The main thing I walked away from this video with was a desperate yearning for a new Panzer Dragoon game. I’m not talking Panzer Dragon Saga II or anything — just me riding a dragon around a fantastic fantasy world, doing some stuff. There’s not a Panzer Dragoon fan out there that could watch the flying bits of this vid and not feel the same way.

Nowhere is the realisation of flight grander or more satisfying than in video games. When done right, flying in a game can leave a lasting impression on both players and developers that impacts every game they play or make going forward.

Telltale Games designer Mike Stemmle pointed this out while demoing Tales of Monkey Island Episode 3 for me in September. I asked what gameplay inspirations helped him develop for Monkey Island and after a moment’s pause he said, “Kingdom Hearts.”

“Oh, because it has pirates?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “It’s the flying.” The way the game introduces flying the player — about halfway through its storyline after you’ve been running and jumping on the ground the whole time — was like a revelation in game design for him. “Because once you get [to fly in Never Land], it’s like you knew it was coming. It just felt right.”

There’s a fantasy fulfilment that comes with flying in video games. And even if flying in a game is just another way to get from point A to point B, it’s appealing to a part of your senses that you don’t use very much in everyday gameplay.

“We live in a very X, Y world,” Dark Void Senior Producer Morgan Gray said. A veteran of flight games like X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance, he knows his Z axis and isn’t afraid to build his games around it. “If you look at … shooters, when they first came out, everything was flat. [There was] a roof over your head and walls on all sides. It was only really when you got to games … where you had enemies [above or below you] where you had to start exploring the Z axis.”

Like Doom players that had to learn to use the mouse to enjoy Quake, your average gamer has to put in effort to master flight. Instead of thinking in only one or two directions, he or she has to think in a 360-degree bubble where enemies can come from any angle. They have to be aware of their character’s (or aircraft’s) physics so that they don’t get lost when trying to execute a turn. Some games make it easier for the player by limiting the range of flight to forward-only like Star Fox or Panzer Dragoon; other games like Dark Void layer on tutorial after tutorial to make absolutely sure you internalise the controls before cutting you loose in the wild blue yonder.

By that same token, developers without Gray’s flight-filled background have to work a lot harder to implement flying. Whereas Gray can look back over both his career and his childhood and see Chuck Yeager’s face mocking him after Gray had crashed and burned in Advanced Flight Training, some developers only have memories of Star Fox or Wing Commander as their flying inspiration. They don’t realise that there’s more to flight than getting off the ground.

“Don’t get me wrong,” says Gray. “[Wing Commander's] level design was great, the ship design was great, progression was great. The actual nuts and bolts of flight? All pretty arcade-y because [it didn't feel] like there was meat to the simulation.”

Developers with traditional level-making experience on shooters or adventure games that have the walls on all sides and the roof overhead have new challenges when making an enjoyable flying sequence or full game. They have to relearn how to organise a level around enemy spawn points in spaces with no walls or roofs.

“You really need to use enemies not only as a way of making a challenge for the player, but as defining space because [players] have to have that frame of reference for ‘where am I in the terrain?’” said Gray. “If you get [the timing right], it really gives the [flight] meaning and puts a plot to the [enemy] encounters. It’s different than ‘And now we walk you in this room and find the blue key,’ because you don’t get blue keys in the air.”

He compared a perfect flight level to a map called De Dust in Counter-Strike. To him, it was obvious that some developer had sat down with a stopwatch and timed how long it would take enemies to reach players when spawning from two different points on the map. That developer knew exactly where the player would be and what they would be doing when the enemy got to them, and they build the level outward around the player from that point.

Flying levels, Gray said, should be built the exact same way.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the upcoming Avatar for the Wii. A flight level with a giant lizard bird was the centrepiece of a demo given to me by creative director Daniel Bisson, and he wasn’t shy about telling me it was the hardest level to design. In early efforts, the enemies spawned too fast and the Wii Balance Board was over-responsive to even the slightest shift in weight, causing the lizard bird to pitch wildly and slam into spawning enemies. As the level developed, they added more environmental boundaries like tunnels and trees to define the flying space and confined 360-degree movements to quick time events.

So what began as a flying level instead turned into an arcade-style on-rails experience. Sure, you’re up in the sky on the back of a bird. But, there’s not much fantasy fulfilment and no raw freedom in having your hand held.

