What is going in the FPS genre ?

[adam_grif]

You guys should probably give a mention to Goldeneye Wii as a shooter of note last year, it was actually way better than I was expecting it to be. I'm not sure if it was lifting the mechanic from other games (probably), but I really appreciated the pseudo-cover system provided for by crouching-aiming interaction, wherein if you're crouched behind an obstacle and you hit "aim", you automatically pop up while you're aiming, then when you let go of aim you return to your crouched position. Generally, the game also let you do Stealth in 90% of the levels if you wanted to, unlike the totally scripted stealth in something like Blops where you trying to sneak around on a level not specifically designed for you to stealth is an exercise in futility.

As for this year, Red Orchestra 2 and Crysis 2 are going to be providing my FPS fix. RO2 specifically looks absolutely awesome, PC gaming master race etc.

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.

Art teams already create super-high resolution and detail assets for their games, they simply down-sample and compress them for the final product because they're trapped on 2005 hardware and can't get out.

[Stark]

You mean Vietcong's cover system from 1998? At least it finally showed up again.

[CaptHawkeye]

If RO2's infantry combat is shitty and broken i'll still be happy with the not-health-bar based damage model they're using on vehicles now.

[weemadando]

You mean Vietcong's cover system from 1998? At least it finally showed up again.

Hey, hey. Let's be fair. It's from 2003.

If we want to talk about stuff from the 90s, let's talk about the ballistics/penetration system that SWAT3 had in '99 that is still unmatched by any game out today.

But wait - a Call of Duty game put in fences you could shoot through. INNOVATION! GAME OF THE YEAR!

RO was a cool game until simhard morons got to it. Such a shame.

I remember being bawled out for minutes on end by some (I presume) hambeast grognerd during a game of RO for daring to use a MG34 in a manner which was inconsistent with Heer doctrine at the time the map was set. So I shoved a potato masher down his pants every chance I got. Getting kicked from a server is sometimes totally worth it.

[Stark]

Holy shit, Vietcong is 2003? Why doesn't it fucking work anymore, then? Bah!

SWAT 3 had recalcitrant suspects, too. It's a shame the expansion basically turned it into a shooter.

RO when it was a mod was a lot of fun; it was objective-based and had high lethality. But then the devs listened to the forums full of fatties who turned it into a spreadsheet while ignoring hilarious nade-spawn issues. Cause hey, who cares right?

[weemadando]

SWAT 3 remains the best "tacticool" game ever.

Holy shit, let's actually design interesting and challenging scenarios rather than just going: "yeah, so there was a carload of guys escaping an armed robbery who crashed and hid in this office building." Neglecting to mention the fact that it was about 10 busloads of guys who were in there.

The first two levels of that game were great - the freeway sniper who would often hide in one of the many bolt-holes in the level (my first run through he came out from a cupboard under the sink that I didn't even notice and took out two officers by shooting them in the back) and the night raid on the bombmakers were two of the most replayed levels in my gaming history. So many variations despite having a grand total of 3 enemies and 1 civilian and a playspace the size of two small homes.

But hey. I guess we need sprawling levels and infinite spawn monster closets helicopters with fast ropes to make a good game now.

Anyhow - it sounds like GoG might have just picked up the rights to republish the whole Police Quest series. If this means I can get a fully functioning version of SWAT3 GotY for Windows 7, then I'm there.

[Highlord Laan]

Hell, my friends and I still play UT2004 >_>

AS for new shooters, Blops is fun, if sometimes aggravating. It gets annoying getting called a hacker for being good at knife kills.

[Thanas]

Is everybody forgetting about Mafia 2 and The Saboteur?

Or do these not count as FPS anymore?

[General Zod]

Is everybody forgetting about Mafia 2 and The Saboteur?

Or do these not count as FPS anymore?

I hate to break it to you.

But those are third person shooters. Not first person.The Saboteur was kinda mediocre anyway.

[Losonti Tokash]

The Saboteur is also from 2009.

[adam_grif]

Is everybody forgetting about Mafia 2 and The Saboteur?

Or do these not count as FPS anymore?

The F in FPS is "First". Mafia 2 and The Saboteur are "Shooters", but they aren't "First Person Shooters".

[CaptHawkeye]

Honestly Thanas's point is probably isn't about genre pickiness. I think he's trying to say that their are plenty of shooty action games around. To many people, the difference between First/Third in a Shooter are pretty irrelevant.

[General Zod]

Honestly Thanas's point is probably isn't about genre pickiness. I think he's trying to say that their are plenty of shooty action games around. To many people, the difference between First/Third in a Person Shooter are pretty irrelevant. It's a shooter.

