First Person Suckers

[IcePak]

Is it just me, or is anyone else out there over First Person Shooters?

Multiplayer FPS games can be really fun, but make it a solo experience, and it lacks any real purpose. I recently tried Far Cry, and it started out good enough, but once you've played the game for about an hour, you realise it's just another average FPS with nice graphics. That you've done it all before. Honestly, the last single-player FPS I remember enjoying was Duke Nukem 3D, and that was way back in 1996.

Why developers continue to create games to the single-player FPS standard is beyond me. The market is overcrowded with these types of games, and none have offered much more than what Doom offered us back in 1993. Sure some people praise Halo as the best recent FPS, but I found it to be pretty average after the first couple of levels.

Personally I can't see any way of rejuvenating the genre until interactive technology becomes a lot more advanced.

[Concept]

Personally, I believe if anything, the first-person shooter genre is going through a period of serious rejuvenation at the moment.

Far Cry. Chronicles of Riddick. Half-Life 2. Halo 2. Doom III.

Some good titles out presently, and some amazing to come.

[JibberX]

The last FPS I really enjoyed was Half Life, anything since has been just the same game wrapped around a different tree. GoldenEye was good because it was a game developed from the ground up for the control mechanism, you can't jump, why not, because you don't have to when you design a game around that fact.

Its a bit like the genericatron Platformers of the Snes Megadrive era. Far Cry simply isn't that great either, anyone who says it is must be without doubt not playing it, not played it, or emplyed by ubi-soft.

[Concept]

In your opinion.

I thought Far Cry was superb in many ways. Similar to Halo's outdoor sections, but taken to another level. The sheer scale, involvement, scope of action and atmosphere blended expertly for me.

[SharkAttack]

Only FPS to have appealed to me recently (console wise) was XIII and I had to drop the idea of getting that due to funds. I have Timesplitters 2 sitting indoors untouched since I bought it. And then I am struggling to enjoy the old FPA Metroid Prime right now.

EDIT: And now I have touched Timesplitters 2 it made me sick! lol

[IainMcC]

Is it just me, or is anyone else out there over First Person Shooters?

Multiplayer FPS games can be really fun, but make it a solo experience, and it lacks any real purpose. I recently tried Far Cry, and it started out good enough, but once you've played the game for about an hour, you realise it's just another average FPS with nice graphics. That you've done it all before. Honestly, the last single-player FPS I remember enjoying was Duke Nukem 3D, and that was way back in 1996.

Why developers continue to create games to the single-player FPS standard is beyond me. The market is overcrowded with these types of games, and none have offered much more than what Doom offered us back in 1993. Sure some people praise Halo as the best recent FPS, but I found it to be pretty average after the first couple of levels.

Personally I can't see any way of rejuvenating the genre until interactive technology becomes a lot more advanced.

Can I just say I think you're Mad And Wrong?

If you think titles like Far Cry, TRON 2 or Halo (for example) don't offer more than Doom, then that must be pretty potent crack you're smoking. I agree that the market is hopelessly overcrowded, but there are plenty good FPS games out there which have done something different with the genre, rather than put you in a corridor with a big gun and a bunch of mindless enemies.

The only problem with Far Cry is that it turns into Quake towards the end of the game - the beginning levels are pretty astounding; the set-piece on the top of the carrier in particular. The flexibility of the AI is incredible, perhaps even a step up on Halo, and the integration of proper physics and the ability to find your own path instead of following a linear route when fighting on the islands really keeps things fresh. Once you've played Doom once, you've played it a thousand times. The path is always the same, and the enemies always act in the same one dimensional way. You can't say the same about Halo or Far Cry. The AI co-ordinates, flushes you out, and in Far Cry, can even call in for reinforcements.

If you find Duke Nukem 3D more fun than Halo or Far Cry, perhaps you should stick to playing things like Serious Sam or just take off those rose-tinted glasses and realise that genres can actually make technical progress and still be fun...

[JibberX]

To counter the FarCry thing, the AI was "ok" and the level design was on the whole lower than average, the free roaming concept wasn't very well excuted, in fact I'd say lazy. If it wern't for the foliage and fluff it'd be a big field with mysterious walls you can't get past. Bascially they hid the normal restraining concepts in "cliffs" and the unpassable sea.

[jezzace]

I think FPS are suffering the same way any overcrowded genre is. There are tons of great games but they all start to seem a little alike when they tons of them are released. I think a lot of recent ones have suffered from too much hype as well. Remember when XIII was coming out how it was meant to revolutionise the FPS...pffft. What about Deus Ex 2? Crud for being to complicated or too simple depending who you talk to.

Most recent fps released since Perfect Dark (the last absolutely great fps imo) have just been tweaked versions of what came before. "I know lets take goldeneye's stealth and add a gun thats twice the size of your character" sort of thing. We just need a new fps to come along and show us how to fully revolutionise the genre the way Goldeneye, Half Life and Doom did. And I think Half Life 2 will be that game.

With regards to Halo and Far Cry I think its just personnal opnion. I myself think Halo was good not great, though my opinion of it improved when I started playing Co-op with my mate (I only had the pc version yer see).Far cry was good then duff as soon as they introduced the dumb stupid monkeys!!