The trick is keeping reality from ruining fantasy. Yes, it’s a lot of work to pilot an X-Wing in the Star Wars: Battlefront games; but if you get to blow up a TIE Fighter as a reward for your patience, you don’t mind sinking effort into learning how to be a pilot. Likewise, War in the upcoming Darksiders would look silly with a pair of wings sprouting from his burly back; but hijacking a gryphon from an angel for a quick joyride through a ruined city appeals to the fantasy of the character and doesn’t last so long that the game needs to bog the player down with real physics.

Above: The lone flying level in Darksiders.

With Crimson Skies and flight sims on side of the spectrum and our Star Foxes and Panzer Dragoons on the other, there are so many ways gamers can fulfil the fantasy of flight. Each new game that introduces a flying segment or builds its entire experience around the thrill of strapping on a jetpack builds on the collective fantasy gamers and developers share of taking to the skies.

The ultimate dream of flight in games, says Gray, is this: “I don’t know where I’m at, but I’m having fun.”

Image Cred — Kingdom Hearts
Title Image: The Fall of Icarus, Peter Paul Rubens, 1636

Saith the Infinity Ward community manager:

“Uploading a bunch of #MW2 avatar gear to XBL tomorrow, including this full GHOST outfit!”

Bowling clarified for me that “uploaded” does in fact mean available to you, the gaming public. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like these will be gratis. “I asked for some to be free but was denied.” he told me.

Modern Warfare 2 Avatar Goodies Heading to XBL, PS3 Themes Soon [VG247]

As Cameron puts it, Pandora is really the garden of Eden, and humanity is here looking for apples. Behind all of the special effects wizardry and lush visuals, the story is really a heavy-handed tale about humanity encroaching on the wilderness and how stepping into the shoes of those we encroach upon will change or perception and potentially our actions. Still, very pretty world. I’d pillage that for resources any day.

Unfortunately, you can’t get much of a feel for how nifty the flying is without watching someone flail around on the Balance Board. But the scenery is lush and the stealth gameplay is easy to see. Note how the prompt shows you to swing the Wii Remote a certain way to pull off an attack — that can be quite the stealth-wrecker if you get it wrong.

Enjoy!

Answer: It denies it ever made that promise.

Unlike the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game, the Wii version of Avatar deliberately avoids the main plot of the movie and puts players in the shoes – or sandals as the case may be – of the story’s antagonistic alien race. Also, it seems a little more kid-friendly than Cameron’s film (although Avatar hasn’t been rated yet).

What Is It?
Avatar on the Wii has players taking the role of the alien Ryuk, out to recover artifacts stolen from his people and rescue natives of his planet held by Earthling military types. The game has optional Wii Motion Plus and Balance Board functionality and features drop-in/drop-out cooperative play where Ryuk’s sister joins the fight.

What We Saw
I played the tutorial level, level two in co-op mode and a flying level from a little later in the game.

How Far Along Is It?
The build I saw was pretty early days, but Ubisoft says the game is on track to come out a couple of weeks before the film’s release in December.

What Needs Improvement?
Co-op Is Painful On The Ground: Rather than splitting the screen, the co-op in Avatar orients to one player and keeps both on the screen at all times. In ground-based levels, this is tedious if your partner keeps messing up jumping puzzles, or if you’re trying to aim a ranged weapon somewhere farther along the path of the linear level. Also, there’s an unfortunately bug where the camera gets confused about which player is the leader made it even worse.

Avatar Film Spoiler Warning

Oversimplified Plot Leads To Uncomfortable Implications: Cameron says his film is delivering a profound message and from what I saw of the Wii cut scenes based on plot points from the film, I gather that message is one of pro-environmentalist/anti-racism. Kind of like Fern Gully, only with aliens instead of pixies. The problem with the Wii game is that it has to oversimplify that message to create viable gameplay. So rather than exploring both sides of the “Hi, we need your planet” equation, the game just drops a bunch of humans into levels and tells the player “These guys suck, kill them all.” On a surface level, this comes off as clumsy and boring – but if you’re approaching it with an understanding of the message Cameron’s film is trying to get across, I imagine it’s just uncomfortable and sad.

