Example One, Bad Camera: Neverwinter Nights 2. Simply put, the camera in NWN2 is abysmal and really drags the game down. There are three camera modes. The first (theoretically) gives you the ability to look any way you want, while your character moves in any direction independent of the direction of the camera. Problem, you must click where you want your character to go. How do you click where you're not looking? The second is a pure top down view called strategy mode. Again, you click but at least you usually can with this view, though you must keep pushing the mouse to the edge of the screen to see what's ahead. Problem, when you're looking down from kinda far out on a dark field at night with slow moving zombies, how do you tell what/where anything is? The last mode, which I use, is driving camera. Now you steer the character with the keyboard and the camera follows behind. However, the pitch of the camera up and down is very sensitive, making it very hard to change accurately when pushing the mouse against the top or bottom of the screen. The camera is also bound by any roof you may be under, making it ridiculous to use inside. You can also push right or left with the mouse to look around, but then the camera either swings sickeningly back into place, or your character flips around in place. Good one guys. Several times I've charged into battle facing the wrong way.
Example Two, Okay Camera: Dungeons and Dragons Online. I've been playing this a lot lately and so it comes to mind when thinking of video game things. The camera in DDO is as I said, Okay, nothing more. And here, Okay is much better than bad, and perfectly functional. The camera is locked behind your head. You can move it up or down quite accurately and left and right. However, if you move your character the camera will stay put but your character will move in the direction the camera is now facing. If you hold both the mouse buttons and the movement keys you can look around while moving. A bit impractical, but there is rarely a reason to watch constantly to your character's right while running full speed. There is a bit of an exploit with this camera though. You can zoom rather far out. With the camera zoomed out, I can look around a corner to see if there is a group of orcs ahead. The orcs have no way to see me, I can thoroughly examine them and prepare, and my character is facing a wall. Um... yeah.
Example Three, Good Camera: The Legend of Zelda Windwaker. For the most part, all the Zelda games have a good camera, but WW sticks out for an extra feature. First of all, the camera generally stays behind Link, but if you make a major change in direction it will only adjust when Link starts to run off screen. It's smooth and slow, but not too slow. You can also with the touch of a button (that your finger is probably already on) snap the camera right behind Link's head again. You can also lock onto a single enemy keeping the camera always focused on it. Where WW breaks away from the style of every other Zelda is that hitting the C stick breaks the camera into free mode. By tilting the stick you can rotate the camera all the way around Link, at a speed varying by how much you tilt the stick. By tapping that button again, you return to normal camera. This pretty much allows you to look at whatever you need to or explore your options easily.
All of these problems were fairly moot back in the 2D days, but now 3D has been the standard for a long time, and the player needs to be able to see things (often quickly) in order to succeed. A little extra time and polish on this aspect of your game will keep your player's frustration level down a bit. A lack of time and polish here and your game will be notorious for a bad camera. It's one of those things that usually goes un-thanked when done right, and draws a lot of hatred when done wrong. Just like an IT job.
Look out below! (Or judging by Link's expression, maybe we'd rather not see what's down there.)
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