What is going in the FPS genre ?

[Sarevok]

Other than Operation Arrowhead and CoD:Black Ops I don't seem to recall any FPS games of note released last year. Is the FPS genre slowing down or something ?

I pruned this thread of shit that was chatty or spammy. Give yourselves a hand, you assholes made it a goddamned challenge. -- Lagmonster

[Steel]

How about Bad Company 2, which makes both of those look like steaming piles of shit?

[Chardok]

Short answer - yeah.


Long answer- I feel like there's really not a lot left to innovate with in the FPS genre. and with 800 pound gorillas in the arena already, there's little incentive to. What company in their right mind is going to spend valuable man-hours and dollars to put their FPS up against one with an install base like Call of Halozone 3? The only reason Gearbox is doing DNF is because the CEO worked for ID (Or whateverthehell) back in the daaaaaaaaaaay and he's also insane (Borderlands says hello); Killzone 3 is being pubbed because Sony is stupid, (also Resistance 3, which no one asked for) and Homefront is....about the only....sort of...new FPS to give any kind of a flip about. The last big "innovation" in FPS was beth merging heavy RPG elements into it with FOII/NV and Rage (Which I've mentioned I'm looking forward to). To summarize, standard (Non rpg) FPS's, by and large can eat a bag of dicks. I'm done with them until I see something that really turns my wow meter back onto them.

[open_sketchbook]

Besides, everyone realized 3rd person is honestly better for modern shooter gameplay because it gives a slightly widened field of vision (where in first person you basically have blinders on) and lets you interact with cover in a way that doesn't totally kill your situational awareness, thus making for more intutively correct, though not exactly more realistic, action. As cover-based shooters are sort of the thing right now, FPS games are getting the shaft. Once everyone gets bored of hiding behind boxes, we'll probably see more first person again.

[General Zod]

I'm mostly with Chard on this one. There really isn't a whole lot left for FPS genres to innovate. Metro 2033 and BFBC2 are pretty much the only worthwhile FPS games from last year as it is, and if you want to find the good ones you're going to have to start looking away from the major studios. (I stopped caring about CoD after MW2).

[Zixinus]

What about Portal 2?

[General Zod]

What about Portal 2?

What about it? Portal 2 is a puzzle game, not an FPS.

[Mr Bean]

What about Portal 2?

Not a shooter, First person puzzle solver.

Shooters work best from a third person only if you everyone is a magic super mercenary with awesome shoot from the hip skills. Also if your enemy's are bullet sponges ALA-Gears of War where even a first mission grunt takes 11 bullets to the head to die and you kill 9000 more of his friends before the game is over. In a true twitch game (Some like SWAT 4, old fashion Quake III(Railguns) or BF2 Hardcore) playing in 3rd person is going to get you killed because guns in those games are filled not with yummy candy but hot death.

Only in the Halos or CoD's where you can take 100 bullets before going down does it make sense to go 3rd person. All third person games have that in common, your durable, sometimes you even get durability and regenerating heath making you immortal as long as there are boxes to hide behind and no terrain destructibility built in.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I think there's plenty FPS games can yet do, if the will was there to do it anyway. Long-term persistence a la OpFlash: Resistance only better and not hopelessly buggy, for example, although that isn't necessarily restricted to FPS.

[2000AD]

To the Google-mobile!

MAG
BioShock 2
Aliens vs. Predator
NecroVisioN: Lost Company
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Metro 2033
Red Steel 2
Sniper: Ghost Warrior
Singularity
Halo Reach
Call of Duty: Black Ops

Fallout: New Vegas is borderline.

Personally I think it's just more shooters are shifting across to 3rd person rather than 1st. In that category you can add Mass Effect 2, Kane and Lynch 2, Mafia 2, APB, Lost Planet 2 and Just Cause 2 and that's just off the top of my head.

[Chardok]

MAG - DOA
BioShock 2 - Meh
Aliens vs. Predator - Crap
NecroVisioN: Lost Company - never heard of it ergo poop.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - Exception to the rule
Metro 2033 - decent
Red Steel 2 - Really?
Sniper: Ghost Warrior - crap
Singularity - Crap
Halo Reach - Samey
Call of Duty: Black Ops - for idiots.

Fallout: New Vegas is borderline a buggy piece of shit that no one but the most hardcore FO fans should ever consider even looking at with their eyes.


Not an indictment of you - just wanting to show that the list is basically a succession of piles of samey bullcrap where resources would've been better spent inventing new IP's or innovating on existing ones (Halo Wars, anyone?)

[Stark]

The OP just wasn't paying attention. 'Of note' apparently means 'has one million ads'.

The existence of 'innovation' has nothing to do with the number of good shooters. Metro and BC2 are just well-done rehashes, after all. Poor Sarevok just has no idea what happens. How many people played Metro, again? How many played fucking Blops?

[Chaotic Neutral]

What about RTS-FPS combos? That's an area FPS's are lacking in.

