Shaky Cam Games

[Kenji_03]

"So, if God of War is popular, it's because lots of people today are emo, selfish, self-hating, physically weak, sexist, responsibility-avoiding whiners who sympathize with Republican economic policies. You might say I'm reading too much into these things, but you have to admit it's definitely true that liking Resident Evil 5 makes you a racist."

Yep, totally hit the nail on the head. Even those of us who view ourselves as "better than the rest" in a George Carlin like manner have to admit that is (at the very least) who we were if not are today.

Insightful for me and I appreciate the thoughtful analysis instead of random ranting.

 

[Gyrefalcon]

i did not enjoy cloverfield.

I wanted to but it made me yak and I was just getting over a flu bug. I'd love a good monster movie or game that doesn't feel it needs to apologize for being what it is.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Other than the shaky cam being used is stupid in Castlevania: LoS, I also think there was another part of the camera I thought was silly. Like when you are in a snowy area or a rainy area, the camera gets little specks of snow or rain drops on it. That is just stupid and breaks the feel of being in the game. Why would you see these specks and drops? Is the game showing us that we are actually playing in a movie and we are watching it from the prospective of the cameraman, because they obviously didn't have cameras back then.

Moving on, I of course don't like shaky cam in anything, but I will also talk about something I would like to call swoosh cam. This is where you have two or more people talking and then when each one starts to say something, the camera quickly pans to the person starting to speak. I first started to notice this stupid form of camera work when I watched a random Battlestar Galactica episode that was on, because I was waiting for something else I wanted to see come on.

What depresses me is that one of my favorite television series, Stargate, with its new series, Universe, has adopted this way of filming from Battlestar, as well as the stupid soap opera like stories and relationships between crew members.

 

[ecoho]

"So, if God of War is popular, it's because lots of people today are emo, selfish, self-hating, physically weak, sexist, responsibility-avoiding whiners who sympathize with Republican economic policies." -Crosshaw

I very much like this theory, might explain why everyone also like zombie games, you picture yourself as the only person with a brain left to be eaten by the monstrous hordes of mall going consumers.

Also not strictly speaking a Republican policy, just popularized by them.

for the love of god can we all agree not to talk about politics because what ever you say there will be at least one person offened......

 

[eels05]

Your pop psychology sound pretty much spot on.
Haha thats pretty perceptive actually.

 

[zelyis]

I still don't see how Resident Evil 5 is racist. Most native Africans are black, people have known this for a long time.

 

[Atmos Duality]

You gather souls from enemies and use them to upgrade your combos and magic spells you learn along the way, and collect things that eventually make your health and magic bars bigger. Then at the end of it you kill whoever the local equivalent of Satan is.

You forgot Devil May Cry in that list. God of War is literally identical to it, minus the QTEs (so it's automatically better by default in my book.)
Replace "Magic Spells" with "Guns" or "Techniques", change the Gothic/Tower setting to a Greek setting and you really do have nearly the same game...

Now I'm wondering which game came first...

 

[Direwolf750]

it wasn't good in the Blaire Witch project, it isn't good now. dunno why it's getting popular

Because in an age of extreme indulgence, we frequently conflate 'crap' with authenticity and 'low budget' with 'artistic.'

I think Yahtzee may have summed up why I've never been enthralled by the GoW series. I just don't hate women enough.


>.>

You can be low budget and still be good, and you can TRY to be artistic and still be bad. If something is crap, an all too common excuse is that "it's artistic." no it isn't, it's still crap. And it was crap at the time too. The movie was shot in an age where engineers had FINALLY worked out how to make smooth motion cameras for filming, and they shot a bad movie using a hand-cam. Woo...

 

[ecoho]

Other than the shaky cam being used is stupid in Castlevania: LoS, I also think there was another part of the camera I thought was silly. Like when you are in a snowy area or a rainy area, the camera gets little specks of snow or rain drops on it. That is just stupid and breaks the feel of being in the game. Why would you see these specks and drops? Is the game showing us that we are actually playing in a movie and we are watching it from the prospective of the cameraman, because they obviously didn't have cameras back then.

Moving on, I of course don't like shaky cam in anything, but I will also talk about something I would like to call swoosh cam. This is where you have two or more people talking and then when each one starts to say something, the camera quickly pans to the person starting to speak. I first started to notice this stupid form of camera work when I watched a random Battlestar Galactica episode that was on, because I was waiting for something else I wanted to see come on.

What depresses me is that one of my favorite television series, Stargate, with its new series, Universe, has adopted this way of filming from Battlestar, as well as the stupid soap opera like stories and relationships between crew members.

lol yes so true but whats realy sad is they had a great following and great promise when it first started then SPLAT its battlestar Galatica with stargates....... what the hell?! i mean it would be one thing if they had this and atlantis airing but NO they have just this shit and reruns(which are soooo much better)."huff" ok rant over.

OT: shakey cammeras in games wouldnt be so bad if there was a reason for them to be shaky. For instance say your bleeding and your wobbly untill you get patched up or someone drugs your character but outside that kind of thing its just stupid.

BTW you have a realy funny avatar

 

[Sonic Doctor]

lol yes so true but whats realy sad is they had a great following and great promise when it first started then SPLAT its battlestar Galatica with stargates....... what the hell?! i mean it would be one thing if they had this and atlantis airing but NO they have just this shit and reruns(which are soooo much better)."huff" ok rant over.

