that running has on a person's point of view. All it does, if anything, is contribute to the "idea" (I use the term loosely here) that someone with an artistic edge thinks it makes the scene more dramatic. Perhaps if you drew the viewer in with a more interesting story, you wouldn't need to resort to some hack camera work trope to draw attention to something.
In RE5, I get that it was to build intensity to a moment of escape. It helped to play to the moment of being pursued by zombies and whatnot. When a camera is in a third person position behind the character in a "chase cam" situation, a la COPS, it doesn't make it believable that the camera would sway since we all know this is just a digital environment wherein there was never a camera operator on scene. If anything, it takes you more out of the moment in making it seem any more real.
Now in the situation where the camera is placed in first person perspective, it makes more (if not the most) sense to convey a certain emotion through the angle of the lens since we can't see any reactions from the character and are left to our own imaginations. When the writers purposely withhold plot information for the sake of character development, we don't always understand why a character would react the way they do without knowing the whole story upfront, which is (hopefully) the purpose behind why we are playing the game. Games such as GoW that fall into the hack-n-slash category shouldn't fall prey to the COPS cam since you only see those kinds of angles in a movie (if that is where they are drawing on the influence) during a chase scene or moment of intense combat which should last less than a minute to showcase some single special moment. Peppering a game with random moments of a camera placed on a dolly with a broken wheel don't make your game seem any more interesting to person playing it, they just tend to lose focus on whatever the hell it is you want us to pay attention to until you FINALLY pan around and lock on to it. Whipping the view around to make it seem more realistic or interesting just has the opposite effect.
Take for instance the game Gears of War. When you have the character run, the camera gets blurry and moves from side to side to simulate the action through the visual medium presented. So why the hell is it when the character runs, he suffers from tunnel vision at the same time? Moments like that make me wish that virtual reality had become the more dominant technology over three dimensions because at least you had the freedom to turn your head and change the view yourself instead of the programmer locking the camera to show off whatever film school influence they had or wish they had. Static angles help more to establish environments and mood than your gonzo line of sight tricks.
In RE5, I get that it was to build intensity to a moment of escape. It helped to play to the moment of being pursued by zombies and whatnot. When a camera is in a third person position behind the character in a "chase cam" situation, a la COPS, it doesn't make it believable that the camera would sway since we all know this is just a digital environment wherein there was never a camera operator on scene. If anything, it takes you more out of the moment in making it seem any more real.
Now in the situation where the camera is placed in first person perspective, it makes more (if not the most) sense to convey a certain emotion through the angle of the lens since we can't see any reactions from the character and are left to our own imaginations. When the writers purposely withhold plot information for the sake of character development, we don't always understand why a character would react the way they do without knowing the whole story upfront, which is (hopefully) the purpose behind why we are playing the game. Games such as GoW that fall into the hack-n-slash category shouldn't fall prey to the COPS cam since you only see those kinds of angles in a movie (if that is where they are drawing on the influence) during a chase scene or moment of intense combat which should last less than a minute to showcase some single special moment. Peppering a game with random moments of a camera placed on a dolly with a broken wheel don't make your game seem any more interesting to person playing it, they just tend to lose focus on whatever the hell it is you want us to pay attention to until you FINALLY pan around and lock on to it. Whipping the view around to make it seem more realistic or interesting just has the opposite effect.
Take for instance the game Gears of War. When you have the character run, the camera gets blurry and moves from side to side to simulate the action through the visual medium presented. So why the hell is it when the character runs, he suffers from tunnel vision at the same time? Moments like that make me wish that virtual reality had become the more dominant technology over three dimensions because at least you had the freedom to turn your head and change the view yourself instead of the programmer locking the camera to show off whatever film school influence they had or wish they had. Static angles help more to establish environments and mood than your gonzo line of sight tricks.
