True!

As soon as I read the title of this post in my feedreader, I was like “Woah, yeah – jumping is really important to me, too. It wasn’t explicitly clear to me, but I don’t like games that don’t allow *me* to jump.”

@ Matthew:

Yeah, I hate the insurmountable fences too. You know what’s even worse? Invisible walls – worst kind of immersion breaking mechanic. I really don’t get why people keep using them, since there are so many good ways to either avoid having them, or explain them away in game terms.

Although jumping is a basic need in games that can not be denied, I am getting to the point of hating when I can not climb things.

“Oh hey there, fence! Enjoy your nice view of the field? I am just going to climb over you so I can get to….hey! Let me over! Fine, I will just go around you and….what? You mean I have to walk a mile just to get around you??”

Yeah, that. Games do it, and it is annoying. I didn’t enjoy a lot of GTAIV, but I can honestly say I loved the jumping, climbing and jumping then climbing it allowed. It was nice.

“Say ‘apple’. Aaaaaaa-pple.”

I completely get the whole leaping-about-Balmora thing. It’s a very liberating feeling to jump over buildings and obstacles. The Force Jump abilities were always the first things I unlocked in the old Jedi Knight games. Soaring through the air without a care in the world, like an eagle. Piloting a blimp.

Equally important is the ability to crouch, imho.

@ Adam:

You know what, I’m leaving that typo in. :)

@ karthik:

Good point. But I think the movement restriction is often an outgrowth of the lack of a jump button. Note that games that lack jumping are much more likely to have arbitrary restriction on movement (ie. an impenetrable shrubbery, a un-scalable wooden log, etc..).

@ Alex Bailey:

Yeah, I remember. I think I still have a link to your blog in the sidebar. :)

@ Sameer:

Oh man, this was such a pain in the ass! I used to do the same thing, and every time I bumped into an invisible wall I was super annoyed. I think there might have been some mod that removed most of these somewhere – or at the very least I vaguely remember searching for one. :P

@ Dr. Azrael Tod:

I think that Deus Ex HR was one of the worst offenders in terms of ladders. There was just no reason for the camera to swing back and show you climbing in third person. It was like “Wooosh, look at me climbing a ladder!”.

Actually all vertical movement was fucked in that game. The fall damage was ridiculously silly. You could jump from ledge A and take no falling damage, then jump from ledge B that was only few inches higher, and die instantly. There was virtually no partial fall damage in that game – you either landed safely, or died.

My first death in that game was when I jumped down from the 2nd floor in the Sarif building because I was to lazy to run to the stairs. Based on what happens in most FPS games expected to take moderate damage, but it was an insta-kill. Later I got the parachute aug, only to realize it was a piece of crap too – there was no reason for the 10 second animation of Jensen surfing an electric discharge.

Ideally I would like that aug to let you fall at regular speed, and then discharge the orange crap when you hit the ground. Or fuck, just do what Portal did – play a sound when you touch down to indicate that your mechanical legs somehow mitigated fall damage and you’re done.

it’s not just about beeing able to jump
it’s about what you would expect and what you really get. If you controll a person that walks around, shoots some people and is unable to jump, you are annoyed because you have expected that person to beeing able to jump.
If it’s not a person but a huge 100t walking robot, then you dont expect it to jump, but to walk slowly. If it moves like a person and jumps over buildings like you would over a fence, then it’s more unexpected (if it’s done right, by using jet-engines and starting slowly and leaving a big mark in the building, then its just an additional ability and great, but if it looks “wrong”…)

That works for nearly any ability you expect. The worst i found till today is climbing ladders. There are lots and lots of games out there where you can climb ladders. But if you do, you become some kind of train, restricted to rails. In the best you can go forward and backward, sometimes you can even look around. But if someone attacks you, you have to jump down from the ladder because climbing and shooting is impossible. You can’t even throw a grenade while hanging or use a knive if someone stands directly on top of the ladder.

Adam wrote:

Also, you are officially at the top of my “Hilarious Typos” list. If you don’t know the one, it’s in the final paragraph.

This :D

I get where your coming from especially after playing games that allow unrestricted freedom of movement. It’s very hard dealing with not being able to jump or even the utter inability to jump over small obstacles. I found it jarring in New Vegas for instance; when travelling to a marker I’d try to take shortcuts by scaling mountains only to find out I’m not allowed to. Invisible barriers in NV are rare but it does happen more often than I’d like. I’m finding it increasingly tedious to play on railroads.

You probably don’t remember me, I think we met on Digg way back when it was still relevant. Think we might have referenced each other in a blog post or two along the way as well. Just wanted to see I’m pretty impressed with your blog, keep up the good work :)

I don’t care about the act of jumping in most games. I didn’t miss it in Mass Effect, for instance.

I do tend to be disappointed when I find movement to be arbitrarily restricted in other ways, though. Alpha Protocol didn’t let me scale knee high walls, multiple times. I was frustrated to the point of not playing it for months. Dragon Age (and II) and The Witcher had flimsy barriers in place as (in)visible walls, like a six inch high log, with the road continuing past the log. I mean, really? At least dress up your invisible walls, lazy RPG devs. Even games with a jump key often have walls just high enough to keep you from scaling them.

So it’s not really bunny hopping I miss, but sections of the game world I can see but can’t explore. Remember HL2: Episode 2, when you’re just out of the train wreck and looking at the imploded Citadel ruins in the beginning? That game would have been so much better if it let me jump off that viewing platform to my death into the valley below. Let me be a clueless moron, Valve.