With so many 3D games nowadays, allowing for infinite (or close to) perspectives camera control is a major issue in creating immersion for the player. For FPS, traditionally, the camera or the player view has just been where the player would think his/her head is (actually, it depends on the game - some cameras are located in the center of the torso...) In third person games controlled like with FPS, the camera has been mounted behind the character, constantly centered - sometimes, the character might be below the horizon (good design), or sometimes would obscure the horizon and the targetting reticle (bad design). While these views are functional for shooting games, for games that feature melee elements (JKII for example) (switches between fps and tp) one can''t help but feel that it can be improved somewhat... Especially with the third person camera control - one of my pet hates is that the camera is constantly centered behind the character - the effect is slightly naseous and a view that doesn''t provide an engaging view of the battle - who wants to see the backside of their characters constantly anyway? It might as well be a highly detailed sprite (remember MDK? they used a sprite because of this - it didn''t look that good). On the other end of the camera spectrum you have the side on view of the fight in fighting games - good view of the fight, but in terms of maneouverability around the arena - there is little. So how do you find a compromise for the third person melee view? I''ll leave this to you to discuss Zaptruder

Perhaps using two keys to rotate camera/zoom around the player with the use of left hand and slashing/thrusting with mouse and right hand? In any case, user controlled camera would be advantegous.