Game Feel (Gaming)

by cheapLEY , Monday, November 25, 2019, 19:08 (1613 days ago) @ Cody Miller

This is something I’ve been thinking about recently, too, after playing Jedi Fallen Order. That game feels slightly off in many ways in regards to player moment. Coming from Titanfall and Apex Legends, which both feel very fluid, the player character in Fallen Order feels very stiff in comparison. For instance, wall running can only be done on very specific walls, and it feels like watching a scripted quick time sequence play out rather than an aspect of gameplay that requires any sort of skill to execute or allowing any sort of player creativity and problem solving.

Everything in that game feels disconnected from the player in some way. Instead of feeling like I’m doing something, I feel like I’m telling the character to do something then watching him do it. It’s a game that reminds me that I’m playing a video game at every turn.

Death Stranding, on the other hand, feels great. I never feel like I’m watching a canned set of animations play out, but rather feel like I’m just seeing Sam react to the environment around him in a natural way.

VR is really tricky when it comes to feeling correct. First person VR games, especially. Things have to be basically perfect, otherwise we just instinctively know that they’re off. If you pick something up and it doesn’t behave as we know it should, it’s much more noticeable than the same thing happening on a normal screen. If the motion doesn’t match what we’re doing perfectly, it’s never going to feel right. It can’t be faked in the same way that a normal game can.