The other night I was playing MGO3 (another 4.5 hours logged, on top of ~160 for the main game), when I found myself simply running up and down the length of the hub world between matches.
Just running up and down the river valley. Climbing rocks, sliding down slopes, weaving between trees. Sloshing through water, diving into foliage. Barrel-rolling through the dust. Shooting targets in quick succession while lying on my stomach or back. Segueing from a comfy stroll to a steady jog to a thundering sprint. Diving into a crawl, my body fitting the lay of the land like a glove.
I think I did this for 15 minutes. Normally I'd be bored of a game by now (and I wish I was -- I want to free myself up for Super Mario Maker, Transformers Devastation and Yoshi's Wooly World), but everything just feels so good. The mere act of movement is a pleasure in itself. Just running around Jade Forest, I'm wholly entertained, like hopping around Peach's Castle in Super Mario 64.
For me, MGSV is the game that finally nails the perfect balance between solidity/weight and fluidity/responsiveness in a third-person action title. It doesn't have any of the "wide turn" wobbliness that makes turning or walking feel clumsy or inelegant in other realistic games. Every movement feels tight and precise, and yet still conveys the heft you'd want from such a detailed visual expression.
You can feel each footstep, firmly planted in the ground. When you sprint, you feel like a force of nature, 200+ pounds of muscle and equipment chewing up the scenery. When you dive, you feel the impact of that weight crashing into the earth. When you crawl, it feels very deliberate, every inch of your body hugging the earth. It just feels right. There's a real friction, a sense you exist in this 3D space.
The best part is how you can turn on a dime. So many realistic games make your character turn with a wide arc, over-animating their gait, but in MGSV your character simply turns around in place, right away, on the spot. And it still looks realistic. It doesn't break immersion or lose character.
Yes, there are times when the context sensitivity causes you to, say, cling to rails in Mother Base when you're just trying to go upstairs. A minor nuisance, but that's not what this is about. This is about the general feel of movement -- the feedback you get from simply existing in the world and moving through it. The sense of immediacy and athleticism from pushing forward on the stick and traversing the world.
We've come a long way since the days of Nico Bellic in GTA4 and his drunken inability to walk a straight line. Many titles overcompensate for this by making your character sluggish instead. But MGSV gets it right. It might have the best feel yet for a realistic third-person game.
What's your current "gold standard" for this?
Just running up and down the river valley. Climbing rocks, sliding down slopes, weaving between trees. Sloshing through water, diving into foliage. Barrel-rolling through the dust. Shooting targets in quick succession while lying on my stomach or back. Segueing from a comfy stroll to a steady jog to a thundering sprint. Diving into a crawl, my body fitting the lay of the land like a glove.
I think I did this for 15 minutes. Normally I'd be bored of a game by now (and I wish I was -- I want to free myself up for Super Mario Maker, Transformers Devastation and Yoshi's Wooly World), but everything just feels so good. The mere act of movement is a pleasure in itself. Just running around Jade Forest, I'm wholly entertained, like hopping around Peach's Castle in Super Mario 64.
For me, MGSV is the game that finally nails the perfect balance between solidity/weight and fluidity/responsiveness in a third-person action title. It doesn't have any of the "wide turn" wobbliness that makes turning or walking feel clumsy or inelegant in other realistic games. Every movement feels tight and precise, and yet still conveys the heft you'd want from such a detailed visual expression.
You can feel each footstep, firmly planted in the ground. When you sprint, you feel like a force of nature, 200+ pounds of muscle and equipment chewing up the scenery. When you dive, you feel the impact of that weight crashing into the earth. When you crawl, it feels very deliberate, every inch of your body hugging the earth. It just feels right. There's a real friction, a sense you exist in this 3D space.
The best part is how you can turn on a dime. So many realistic games make your character turn with a wide arc, over-animating their gait, but in MGSV your character simply turns around in place, right away, on the spot. And it still looks realistic. It doesn't break immersion or lose character.
Yes, there are times when the context sensitivity causes you to, say, cling to rails in Mother Base when you're just trying to go upstairs. A minor nuisance, but that's not what this is about. This is about the general feel of movement -- the feedback you get from simply existing in the world and moving through it. The sense of immediacy and athleticism from pushing forward on the stick and traversing the world.
We've come a long way since the days of Nico Bellic in GTA4 and his drunken inability to walk a straight line. Many titles overcompensate for this by making your character sluggish instead. But MGSV gets it right. It might have the best feel yet for a realistic third-person game.
What's your current "gold standard" for this?