The main difference being third person shooters generally have more depth to them than your typical fps twitch-fest. I think you're reading into his post too much in any case.

[adam_grif]

I'm not exactly sure how you're operationally defining "depth", unless you're exclusively speaking of the recent spade of CoDlikes.

[General Zod]

I'm not exactly sure how you're operationally defining "depth", unless you're exclusively speaking of the recent spade of CoDlikes.

More mission paths? More gameplay options? Halfway decent writing?

[adam_grif]

What has the third person perspective got to do with mission paths, gameplay options and decent writing? I'll assume you're speaking of the cover system for gameplay options, but a cover button doesn't equal gameplay depth. Taking cover from fire by pressing a button is no more or less deep than taking cover by crouching behind a box or running behind an obstacle. Aiming from cover is no more or less deep than aiming in an FPS that requires you to ironsight or control your fire to keep the recoil down.

I don't even see how they're intrinsically more deep than a game like Unreal Tournament, the ultimate twitch shooter.

[General Zod]

What has the third person perspective got to do with mission paths, gameplay options and decent writing?

In other words you missed the point of my post. I wasn't saying the gameplay was dependent on the perspective, I was saying FPS developers tend to stick to convention and make their games samey more than third person ones.

[Thanas]

Yeah, I was mainly saying that there are enough action shooters around.

[Artemas]

Stark wrote:
Have you even played it? Would you have anything meaningful to say about it?


Eventually I will when there's a reasonable sale on it.


Quote:
I mean, you could have ASKED.


And maybe you could have used something a bit more self explanatory in regards to the latest slang in the gaming world.

You're not going to play it for like 5 years then. And people in this forum have been referring to CoD: Blops for like six months.

Pretty much the only people who are trying new things in shooters are eastern europeans, with stalker and factions and faction wars and shit. It was pretty simplistic in clear sky, but what other game has tried anything new recently?

[Aaron]

[I wouldn't classify it as trying anything new but Metro 2033 certainly upped my expectations for future FPS games. Not because of anything gamplay wise (it has all the usual FPS conventions) but because of the atmosphere. I must have played through a dozen times by now and I'm still scared I'm going to be eaten. Maybe thats what happens when you put more emphasis on atmosphere then making sure it looks pretty?

[Artemas]

For sure, Metro is great. But metro also looks pretty, so its not like you can't do both, people are just stupid. BC2 and STALKER and Metro have raised my expectations for shooters, but what are the odds other devs will actually learn from them? If we're lucky, the devs that made bc2, stalker and metro will have learned from their games, and will continue to put out quality titles. Well, most of the guys from metro are originally from stalker, so its already sort of happening i guess. I just hope they don't fuck over the sequels to bc2.

EDIT:

Black Ops works as a contraction of the game title, it's also clear and concise enough to be readily understood in a moment.

Dude, Black Ops is the official subtitle. Not Black Operations. Seriously, fucking use google.

[MKSheppard]

Crysis has a surprising amount of depth to it thanks to the NanoSuit giving you a lot more options than are commonly found in shooters.

[I've only gotten a couple hours into the game, so please hold spoilers please]

Huge chasms? Jump down them and let the suit regenerate your health. Patrol in the woods? You can either shoot it out with them or sneak past them with the cloak or just speed run past them.

The levels while they're constrained with unrealistic huge vertical cliffs and other impassable obstacles to keep you from wandering off, still allow you options in dealing with patrols or infiltrating a base.

Too bad the enemy AI is only slightly smarter than a box of rocks and you're the archetypical lone warrior with a bunch of meatshields for conversational cutscenes every so often.

[Stark]

Seriously Shep, you are unintentionally hilarious with your earnest descriptions of games from years ago.

Far Cry 2 and Metro are the shooters I'd like to see more developers emulate, but of course Blops is the biggest selling shooter in history while Metro got harsh reviews for being 'linear' (ps, Blops is linear, shooters are generally linear, oops) so guess what they'll make more of?

[Artemas]

Far Cry 2 was excellent. Or, almost excellent. If they only had time to complete it and polish it. Actual factions and faction relations would have been sweet, but i'm the guy who loves watching ai men fight other ai men. More meaningful differences to weapons in a class? There are a bunch of things they could have improved, but most look like they are related to lack of time rather than bad design.

[Aaron]

Far Cry 2 was excellent. Or, almost excellent. If they only had time to complete it and polish it. Actual factions and faction relations would have been sweet, but i'm the guy who loves watching ai men fight other ai men. More meaningful differences to weapons in a class? There are a bunch of things they could have improved, but most look like they are related to lack of time rather than bad design.

I've probably got more replay value out of FC2 then any game I've ever bought.

Hey Shep, why don't you get a 360 or PS3 and just rent the games?