7 Best Games With Fixed Cameras

Summary

• Fixed cameras can enhance a game's cinematic experience, evoking awe or terror when properly implemented.
• Games like Paper Mario and Until Dawn utilize fixed cameras to build atmosphere and tension effectively.
• Resident Evil popularized fixed cameras, creating a sense of unease and influencing the survival horror genre.

The concept of the fixed camera is a controversial topic in gaming. When poorly implemented, games with fixed cameras feel stiff and awkward to play as the lack of direct control over what you can see is understandably frustrating.

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But, when done right, fixed cameras allow the developers to mould a cinematic experience to their exact vision – eliciting awe or terror in a way that wouldn’t be possible if you had full agency over what you could look and see. When the game is properly designed around it, a fixed camera can be a great creative choice.

7 Paper Mario

A Picture-Perfect Experience

Paper Mario reimagines the Mushroom Kingdom as an arts and crafts playhouse, where every character, building, and environmental detail is made from paper. As such, when exploring this world, the camera is typically locked on one side of a level, only zooming in and out or moving sideways as Mario explores across the screen.

And, for the most part, this works just fine. All of the Paper Mario games have cameras that are expertly placed to show enough of the level at any given time while also keeping secrets just out of sight.

6 Until Dawn

The Return Of A Classic Look

Until Dawn proudly wears its horror influences on its sleeve. If you have any experience with scary cinema, then it won’t take long for you to identify the story tropes scattered throughout the game.

However, Until Dawn pays homage to classic horror gaming as well by opting for a fixed camera perspective. As expected, this helps build a sense of unease while playing, as you can never really be sure what lies around the next corner.

5 Crash Bandicoot

Crashing Into The Camera

While Super Mario 64 gave players the freedom to explore a 3D space by choosing the camera angle that worked best for them, Crash Bandicoot went for a different approach. Developer Naughty Dog instead decided to fix the camera on a set of “rails” that would follow Crash as he ran, jumped, and spin-attacked throughout the levels.

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This allowed players to just focus on the core platforming and not concern themselves with camera placement. Whether you were running away from the camera, towards it, or in one of the game’s side-scrolling sections, you could have the confidence that the developers were showing you exactly what you needed to see.

4 Final Fantasy 7

No Moving Cameras In Midgar

When SquareSoft went to the drawing board for Final Fantasy 7, they wanted to make a game that felt larger in scope and scale than anything they had done before. To create this cinematic feel, towns and dungeons were presented as pre-rendered backgrounds with immovable cameras.

This striking visual style came to define the Final Fantasy games of this era, and indeed, many of the JRPGs released for the original PlayStation. And while you could technically rotate the camera when exploring the overworld, most people remember Final Fantasy 7 for these pre-rendered, fixed camera locations.

3 Heavy Rain

A Playable Movie

Developer Quantic Dream loves making games that feel like movies. Heavy Rain achieves this feel through a variety of methods – the cinematic writing, the heavy reliance on quick-time-events, and a camera that often feels like it's framed as a shot in a movie.

This can make certain basic controls, such as moving your character, a little bit awkward given the fixed camera angles. But there’s no denying Heavy Rain owes a lot of its vivid appeal to its camera and the way it acts as a storyteller in and of itself.

2 Resident Evil

The Game That Popularised Fixed Cameras

These days, going back to the original Resident Evil can feel like stepping into your grandpa’s old shoes – they’re clunky to move in and rarely point you in the right direction. The game’s tank controls are certainly to blame for some of this awkwardness, but the fixed camera perspectives also take some getting used to.

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However, it doesn’t take long before you begin to notice the subtle genius at the heart of this game’s camera design. The strictly fixed camera angles fill you with a deep sense of unease as if Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield are constantly under surveillance from some malevolent force. More than anything, this style of camera would prove to be hugely influential, both for the Resident Evil series and the survival horror genre as a whole.

1 God Of War

Worthy Of The Gods

Before God of War was making headlines about having a camera that didn’t cut a single time throughout the entire game, the series used fixed camera angles to frame its visceral, mythological action. While having a fixed camera for an action game wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea, it’s hard to deny that it worked for the specific flavour of chaos that the Greek-based God of War games were going for.

For one, it’s a lot easier to make sense of the action when you only need to worry about Kratos’ movement and actions and not what the camera is doing. It also helped elevate the epic sense of scale the series is renowned for, as the developers could always pull the camera right back if they wanted to create a jaw-dropping moment of awe. While God of War has since moved away from a fixed camera, it’s hard to argue that it didn’t execute the concept as well as any other game.

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