While Project Natal will be infinitely cool if it works as promised and games are made specifically for the device and not simply forced to adapt its motion controls, but there is one thing I cannot stop thinking about: first- and third-person shooters. How exactly are they going to work in a meaningful way using Natal? I couldn’t say.
Epic Games, that one company that kind of maybe knows a thing or two about making successful shooters, seems to agree. In an interview with Develop, Cliff Bleszinski spoke about the merits of Natal, and whether or not the company will create future games specifically for the device.
“Y’know, we’ll take a look at Natal — no promises — but it’s likely that the classic control interface is what Epic will be working on in the foreseeable future,” he said. “But I think there’s ways that you could merge the two interfaces and supplement a classic game with Natal controls to make something compelling.”
And that, my friends, is as of this time the only way in which I can see the genre working well with Project Natal. I can only hope other developers agree with this sentiment, because otherwise we would probably get a flood of Virtua Cop clones. Sure, it would be neat for like an hour, but then what?
