Posted 10 October 2010 - 09:46 AM
Kinect!??? Motion control is the worst idea in history, and Kinect is the single worst offender. By all accounts the hardware doesn't even work reliably, it has no application beyond a few kiddy minigames (just like the Wii) and the whole idea could never, ever be used in anything approaching a real game. Technology has an innate need to move on and advance, and since the current state of hardware hasn't given way to new consoles like usual we're getting all these abnormal mutations like motion control. If they'd unveiled anything like this any other time they'd be laughed out of the market, it's only becuase things are so stagnant that people give it the time of day. The Wii has slipped right off the bottom of the sales charts now the novelty's worn off. Nobody cared about move, or the PSeye. Something that's twice the price and half the depth isn't going to well. Controls will move forward when they use less movement, not bigger ones.
Anyway, I disagree that innovation is tied to tech level. Anyone with an imagination can offer at least something new. Controllers these days have analogue triggers, why not have an FPS when your gun is realistically idle by your side by default, and can be raised and held lightly by holding light pressure on the trigger, increasing pressure to tighten aim, which slows movement. It also lets you make the 'look' controls nice and loose by lowering the gun, which normally would affect aiming, and is a new way of looking at they system which eleminates the robotic nature of FPS controls. Or incorporating a Heavy Rain type combat mechanic into games like Blood Stone, so incoming attacks are mapped to certain buttons you have to quickly counter as appropriate to where the attak comes from (i.e left for left are, right for right, promps mapped over the incoming enemy limb, like HR, not a straight QTE, so it stays in-world) so you have to respond realistically as a combat trained agent would? Both could work and be easily implemented (modern shooters don't even use the analogue shoulder buttons). Or counting ammo in clips rather than bullets, so if you load a new clip you lose the remaining bullets in it, giving reloading a realistically tactical element. See? Coming up with something new, even if it's not genre defining, isn't impossible. COD did no more than the above suggest and it defined the genre for a generation.
