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Duck and Cover |
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A Brief History of the Cover System |
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What would you do if someone fired off a few rounds in your general direction?
What if you were trying to sneak around a secret military facility and some bloke with an M-16 and a cranky disposition popped out of a doorway up ahead?
Would you strafe from side to side? Would you backtrack along the corridor and wait patiently around the corner?
Or would you dive behind the nearest solid object in the hope that it might conceal your location, block the shot, or at the very least, cushion the blow?
The cover system has been evolving for years, offering players another level of strategy when dealing with their opponents, and delivering what many argue is a much more realistic approach to in-game defence and attack mechanisms.
While games have always given us the chance to use our skill and judgement to dodge an attack, a true cover system allows the avatar to interact with an object, be it stationary or moving, in different ways to the rest of the environment to either get out of the way, or get a better shot at the onslaught of video game nasties.
We can trace the origins of the cover system way back to the golden age of arcade gaming like the classic Space Invaders, and a 1983 title called Elevator Action. The game was a fairly standard run-and-gun side scrolling platform adventure, where you made your way through buildings shooting spies and trying not to get yourself killed.
What set it apart was the provision of doorways that allowed the player to briefly hide while the enemies passed.
Elevator Action spawned sequels and spin-offs, and Japanese developers Namco helped spread the idea around the globe with their popular Rolling Thunder titles, released between 1986 and 1993.
But Namco’s greatest and most memorable contribution to the cover system would come in 1995, with the release of the first Time Crisis game. Developers had been placing guns in teenager’s hands for years, but Namco were the first to put an “action pedal” under their feet.
While genre favourites like House of the Dead forced you to stay in the line of fire at all times, the action pedal let you hop up to take out the tough guys when pressed, then duck back down upon its release.
These days you won’t find an arcade shooter without a foot pedal. In the late 90s, the evolution of the cover system would move to home gaming consoles.
1998’s PlayStation blockbuster Metal Gear Solid was all about stealth, and this meant hiding behind anything and everything to avoid detection by your enemies.
Walking up against a wall would switch you to cover mode, and allow you to peek around corners. Nintendo 64 fans also got a taste of what was to come with Operation: Winback, which employed a system where the player had to take cover behind corners, then duck out to take their shot with a laser guided weapon.
A few years later, Splinter Cell took stealth capabilities to a whole new level, and Sam Fisher became our new duck and cover champion.
Then Kill.Switch happened. At the time this game barely managed to poke its head out amongst the steady influx of third-person console shooters, but it laid the foundation for the cover system that most of us are familiar with today.
Instead of automatically entering cover by walking up against a wall or object, Kill.Switch required you to push a button to enter cover mode, from which you could peer out and shoot, leap over the barrier, or blind fire over your head. Sound familiar?
Unfortunately, an innovative cover system was no substitute for a lack of plot and boring level design. Thankfully, the next game to give the push button cover system a go got it right, and when we say got it right, we mean they nailed it to the wall.
Epic’s 2006 masterpiece Gears of War took Kill.Switch’s basic concept and made it look good, real good! For many gamers, this was their first experience with such a system, and it rocked their world.
The runaway success of the title, and its 2008 sequel, have forever changed our expectations, and you can see the powerful influence this game has had anywhere you choose to look.
GTA IV was the first in the series to feature a proper cover system and, unsurprisingly, it’s rather close to the Gears system.
Mass Effect creators Bioware also brought in a push button cover system for their sequel, following criticism from players who didn’t want to be forced into cover every time they were up against a wall or crate.
Most recently, Splinter Cell: Conviction is making waves for its improvement on one of the biggest problems with today’s cover systems – getting stuck behind the wrong piece of cover.
Using your reticule, you are able to aim for specific spots on a particular piece of cover, and then push A to make your move.
Other games like Red Faction: Guerrilla recognise that indestructible cover is unrealistic and unchallenging, and are keeping players on their toes as they constantly look for the next best vantage point.
This lead was also recently demonstrated in Battlefield: Bad Company 2, where players are as likely to meet their maker underneath a missile-struck brick wall than from a well aimed hollow-point.
These systems are not without their detractors. Some people think they take the fun out of things, slowing down the action and making the challenge of taking down your enemy a whole lot easier.
Many ridicule the way in which players are given the impossible ability to look around corners and shoot without being detected, arguing that for all the supposed realism, these systems are turning soldiers into supermen.
But if current trends are anything to go by, the cover system is here to stay, and it’s only going to get more complex and intuitive from here.
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