Monday, August 02, 2004

Kicking Meters Must Die

ESPN NFL 2K5 is an amazing experience--the animation and some of the player behaviors are so shockingly realistic at times that the game is incredibly immersive. So when you see a lame-ass kicking meter on the screen it's like cold water to the face. Actually, it's worse than that. Add an odor and make that stinky cold water to the face.

Kicking meters have always been terrible. They're a convention now, unfortunately, and no one is making an effort to get rid of them. A very fundamental design premise of sports game, though, should be to remove as many synthetic elements as possible. The kicking meter is now the #1 enemy of realism and immersion in football games. When I have to look at a little meter to kick, I might as well be playing ColecoVision. Even though I'm playing NFL2K5 in 480p, 16x9 widescreen mode and the graphic realism is breathtaking, I'm kicking using a convention that was developed over two decades ago.

That doesn't make any sense.

Here's a new way to do it. Use a very low camera angle directly behind the holder and a few feet back. From this camera angle, you can actually watch the snap come to the holder. It will be in one of five areas: center, left, right, high, or low. You will have to make an adjustment on the d-pad (if it's not a center snap) and press the button when the ball reaches his hands. The holder will move his hands away from the center position to reach a bad snap in response to your input. If you're one zone away, he'll bobble the snap but get it down. If you're two zones away (you pressed right and the snap is left), he muffs the snap and you're not getting a kick off.

A very high percentage of snaps will be perfect, just like in the NFL--well over 90%. But when they're not, you have to be ready to respond, and you're not watching a meter--you're looking at the screen and watching the snap of the ball.

When the kicker moves forward, you press the button when his foot is about to impact the ball. Based on how the holder did, the difficulty will change. If he got the snap down easily, you have a larger range for perfect impact. If he bobbled it, the perfect impact tolerance will be much smaller. There's no meter. Once his foot hits the ball, you'll see the kick head toward the uprights (you picked the angle before you snapped the ball. No moving arrow to screw with). If you kicked early, the ball will go left--if you're late, it goes right. It's an analog system, meaning that your degree of early/late impact is reflected in how far off target the ball travels.

Then, on the replay, when the holder catches the snap, you get feedback on whether it was perfect, one zone away, or two zones away. Same thing with the kicker. Or you can even have the announcers commenting on the replay that he 'seemed rushed' (early) or 'he took forever to get that kick off' (late).

Controller vibration could also be added for away games and pivotal kicks.

Totally natural to the game world. No meters. As it should be.

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