OT: shakey cammeras in games wouldnt be so bad if there was a reason for them to be shaky. For instance say your bleeding and your wobbly untill you get patched up or someone drugs your character but outside that kind of thing its just stupid.

BTW you have a realy funny avatar

Thanks for the avatar compliment. Yes, Universe has become all relationships, all the time, the main plot and the aliens have be downgraded to side plots.

 

[lifestorm2]

But Kratos killed everyone in GoW3.

 

[MR.Spartacus]

i did not enjoy cloverfield.

Yeah. Too much time on unlikeable dip-shits that were obviously going to get killed off. I wonder why this is catching on. Didn't manhunt have it a bit. It was was just during the executions so I don't think it counts. Also Kane and Lynch two did it to cover the sub-par graphics. That plus they were completely out of ideas. I just hope this doesn't catch on. I'm not all that sure it will though, was K&L2 a "success"?

 

[The Cheezy One]

Cloverfield was actually really good, but the size of the monster wavers somewhat.

No it wasn't. It lacked something rather basic, an insignificant little thing I like to call "plot". I know, I know, that's a fairly old fashioned concept, but I'm old enough myself to have grown up with such things, so I miss them.

So you are saying my opinion is wrong? That is impossible, because my opinion is exclusive to me.
And it did have a plot. It may have been thin, but a plot is not necessary to enjoy a film. Sometimes, I'd rather watch something mindless than an intense psychological thriler.
Oh, and sarcasm does not make you automatically funnier.

 

[DenSomKastade]

The skate-games has pulled off the "shaky cam" quite good I think. They make the narrator the cameraman and everything is from the cameraman's camera point of view.

 

[Great North]

What? Freud? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH YAHTZEE?! Your uncomfortably close-to-home assumptions are so much worse than HIS uncomfortably close-to-home assumptions!

But really, the latter part of this article made me chuckle.

 

[CAPTCHA]

2) I'm also tired of these angsty, self-centred protagonists. It's not entirely new, either. While most 80s action heroes weren't angsty, they frequently needed a personal motivation to go after the bad guy. This was usually: the bad guy kills or kidnaps his girlfriend/wife, or more often, the bad guy kills or kidnaps his hetero life-partner. What's wrong with a protagonist who goes after the bad guy because it's his job? Or because it's the right thing to do? What shocks me most of all is this "personal agenda" crap predominates American fiction: somehow, writers from the country that was founded by a war fought over high-minded ideals can't conceive that anyone would fight for reasons other than personal ones. As much as space marine/WWII FPSes don't really appeal to me, at least most of those protagonists act out of higher ideals than themselves.

This is so prominant because it is the most popular version of the three act story structure. It's called Mythic story telling and almost always involved reluctant protagonists who are drawn into a conflict for personal reasons at the closing of the first act. Almost every game/movie/book with a story follows this method, from Saving Private Ryan to Star Wars. This method of story telling lends itself well to games because the three act structure offers a sense of progress as the stroy advances.

If you want a different type of story in a game you have to look at different formulas for telling them. Detective stories tell their story in reverse by uncovering past event and you can find this present in a few rare games out at the moment. Pheonix Wright for example. The other popular story telling method is called Epic structure. Epics have no real overarching story but follow the life and times of a person or place. Forest Gump is a good example of a movie that follows this method, but it doesn't covey well to games due to the absence of progress that makes Mythic structured storis work so well. Perhaps a few exist though. Animal Crossing could be considered an example of Epic story telling, but don't quote me on that since I've never played the game.

 

[Dectilon]

I feel that what DMC has over GOW is how you build a combo. GOW seems to be more of the style where if you start a certain combo you'll dang well finish it whereas DMC is more of a make-your-own-combo style game. I never did play 1, but at least in 3 and 4 it's all about switching quickly between weapons, canceling animations and timing hits to quickly dispatch even powerful enemies, whereas GOW has you slashing away with whatever move works best against each enemy and waiting for an attack to counter or roll away from.

 

[Elf Defiler Korgan]

Ah the last paragraph was great, a good lead-up and then the conclusion writes itself.

And shaky-cam is one of my most hated things in film. Disgusts me how this jarring-exercise in confusion took off.

 

[Dana22]

No.

Diablo is a Hack and Slash, God of War is an action-adventure.

 

[SiskoBlue]

Shaky-cam doesn't bother me. In fact it works really well on me.

I wonder if it's exposing a difference in people's types of perception. For example, there are people who can't really see 3D. Something in their visual development and genetic differences means their brains don't put two images to make 3D in the same way a majority of people do.

I remember reading that people have different impressions of their visual horizon. Some people as they walk along they see their central horizon as still and their peripheral horizon as going up and down. Whereas others see the central horizon going up and down. Or something like that.

This would explain why shaky-cam draws some people in (like me) but kicks others out of the experience (like Yahtzee) because that's not how they experience motion visually? Just a theory.

Couldn't agree more with his Umberto Eco "Textual Reader" analysis of the gamers motivations for playing "like God of War". Free reign to express the anger and frustration you're supposed to suppress in real life. You are given a worthwhile, personal cause when generally the anger and frustration comes from some vague notion of being disempowered and helpless. I'm not sure it represents misogyny as much as it represents that undefined western cultural view of "what a man is supposed to be." Capable, a protector, the action-orientated individual who doesn't take shit from anyone.

Lots of women like God of War too, so maybe we can stick with the general statement that people enjoy games that allow them to do things they're restricted from doing in real life.