I've been watching YouTube videos of old 1st-person shooters from my youth and suddenly realised how unexciting newer 1st-person shooters are these days. The only one i've looked forward to in the last few years was CoD4, and now CoD:Modern Warfare 2. Yet when i first got my PS1 back in 1996 the thought of a new 1st-person shooter really got me going. It was about then that they really started to increase in complexity as hardware got better and developers got better at coding them. Compare the list of great 90's shooters below with what's been out in the shops these past few years;
Doom (+ sequels)
Quake (+ sequels)
Terminator: Rampage (+ Future Shock + SkyNET)
Alien Trilogy
Marathon
Half Life
Star Wars: Dark Forces
Star Wars: Jedi Knight
Exhumed
Descent (kind of 1st-person shooter)
I'm sure there were others too but my memory fails me this time of the evening!
The only one on your list that I actually enjoyed was Alien Trilogy, just because it was really atmospheric and anything with Xenomorphs is automatically cool.
It's because every single new FPS out there is pretty much the exact same thing as everything else. You're in a first person view, you use the mouse to aim and shoot people, and move around with the WSAD keys. I mean after a while, any gamer, hard core or casual, is going to start to find the trend very uninspiring. In fact the only company out there that seems to be doing anything about it is Valve. Half-Life 2 introduced a physics engine which made, for a brief moment in time, the FPS interesting again. Then you have Portal which introduced an entirely new twist on the genre. Left 4 Dead introduces immense amounts of replayability and a top-notch co-op system that you wont find in many other places, not to mention level design that subtly changes every time you play. And of course you can't forget Team Fortress 2. An excellent example of how an online team based game can be played when you force everyone to realize how insignificant they are unless they work together. Prey tried... but really, it was nothing but fancy level design and the portals in that game were nothing more than an interesting spin on doors.
Other than that though, I mean a FPS has become as empty a genre as MMORPG's. They all follow the same uninspiring formula anymore, so of course the hype for them has dwindled down to nothing.
I dunno, I've just been running through Crysis and I was completely blown away just like when I first played Duke Nukem or Doom. Nowadays the only retro FPS games I can play are Doom 1+2 and Quake.
But yea Crysis, HL2 and its subsequent episodes, L4D, TF2, Portal... Okay so anything by Valve is just verging on perfect. I can't get into them CoD style games at all.
I was on a "retro FPS spree" last month, played about every game in Marko's list plus Wolfenstein 3D, Heretic and Rise of the triads.
But yeah, it is like Brandon said, the FPS genre got so perfected and fine-tuned they all end up the same. Make the gameplay a bit different and your generic fragger will complain. I find myself having fun with the more tactical shooters now, like the Rainbow Six series.
Started working on one myself with retro-looking graphics but got sidetracked
People are probably going to flame me for this, but Halo improved the genre quite a bit with good vehicular combat. Yeah lots of games before it had vehicles, but Halo was the first I played where the vehicles were really fun to drive.
Wow, shame on me for forgetting Crysis. Very fun game, however my first run through seemed to feel like any other stealth FPS. My strategy felt really cheap, but I always kept on resorting back to it whenever I failed to do stuff (I played Delta mode for the Korean language track), which was to cloak and sneak, then shoot the place up, crouch, cloak, shoot up. Strength was only really good for keeping down recoil, and speed was only good for long distances.
Many of those games remind me of DOS bot disks and running memmaker
It was fun watching the technology grow into full 3D back in those days. Now it seems that we've reached a saturation point with graphics quality. Nice to see them focusing on gameplay and level/scenario design more now.
Advertisement
Post Reply
