Wednesday, September 02, 2009

combos with guns

Could a combo system somewhat similar to Arkham Asylum's be designed for a shooter game? Is it impossible to mix combos into FPS games?

I think it's possible, though a solution isn't obvious. Nothing comes immediately to mind, so I'm going to leave the question out there while I think of how to do it. Any ideas?

3 comments:

  1. Not sure if a "combo" would make sense for a gun. Melee combos usually just exist to give extra Cool Factor attacks. For me, anyway, ranged Cool Factor usually involves environmental interactivity. Can I shoot out the light bulb? Is enemy vision impaired if I do so? Can I shoot the cable and drop boiling oil on this group of enemies? If I shoot this red barrel, will it cause a huge explosion? And so forth. I'll include AI in there too. I think for me the perfect shooter (assuming all other aspects are solid) would have AI that would give fairly realistic behavior for military enemies, and the various types of panic we see in the Crackdown/GTA/Saint's Row games for civilians (enemies or not) rather than the "trained military army" enemies who just stand there and let me pick them off.

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  2. True, interaction with the environment is usually more dynamic and important in shooters. But such interaction can exist in melee and magic games as well -- it's just less common. AI is also important. It would be more vital in melee games if melee combat controls involved near the subtlety of aiming and dodging in shooters.

    When I think of combos, the first thing that comes to mind is an unbroken stream of actions. It's the idea that you can pull off all these actions before the enemy has a chance to react. So in a shooter game, that could mean a steady stream of shots without misses.

    The results of shooter combos could be special animations (both how the player-character shoots and how the enemy is effected), ala Arkham Asylum. But linking together shots isn't as easy as linking together melee blows. A special system would be needed... and I wouldn't want much of a game to be in slow-motion.

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  3. Heh up until your last sentence I was going to say "what about the slow-mo stuff in FEAR2?"

    I'm actually going to pick that game up tomorrow night; the AGE guys are wanting to try a MP session on Monday.

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