Gaming Give Me Back My Water Wings

Sprinting, shooting, jumping, punching. Name any human action verb, and you'll probably find it simulated reasonably well in a game somewhere. Unless, of course, it's swimming.

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/gaming/2010/12/22/give-me-back-my-water-wings/

 

The thing is, for most game settings, swimming isn't really adding anything to the gameplay.

 

Tomb raider has done swimming fine from day 1

slow moving but exploring of caves not knowing if you will survive for air

 

Meh, I agree with the point that if a game isn't going to do anything good in the water, they are better off just making it completely impossible, but I really don't think there have never been any good swimming or underwater sequences.

This is exactly the kind of thinking that leads to boring COD clones. Something doesn't have to be action-packed to be good gaming, i don't think i hae to elaborate on that point.

Water (and especially under-water) sequences can be very interesting or cool, because all the rules are different. You can make cool puzzles underwater, have cool fully three dimensional submarine battles, not to mention how gorgeous and mysterious things can look underwater.
Instead of trying to do the things that are good on land, game developers should work on doing things that are good in water, and to a certain extent, they do.
You mention the original Mario, which i think is a perfect example. Obviously it wasn't a very immersive realistic experience, but they DID take advantage of the different workings of gravity under water to mix up the gameplay a bit.

 

oh and to add to that why does everything have to be actioned packed, Mortal online has a very realistic swimming style but have included caves underwater to explore.

you can only really explore these caves if you have learnt the required set of swimming skills combine that with the fact that when you die you literally lose everything it can make for some tense moments

if you want action go back to linear games such as COD im sure they would do it well but frankly that type of game doesnt interest me

 

I approve of this article.

I have never, ever enjoyed swimming in a game. I would always sigh when I had to work through a water level of Mario, and the classic Sonic games. Although well done, I didn't even really enjoy the water levels in Tomb Raider (although, if she had and oxygen tank thus removing the time limit, I might have) In GTA 4, I would never dip into water to escape the police, I'd have rather just been caught.

I think the only underwater game I enjoyed was Echo the Dolphin....

 

I liked the swimming levels in the first and second donkey kong country games.

 

Also, did anyone ever play Treasures of the Deep? Swimming was great in that, the game had currents to ride and calm area's of ocean to explore, as well as caves and underwater bases. Though, it was really a game about having a kick ass submarine, the fact that you could get out and swim around in almost every level except a few that posed huge risks to your divers life, was kind of a neat thing.

 

Eco the dolphin, early Mario titles, and NES version of Jaws were the only games I enjoyed swimming in.

Crysis is the only game I swam in when I wasn't forced to just because it was pretty, but I often grew very bored of it.

 

World of Warcraft, you can swim, and indeed have to in plenty of places

Of course, you just move the forward arrow, and when you enter water, you swim automagically, there's no need to "tread water" or stuff like that, so I guess while the animation is good, its still kinda basic.

 

Ezio Auditore in Assassin’s Creed 2.... oh yeah, that one bloody megacombo jumping level where when you failed, you had to swim back to the starting point, restart the mechanism and do the whole thing again.... Aaaargh, i was stuck here for long .

 

A buddy and I spent two hours doing nothing but swimming in Mortal Online.

It's a badge of honor in my gaming career. Paddling along the coastline desperately trying to maintain full speed without drowing (possible in this game) because we jumped off a cliff like idiots. Ended up swimming so far we reached a city we didn't even know existed.

There are some games which just need the swimming to feel right! But agreed, when it's not needed it should be avoided.

 

Ugh, no. I would much rather suffer the possibility I might end up enduring some tedious swimming rather than to have every game dev have to design their games so that there's no water. Or use stupid solutions like in GTA III.

If you just can't stand that not every moment of your game is guaranteed to be action packed, just play CoD all the time. Some of us like games where there's downtime, and exploring, and such. It creates atmosphere/immersion and makes the action parts all the more meaningful.

Seriously, what's with these articles? Bit-tech sure has some backwards-looking ideas about gaming. It seems like it's always about what features and possibilities they'd like REMOVED to simplify and streamline games, rather than ADDING additional choices and potential.

 

Age of Conan does swimming fine I think. Atleast it looks good and realistic.

 

Aquaria has swimming too (well, only swimming !)

 

Sigh.

 

Cant believe Just Cause 2 wasnt mentioned in this. Actually the first game that made swimming a bit of fun caus you could use the grapple hook to get out anywhere along land, plus so many boats ment you where never stuck doing it too long.

 

or tomb raider underworld

 

Half Life and offspring did a solid job with water. Often, it was part of a puzzle or something where you had to do it in a certain manner so as to not run out of air.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein had some great swimming aspects. One multiplayer map in particularly was really cool because there was a submarine pen that you had to defend.It was a big atrium with catwalks and a pool with a submarine in the center. The other team could attack from the hallways, or swim through a tunnel under the submarine and then come up around it. You could sneak up that way, but you moved slow in water so you were a sitting duck, and only the pistol fired underwater so it spiced up the gameplay.

There can be issues, though. GTA swimming sucked. There wasn't really anything you could do while swimming. The only time I'd ever go in the water was if I wanted to steal a boat or something like that. Boating was kinda fun, but swimming wasn't. IMO the only reason to incorporate it was because they had water, and there were boats, so you needed a way to get to them.

There can also be weird/buggy water. Certain TF2 levels allow you to build sentry guns underwater, which is just ridiculous.

Water can be a fun element if it's done well and if it's pertinent to the gameplay. If they add another element to it, like using the HL2 boat thingy or solving underwater puzzles, then it can be fun. If they just have swimming for the sake of swimming, it gets pretty boring.

 

Its fine in a few games and I quite liked it in Farcry as a way to sneak up on people.

In Saints Row 2 you can just press triangle to 'warp to shore' when you're nearby so there is no faff of finding a slope to walk out onto. Just another reason why Saints Row > GTA