Blogs Thoughts on Jumping

It is a lot more important than some people think. Whenever I fire up Dead Space after not playing it for a while I spend the first 5 mins trying to find the jump button before realising that there isn't one and in Crackdown I always jump right across the city even when driving would be quicker and simpler.

 

Take Marathon for example all three games didn't feature the jump button and you had to use the rocket jump technique to get past certain points in each. I don't know how many times I had to go back to a previous game save an redo a section so I had enough life left to perform a rocket jump without killing myself.

 

Although I appreciate jumping within a game, I just want it to be a bit more realistic: a six foot jump is a bit silly, but at the same time not being able to scale a waist-high box due to a more "realistic" jumping height is frustrating. Games such as GoW are the worst for this in that you can parkour to a certain degree, but if you're on a gentle switch-back your character cannot even fathom climbing a small fence or a two inch-high pile of dirt, leaving the player with a feeling less of immersion than that of an on-rails shooter. Dead Space is another game that deals with this in a very poor way with arbitrary limits to where you can walk and the inability to scale (through jumping or climbing) even the smallest of obstacles. This isn't even beginning to discuss my issues with excessive movement or course correction whilst aloft (some games get this right though, such as minor correction within Portal 2 which feels more akin to minor bodily manipulation than outright "in-flight movement" of several feet or more as some games have).

All the games I've mentioned are great on their own, but it's hard for me to stay in the moment because the character I'm controlling simply cannot shimmy on up a box or step over a rock or two. There is definitely a middle ground to be reached here, and nobody seems to want to go there.

 

I played through bulletstorm recently and the lack of any jump button killed that game for me.

 

It's one of those things that bugs me at first if I play a FPS and you can't jump, but I soon get over it. I think the original condemned was the first FPS to catch me out like that, but I ended up finishing that game and enjoying the entire experience.

 

It's more then that, in ut2004 movement became an advanced skill. There were people who got very good and could move in ways and get to places the rest of us couldn't (despite us having access to exactly the same jump buttons). Carefully designed maps made for a kind of aerial ballet which ut3 ruined by giving everyone lead boots.

After ut3 I think most ut2004 players decided Epic didn't actually have a clue what made their game good and just got lucky with ut2004.

 

I think jumping is also a way of gaining perspective in our surroundings. Unlike reality, we can't feel the hardness of the ground as we run along it. We can't walk up to an obstacle and judge the ability for one to clear it by it's relation to our own height. As Malvolio mentioned, there is very little way to have a clear understanding of what the terrain will allow us to do. The poor consistency of our environment causes us to habitually test every element of surroundings whenever possible.

How many times have you seen someone repeatedly trying to jump onto a box you have already established as too high to jump onto (which shows that both of you are interested in whether it is of value to you).

During times when we're not engaged, jumping becomes a built-in mechanism for surveying out surrounding. We are always doing this in real life. When you walk up a handicap ramp, you automatically make a silly self-assessment of whether you can vault over it. The difference is, in reality we don't always test the theory, but in-game there is no penalty for satiating our motivated curiosity.

 

Two words : Say apple .

 

I think Assassin's Creed has the best jump feature I've played yet. The ability to literally glide through the air as Altair jumps down onto a guard is awesome. I spent more time jumping off stop or tackling people to the ground to assassinate them it took almost 3 days to beat both games

 

Love the HL2 example, it's exactly what I did!

Any discussion of jumping also brings to mind the various jokes about characters being able to pull of incredible feats (Kratos, Snake, player's character in Demon's Souls etc.) but be unable to jump over low walls. Thankfully those games all have additional movement modifying features such as rolling.

That game and other MMOs have managed to tear apart multiple space bars over the years.