Have you ever heard the rule: ‘If a game has a fishing minigame, it’s legally a good game’? It’s unquestionably true, and has carried a great many games to greatness. Probably. It’s almost impossible to fact-check, so let’s just say it has.
Red Dead Redemption 2 has fishing. Twilight Princess has fishing. Hades has fishing. These games would benothingwithout it.
Well, I think it’s time for a new rule. I still love me some fishing minigames, but the new mark of a good game is whether or not it has photo mode - and more specifically, just how good that photo mode actually is. None of that ‘pause time and slap a filter on’; I’m talking about in-depth tools to create some genuinely unique, professional, and maybe slightly silly screenshots.
Graphic Design Is My Passion!!!!1!
Playing games is cool and all, but have you ever tried not playing them and just taking pictures instead? It’s thrilling, I assure you.
Jokes aside, photo mode is one of my favourite things to appear in games over the past two console generations. Having the ability to stop time, move the camera around, and play with lenses, exposure, filters, lighting, frames, and even character posing and positioning can lead to so many incredible results. Sure, if you’re not that big into photography or creative outlets, you might not even notice this feature as part of a game most of the time, but for those of us who do, it’s a wonderful thing.
I’ve loved messing around with this tool insomething as beautiful as Horizon: Forbidden West, along withsomething so unexpected as Mario Kart World. I’ve even gone so far as to use many of these games to teach myself new techniques, practicing and becoming more familiar with photography as a hobby,before using that knowledge in real-world scenarios.
Photo Mode Is Good;Photo ModeIs Great
An elite few games have gone above and beyond when it comes to photo mode.Cyberpunk 2077,Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and even the more recentDeath Stranding 2. These are a few examples of games that give you full control - or at least, as much as it feels possible to give. You can alter poses, positioning, colour balances, and even place several light sources that can be tweaked as far as colour, brightness, and angles.
Even beyond using these tools for creative screenshots, I’ve spent plenty of time using photo modes to capture unique, specific shots for video production. These can be close-ups, things you might not be able to see naturally in gameplay, or just having a panning shot without the HUD. The additional tools available, such as being able to resume time in the world while remaining in photo mode, can greatly expand the possibilities of elements like this.
Some of that is a personal use case, of course, but even as a creative tool for composing screenshots, it’s something I look out for specifically. If a game doesn’t have a photo mode, I’ll be a little bit disappointed by the missed opportunity; if a gamedoeshave a photo mode, but it’s lacklustre, I’ll be a bit more disappointed at the limitations.
With games looking as good as they do nowadays, and having more complex elements than ever before, it’s time for them to include extensive photo modes as standard. If they don’t, then it’s a bad game. I don’t make the rules. Even though I just did.