[csuzw]

I thought Far Cry was excellent until the last few levels.

Still I'm pretty bored with all single player FPS's now, so much so that Half Life 2 doesn't interest me at all any more - I won't be getting it on release and I doubt I will play it unless I get to try someone elses copy. The only one I would go back to would be Quake 2 - It's still the best. I didn't even like Halo really - it just seemed a bit bland.

Multiplayer is so much better. I'm just getting in to UT2004 after a long break from multiplayer FPS's - so much fun.

[IainMcC]

To counter the FarCry thing, the AI was "ok"

"ok"?? You either have impossibly high standards or haven't replayed the game enough and used different tactics to see just how flexible it is. (I'm talking about the mercenaries, obviously - the Trigens were rubbish) I've experimented on the first half-dozen or so levels about five times, approaching the levels a different way each time, and the AI adapts brilliantly. The AI in Far Cry is the best advance in FPS AI since the Marines in Half-Life. If you're unable to see this, then I'd suggest that it's possibly because you're trying to play the game like Doom. Games have moved on since then, the way you play them should too.

and the level design was on the whole lower than average, the free roaming concept wasn't very well excuted, in fact I'd say lazy. If it wern't for the foliage and fluff it'd be a big field with mysterious walls you can't get past. Bascially they hid the normal restraining concepts in "cliffs" and the unpassable sea.

Okay, now I think you're just nuts. Are you trying to say big fields and mysterious walls are good? Because that's effectively what Duke Nukem 3D gave you. There's nothing worse in a game than finding invisible barriers - Far Cry limits your area of play (which is far larger than most FPS games, incidentally) with natural barriers that are totally consistent with what you'd expect from the environment, not immersion-smashing invisible force barriers you can't get past when you can see that there's clearly another field on the other side of that fence (Medal Of Honor, I smite thee).

Using design methods that are consistent with the game world to restrict movement is infinitely preferable to using walls or inexplicably locked doors. Though Project IGI actually went one better than this, and used a fractal landscaping system that generated the level on the fly. If you wanted to go to the mountains 20km away on the horizon, you could do it - it'd just keep generating landscape until you got bored and went back to complete the level.

[IcePak]

Damn, how could I forget games like Goldeneye, and Perfect Dark. I really did enjoy those, and Timesplitters 2 was a really enjoyable single-player FPS too. XIII started out interestingly, but became more of the same a few levels into it.

As for FarCry, the "free-roaming" feature was still very limited, and you were still technically guided along the same (albiet wider) path. So in that regard, it's not much different from Doom, albiet with some MGS (stealth) stylistics added to it.

As for the Doom anology of games just throwing monsters at you, perhaps it was a little bit over the top, because clearly FPS games have become a little smarter, and they aren't just killing-sprees anymore. However, for the most part they are still walking through a corridor (or area), shooting enemies, and getting to the end of the level/completing to the objective. How about something original for a change?

[IainMcC]

As for FarCry, the "free-roaming" feature was still very limited, and you were still technically guided along the same (albiet wider) path.

Yes, we in the videogames writing business like to call it "narrative"...

[JibberX]

People want to play games, not a narrative. Well thats technically not true, but if the narrative gets in the way of the gameplay, sack the script writers.

[IcePak]

But couldn't there be a way to keep the narrative, yet make the game so it truely is free-roaming? For example, ditch the whole scheme of levels, and just have the one big area in which the entire game takes place. This way, the player can go anywhere they want to in the area, for example, straight to the end boss. This way the game leaves more for the players to discover - did they see everything the game had to offer? Would completing a certain objective before another change the way the narrative plays out? Stuff like that. It's not an impossible task (at it's basic form, this is what Super Mario 64 does, although it still uses the levels scheme) it would just take a lot of work. But a game that takes longer to be made, yet turns out to be better because of this is a good thing, no?

[IainMcC]

People want to play games, not a narrative. Well thats technically not true, but if the narrative gets in the way of the gameplay, sack the script writers.

I think we're confusing "plot" and "story" with narrative here. They're two very different things.

For a game like Doom, the "narrative" as such is the action of playing through the level, because there's no real story or plot to speak of. There's just you, your shotgun, a bunch of corridors and arenas filled with demon-spawn. The narrative *is* the gameplay. The narrative can't get in the way of the gameplay, because they're one and the same.

For something like Far Cry, the narrative is comprised of the plot, plus the way in which you complete the level. The "gameplay" on the other hand can be defined as the control method with which you interact with the game and the behaviour of the enemies. Here, it may be possible for the narrative to obstruct the purity of just sitting down and playing the game, but I'd argue that if you don't want to be bothered by a story or plot, you shouldn't really be playing something like Far Cry. Surely there should be more to playing an FPS than simply blasting your way through a map Doom-style, though. There should be a purpose to it, which is provides an impetus to keep playing, to find out more about the story and background of the world you're fighting in. Both Halo and Far Cry do this very well. Otherwise it's just a criminal waste of the power and immediacy of the medium you're playing in. (See Half-Life for another great use of narrative)

As you can see, depending upon the genre or style of game, narrative isn't a concrete concept (and neither is gameplay, but that's a whole other argument we don't want to get into!)