Do you find that in many first person shooters your actions have little significance, what I mean is, you move from the start to the end of the map shooting and avoiding enemies.. but when you get to the end of the map you think that shooting the enemies made almost no overall difference except to your characters survival. You don''t feel as though shooting the creatures has helped others survive, (and even if you save some scientists you will never hear from them again), or achieved any other "meaningful" (cough) goal. Does this have to be the case? But if an FPS is merely concentrated on survival or is a fun "action-packed" one (ie. Serious Sam? etc.) then this criticism is not very important and would be taking the game too seriously (ie. it only aims to be fun and anything else gets in the way)

Deus Ex is my favourite FPS game of all time. Need I say more?

To elaborate, I really like games like Half-Life and Max Payne, but their linearity and lack of choice do detract from the experience. The feeling of being on a rail throughout the game leaves a lot to be desired. I constantly find myself thinking, consciously or not, "What did the designer intend me to do next?"

In short, I think more games should have more interactivity and more meaningful choices.

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Aim for the horizon
but watch your step

You could try a game like Metal Gear Solid, which isn''t (completely) linear and rewards you for not blasting the hell out of everything :-)

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well MGS is a problematic case, truly hideo kojima is a genius to create such a game with a lot of quality and a lot of default that you can''t remove without degraing the quality, and it was one of the game which play more with the player than the player play with the game and then player heve a lot of room to play yet!

well i''ve done the game twice, one in very esy for the ambiant and the story and the second time in E-Extreme (european extreme)
without radar and with the mode ''see/hear=lose'' for the total gameplay (but i''ve only finish the tanker)

i have now the substance, and think about this.... i have no PS2

action have meaning when there is a scenario to explain them
in serious sam the scenario is SHOOT THEM ALL then no mistake, for others ask the designer why they did a scenario where game don''t need them and why they made action which are out the story they make if any?? complete waste of time, i''m still playing contra 3 the scenario is very small and is on purpose, but a good purpose>> fun and visual choregraphia...

maybe we have lost the choregraphic feelings of old school games (think a doom/r-type 3 game with the module)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Games are a series of interesting decisions.

Meaning as in story is not important. Meaning as in gameplay decisions is.

Could FPSs use strategic, long-term, meaningful decisions? Possibly. In the mean time, I''ll play another game of Soldat.

It would be interesting to see games where something you do early on affects what happens later in the game, instead of just requiring you to perform that action to finish the level.

Half-life was good at making you think you were making a difference, when actually the game was very linear. Then again, so are movies.

We''ll see what kind of flexibility Half-life 2 offers. It seems there will be many ways to solve the problems, but the problems themselves will still need to be solved to complete everything.

quote:

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Original post by Waverider
It would be interesting to see games where something you do early on affects what happens later in the game, instead of just requiring you to perform that action to finish the level.

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I think that might have been done in the Blade Runner point and click adventure game. It changed later depending on how you did things earlier on.

Metal Gear Solid kind of does because you can revisit other parts of the game you couldn''t get into before (locked doors etc) to pick up equipment that you''ll find useful later. But you don''t get told to, and you don''t really need to.

I''ve not seen any games that dramatically change though - I guess it would make development longer and more difficult. Not to mention the nightmare for the QA department!

- Pete

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Why you shouldn''t use iostream.h - ever! | A Good free online C++ book

quote:

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Original post by Diodor
Games are a series of interesting decisions.

Meaning as in story is not important. Meaning as in gameplay decisions is.

Could FPSs use strategic, long-term, meaningful decisions? Possibly. In the mean time, I''ll play another game of Soldat.

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what i want to say is that story does have meaning of the gameplay because it''s a part of it (the gameplay)
when the part what to be the whole (gameplay) there is some problem, some game have very very abstract story and meaning (old shooter, like r-type and contra 3 for the better)but the game is good there is no matter (i define choregraphic gameplay as abstract story and meaning which the purpose is to enhance the gameplay, again old shooter and old game was good at this)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Check out the previews of Deus Ex 2. Gamespy has a pretty good one. It sounds exactly like the sort of game you''re looking for.