In Defense of Tank Controls

This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #184. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

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We are what we’re afraid of.

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In the current craze of remake/remaster/nostalgia bait, it can be easy to pick apart things simply because they don’t match one-to-one with whatever beloved media property someone has attempted to revitalize. This is not what I wish to do here. I argue, in fact, that general quality of life updates for games can often help the original piece achieve its vision in a way that technology did not allow for at the time of its release.

However (and I’m sure you had sensed the “however,” already), just because something dates a piece, or it speaks to the technological constraints of a prior time, does not mean that it should necessarily be abandoned when it comes time to remake. Such is the case, I feel, with the idea of tank controls and fixed camera angles. Oft-hated though they are, tank controls have many affordances specific to the genre of horror, and rethinking their inclusion in contemporary games can allow developers to plumb spooky depths that have been recently neglected.

If you’re unfamiliar with tank controls, they were utilized in early games for franchises like Resident Evil and Silent Hill (and were scrubbed from the recent remakes of same). In this scheme, the player controls their character’s movement relative to that character’s position on screen, instead of the position of the game camera. The camera, instead of following the player over their shoulder, exists in a series of fixed positions through the game space. So, as the player moves around a room, the camera angle will jump from one corner to another, presenting the player in different orientations.

The most common complaint I hear about tank controls is that they’re disorienting – if a player isn’t expecting the camera angle to change, they may unintentionally begin to walk backwards or be unable to fend off an attacker effectively. This leads to feelings of stress and frustration with the experience, and a sense of feeling out of control.

This is the point.

I’ve waxed poetic at multiple other points for this column about how an ideal horror experience should flip the traditional gaming power fantasy on its head and put the player in the position of feeling constantly unprepared and under-resourced. Without these environmental stressors and legitimate fear of failure, the experience will not be scary. Beyond things like scarce inventory and limited saves, using fixed cameras to visually disorient the player is a valuable tool in the horror toolbox. Proof of concept in contemporary gaming can be found in the wildly popular indie horror Crow Country, which pays homage to an earlier era in both its graphics and mechanics.

But this is not the only argument in favor of tank controls. Using fixed camera angles also allows for a much more interesting visual experience and opens up interesting opportunities for atmospheric storytelling. While in an over-the-shoulder camera orientation, players can feel free to stampede through environments without paying much attention to artfully placed skeletons or writing on the wall. With fixed angles, the developer has much more control over where they can direct the player’s eye, and they can thus shift more of the ambiance and narrative into the visual realm, curating detailed tableaus and pre-rendered images. There are many comparisons to be made between the fixed camera angle in games and cinematography in film, but all point essentially to the idea that the more control the developer has over the vista, the more depth they can inject into the experience.

This is not intended to convert tank-control haters to true believers in the experience, though if this helps you go back to older games with new eyes, great. What I’m arguing for here is that we don’t need to throw the super cool atmospheric and mechanically interesting baby out with the bathwater of outdated hardware limitations. While it’s not perfect for every horror gaming experience (a game like Outlast, based in stealth and finding cover, for example, would probably suffer from implementation of tank controls) I’m not sure removing them from the conversation entirely does the genre any favors. As with anything when making art, it’s important to consider the goals of the thing, and how that goal can be achieved through mechanical design. Tank controls have things to offer horror game design, and considering mechanics beyond the scope of their period of origin can lead to some really interesting permutations of horror.

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Emma Kostopolus loves all things that go bump in the night. When not playing scary games, you can find her in the kitchen, scientifically perfecting the recipe for fudge brownies. She has an Instagram where she logs the food and art she makes, along with her many cats.