I’m going to rant about 3D. In two different ways. Stick with me.
1) I think 3 D ruins some games. I remember when all games were 2D, then I remember the first isometric RTS games. (In fact arguably the first was ant attack). Moving the camera in isometric games was easy. When they introduced a limited 4-way rotate to the genre, that got darned confusing. Then came 3D. the first 3D RTS games sucked massively. Then we got mroe of them, and they sucked a bit less. In my limietd opinion the two that do it well are Total War and Company Of heroes. I think COH is better. Why? Neither game makes me waste half my gameplay moving the camera around.
I have a pal who has problems with 3D cameras. Real bad ones. he can’t play an FPS. He can kick my ass big time at CoH. He has tried Men of war, but literally prefers CoH because you can’t rotate the camera by default in CoH. I agree. Watch a video of Eve online and note how much time the player is fucking around with the camera. I played a 3D space RTS recently to try it out, and got sick of the 3D antics. I’m a human, not a bird. I percieve 3D but I’m not good at planning movement in it. I bet there are planets of bird people where Homeworld and Descent are the top 2 games.
BTW I *can* handle 3D in a game. I can kick ass at Call of Duty. I just don’t like a game to be all about the third dimension in terms of planning. Most mass market usable games operate in 2D. They use 3D graphics to draw an effectviely 2D world, with 2D gameplay. Descent and Homeworld were 3D, also flight sims. Not much else. Portal I guess?
2) When i said I perceive 3D, thats true. But it’s also a lie. I suffer from this. Stereo Blindness. It means two things:
- I can’t see through binoculars easily
- Avatar was dull.
Actually avatar was ok, but not earth shattering. I can see a vague slight 3dness to it every 20 minutes or so, but that’s it. I REALLY hope this isn’t the future of movies. If so, I’ll have to keep my money. Paying extra to have to wear dorky glasses to watch a movie in 2D is not my idea of progress. If people think we will all buy new TV’s for this, they are dead wrong. I went ot a demo at blitz games kindly given by the excellent oliver brothers on 3D gaming. Sadly, it looked 2D to me. Gutted. (On the other hand their engine is flipping awesome.)
Above all, I don’t like gimmicks driving artistic development. 3D might be good for the odd CGI film, but lets not default to it. It gets over-used and in the way. People with spears tend to point them self-conciously at the camera a lot. It makes film making even more expensive, and thus dumbed down and generic. (unobtainium? really?). Personally I would have taken every cent of the 3D budget and spent it on writers. Preferably Iain M Banks or Greg Bear, or anyone over the age of twelve, basically. I’m not convinced special effects or 3D have massively improved the long term quality of movies. In 50 years time will avatar be seen as a ‘must-see’ movie? I doubt it. Casablanca probably will still be, despite not even having color.
Sometimes it’s not all about the budget, or the tech.