[Chardok]

Probably because the RTS genre is even deader than than FPS genre. Battlezone was awesome and.... uh...

You know what I'm going to say here. C&C Renegade - I loved it and you can preemptively fuck off for calling me dumb for it before you even say it.

As for CN's question - it's a proper indictment of the market as a whole. "It's been tried", in my opinion, is no excuse to *stop* trying. The mere fact that the last time we had an FPS/RTS hybrid game was, what, 14 years ago(?) should tell SOMEone out there that the market is very different and there's a fresh new crop of morons to exploit for profit who will probably hail one of those types of games as innovative, fresh, and new and sell a bajillion copies specifically because it's *not* Call of Halozone3: Helicopter Wonderland Express.

Hell, I'd buy it.

[Stark]

Honestly I think the FPS and RTS genres have diverged a lot since Battlezone and Renegade. Back in the day RTS and FPS were the 'action' genres on PC; now FPS is action and RTS has become APM and build trees. People who play shooters don't want to fuck with that rubbish, they want experiences like BC2 and Blops. People who play RTS don't want any skill requirement outside that from Starcraft.

[Chaotic Neutral]

As for CN's question - it's a proper indictment of the market as a whole. "It's been tried", in my opinion, is no excuse to *stop* trying. The mere fact that the last time we had an FPS/RTS hybrid game was, what, 14 years ago(?) should tell SOMEone out there that the market is very different and there's a fresh new crop of morons to exploit for profit who will probably hail one of those types of games as innovative, fresh, and new and sell a bajillion copies specifically because it's *not* Call of Halozone3: Helicopter Wonderland Express.

Hell, I'd buy it.

The two games that I was thinking of as hybrids are Tremulous, which is more towards FPS and a pretty old freeware game, the other I saw on Steam that's supposed to be released this quarter call Nuclear Dawn.

[Chardok]

Honestly I think the FPS and RTS genres have diverged a lot since Battlezone and Renegade. Back in the day RTS and FPS were the 'action' genres on PC; now FPS is action and RTS has become APM and build trees. People who play shooters don't want to fuck with that rubbish, they want experiences like BC2 and Blops. People who play RTS don't want any skill requirement outside that from Starcraft.

You're right, of course, and it's pretty sad, because that divergence is exactly what's disincentivizing developers from trying new things. After all, we know we can make tentytrillion dollars making Faceshooter 7: Bullet - why should we bother with Battlezone 2(proper)? Hell - I'll give Activision 20 bucks for a decent port of BZ95 on XBLA/PSN


and CN - I'll check out that Nuclear Dawn thing. It's got Nuclear in the title, so it must be good.

[Stark]

There have been several RTS/FPS mods for games. I thought you were talking about actual popular things.

[Chaotic Neutral]

And Savage of course. How could I have forgotten about that one?

[Chardok]

Yeah it was delayed a LOT. I was never in on the beta, but when I found out it had a solid release date I was real excited. I bought it day 1 and unlike a lot of games, I gave it a chance. Played it strong for about oh, a month I guess. Even revisited it months later after a lot of the game breaking bullshit problems were "Fixed" (They weren't, just replaced with new gamebreaking problems but NEW MAPS!) and I just couldn't get back into it. It was a really good idea with completely balls implementation. now - if there was some sort of penalty for not listening to the commander's orders besides "LOLNOWYOU LOST BECAUSE U NOT A TEAM", and an incentive to do what your told...maybe it wou...nope, it's still a terribly controlled piece of crap.

[Falarica]

Battlefield 3 is on the distant horizon, hopefully it will be a worthy successor to BF2, BF2142.

Rage looks OK though and Natural Selection 2 also looks interesting.

But sadly the genre has a bad case of 'sequelitis', because of the CoD and Battlefield.




Oh yeah, Battlefield: Play4Free is playable if your into that kind of thing

[Stark]

I seriously don't think you can blame CoD and Battlefield for exploitable franchises. Blops is the biggest selling FPS in history after all.

Listing a bunch of games that will come out soon doesn't really address the OP of 'no games already came out'.

[Manus Celer Dei]

Probably because the RTS genre is even deader than than FPS genre. Battlezone was awesome and.... uh...

You know what I'm going to say here. C&C Renegade - I loved it and you can preemptively fuck off for calling me dumb for it before you even say it.

Renegade was probably the most fun I've ever had playing an FPS multiplayer online.

[CaptHawkeye]

The market is deflating lately because while they have been individually successful sales like Blops, most of the market has been in decline since 08. So it's only natural to see what looks like a year of slim picks.

That and the video game industry can fuck off and die until it gives me WiC 2.

[MKSheppard]

Well, that and older games are still decent.

I've been playing Crysis recently after getting it as part of the Steam Holiday Sale and it still holds up pretty well for something released three years ago.

Also, we're hitting the point where you can start to see the first glimmerings of photorealism, driving up the cost of content creation, meaning less A+ titles.