End Spoiler

What Should Stay The Same?
Co-op Is Awesome In The Air: There are several flying levels in the game that allow you to hook up the Wii Balance Board and wing it or just sit back and point your Wiimote at the screen. Either way, you’re expected to manoeuvre past obstacles, score pickups and shoot at stuff. On the Balance Board, this is more complicated because the flying creature responds to shifts in your weight to go forward, back or tilt for hard turns – meanwhile, you’re still pointing at the screen with the Wiimote and mashing buttons to shoot or perform quick time events. The whole experience is a little overwhelming, which is why having a second player in co-op to handle the shooting is awesome. Bonus, you don’t get any of those pesky camera issues from ground co-op.

It Feels Like Assassin’s Creed: The combat in Avatar follows the three basic principle of Assassin’s Creed – stalk, attack, evade. The only difference in Avatar is that you don’t have a little meter to tell you when your cover is blown; instead you get little icons above the heads of the humans that may or may not be on to you. Using talk grass or high vantage points, you sneak up on them one by one and get the drop on them with quick one-hit kills. Then you slink back into the shadows to evade anybody who might’ve noticed you. It’s old hat for Assassin’s Creed fans and totally in keeping with the environmentalist commando them of Avatar. Bonus – if your stealth attack goes tits-up, you can pull off combo melee attacks with rhythmic swings of the Wii Remote.

Auto-Stealth: You don’t have to press any buttons to pull off stealth – just walk into an area of shadow or tall grass, or spring up into a tree. Humans on this planet are cursed with poor eyesight and a limited range of neck motion apparently.

Final Thoughts
I haven’t seen the 360 or PS3 version of Avatar, so I’m not sure how the Wii version stacks up in comparison. On its own, though, it’s an ambitious game with some good ideas. But it still needs a lot fine tuning and polish to pull it all off.

Note: This image appears to be from either the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 version — but it shows off both the bird you’ll be flying and the helicopter at which you’ll be shooting.

That’s two weeks before the movie hits cinemas. The game will be available on Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii, DS and PSP. As website Joystiq points out, the PS3 and PC versions will be 3D if players have the necessary set-up.

Anyone getting Avatar The Game? Interested in Avatar The Movie?

Avatar [Ubisoft via Joystiq]

The PSP installment of James Cameron’s Avatar places the player in the role of one of the giant, blue-skinned Na’vi warriors after the RDA has destroyed his village. From the description in the magazine (as reported by IGN), the game sounds a great deal like the Wii version we reported on previously. One feature that stands out, however, is the ability to transfer “Effort Points” from the PSP version to the PlayStation 3, augmenting your characters in the console version.

PSP to PS3 connectivity? That James Cameron sure knows how to exploit untapped resources.

Avatar PSP Details [IGN via Joystiq]

Avatar for the Wii puts you in the role of a Na’vi warrior, meaning a stronger focus on melee combat and a little bit of stealth. During our hands-on time with the game, we crept through the tall grass while taking out those pesky RDA soldiers with our Na’vi staff and bow, requiring much Wii Remote waggling and careful aiming, courtesy of the Wii MotionPlus accessory. While it may not look quite as good as its higher-definition peers, the Wii version of Avatar: The Game has something the other entries don’t.

That would be two-player same screen co-op, which allows a second player to join in as a female Na’vi soldier. When a fellow member of the press hopped in mid-game, it appeared that both Na’vi players used the same set of moves. That presented a bit of an obstacle, as the camera didn’t quite know what to do in a two-player situation when one of us was trying to aim his or her bow.

Hopefully that’s something Ubisoft is aware of and tweaking, as the two-player mode has its benefits—namely the cooperative revive technique.

When my Na’vi was defeated by an RDA soldier in one of those hulking AMP suits, my partner helped revive me, letting us double team that massive exoskeleton. While I was attacking the thing, my partner sneaked into the tall grass, reviving his character with one of Pandora’s life giving plants, then finished the AMP suited invader from behind. It worked, but not without some hitches along the way.

The Wii version of James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game definitely looked sharp, if you’re thinking of going with the motion controlled version. It should ship on or about the same day as its more visually detailed brothers, should you and a friend want to fend off that human invasion of Pandora together.

Here’s a new trailer for Avatar, the game based on the movie James Cameron has spent the last million years tinkering with.