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10 features we want in online shooters

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10 features we want in online shooters

How the next crop of multiplayer bloodbaths can be even better than the last

Words: Tyler Wilde, GamesRadar US

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8) Peripheral vision

Perhaps our soldier alter-egos are all tripping on acid - for some reason we’re almost always suffering from serious tunnel vision. Even a hallucinatory purple elephant would escape our detection if it were standing more than sixty degrees to the left or right of us, and as a result we all act like spooked race horses with blinders on, jumping around and spinning in circles at the first sound of footsteps.

The third-person perspective takes care of the problem to some extent, but, of course, removes the visceral first-person POV that gives games like CoD 4 much of their intensity. Widescreen TVs help a bit, but still don’t quite capture an actual human’s field of vision and spatial awareness. One solution is to extend the viewing area with a fisheye effect.

Above: A quick console code in Max Payne 2 creates an extreme example of the fisheye approach (in a third-person perspective)

The problem with this solution is that you’d probably either get very sick or very disoriented after not too long. Perhaps there is no good solution and we’ll all just have to buy three widescreen monitors each and make our own pseudo virtual reality set ups. That seems like a justifiable expense.