In the vein of writing a few shorter posts that are easier to digest I present the following thought:
A year, maybe more, ago we suddenly had a few video game titles popping up on the radar that relied heavily on co-op. Left 4 Dead is an obvious example. Resident Evil 5 is another recent high-profile example. There was Army of Two (soon with sequel) and the new 50 Cent game. After a long drought of co-op games this feature has (thankfully) become en vogue again.
Now looking at a few soon-to-be-released games I see a pattern (where there propably is none): Games that strongly with the spatial element of verticality and provide a high degree of mobility. There’s Bionic Commando, which uses the bionic arm of the protagonist to scale heights easily. The other example is Dark Void, which touts it’s Vertical Cover system as a big feature next to the Jetpack. And lastly there’s Damnation. While the avatars there have no fancy mobility gadget they’re acrobats rivaling the Prince of Persia.
Alright, so I only have three examples and that’s far from being a trend but I found it an interesting observation. What about you, can you come up with more?
Crackdown, Mirror’s Edge, and Assassin’s Creed…
I’m sure there are more.
This vertical trend has been going on for at least a year in my opinion. You are correct in pointing out the trend, as it is obviously growing. Verticality is definitely an aspect that some designers are focusing on in order to make their game (seem) unique.
Crackdown, yes. That’s a good example. Again the verticality here comes with increased mobility through the use of Superjumps, Wallclimbing etc.
Looking at open world Sandbox games, Assassin’s Creed (freeclimbing), Infamous (freeclimbing) and Prototype (freeclimbing, wallrunning and flying) come to mind as well. Assassin’s Creed even makes use of this (I think, didn’t play the game yet) as a gameplay feature where you have to scout out the area from the rooftops first.