doom = a top down shooter from 1st person perspective. It had a lot in common with older shooters. But games are getting too slow, too long and too serious now.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster
doom = a top down shooter from 1st person perspective. It had a lot in common with older shooters. But games are getting too slow, too long and too serious now.

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Hmm... I''ve wondered. Would "enough" (whatever that means) people enjoy more FPS''s as simple as Doom, or would "too many" (whatever that means) people be like "Dude... you can''t even jump!".

@Gtronics:
One word. Well... acronym: DDR.

Simple enough a concept for ya? And look at all the insanity it''s brought to the arcades.

With other words, the games of today are getting to commercial
(at least most of them)

The secret behind why some people love the old fps''s:

You dont have to have any amount of skill at all its sorta like Starcraft, grab a certain weapon and blast away.

Hmm lets see you like the old games better because you played them while you were young didnt everything seem funner while you were younger,

Swings, Trees, Masturbation, Gameing.

Personally I cant wait for the FPS genre to die and for FABLE to come out.

But intill then Play Conqueror ad 1086.

Best game to date
Is fps/rpg/tbs

I recently bought Return To Castle Wolfenstein. It''s got all the right ingredients; nice graphics, big levels, lots of guns, nazis, zombies... but for some reason it''s as boring as hell. While I like first-person shooters, I''m finding them infinitely less entertaining than I used to. If RTCW hadn''t had such a famous legacy, would it have sold anywhere near as well? I doubt it.

A few years ago, I would have been completely satiated by RTCW. But since then, I''ve seen games like Halo, Half-Life and Deus Ex. RTCW is depressingly linear and simple - it displays none of Deus Ex''s freedom, or Half-Life''s invention. Oddly, I can enjoy the Serious Sam games because they''re very much focussed on one thing - connecting a series of small arenas into one big level and filling them full of mindless monsters. Will Rock, on the other hand, tried to mix the stupid monsters with larger, more expansive environments, and it just didn''t work. Painkiller has the right idea; like Serious Sam, it''s levels are made up of a series of smaller arenas that mean you can concentrate on the business at hand - mindlessly blasting moronic monsters - without worrying about the layout of the level.

Basically, I think that we''ve been spoilt by a few very good shooters. Complicated games with innovative features still appeal because of the thrill of the new. Old games (like Wolfenstein) and old-style games (like Serious Sam) appeal because they offer simple, mindless action. Most first person shooters, though, occupy a middleground that offer neither, and leave us feeling unfulfilled.

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Original post by Alf_Fly
I recently bought Return To Castle Wolfenstein. It''s got all the right ingredients; nice graphics, big levels, lots of guns, nazis, zombies... but for some reason it''s as boring as hell.

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That''s because those aren''t the right ingredients

With so many shooters that come out that have almost indentical game mechanics, there are still some that are noticably more fun than others. Why? Level Design.

Most level designers in the industry don''t know what they''re doing. They think that by making "this really cool layout I envisioned", that it will not only fit the game''s style, but the game''s audience. When level designers stop looking at their work as "the best levels are filled with really little cool things" and instead see them as "a physical set of rules that govern a player''s experience and control game flow", then we will see much better games on the market - whether or not the actual game controls/looks/sounds/moves like every other game in its genre.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster
You dont have to have any amount of skill at all its sorta like Starcraft, grab a certain weapon and blast away.

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Actually, in my experience, the opposite is true in general. The simpler the game, the more skill is required, especially when playing against human opponents.

Also, I don''t consider "twitch" a skill, and, if it is, it''s not a skill I care about. I loved the slower paced dueling in Infantry. Granted, it''s not an FPS, but it is a shooter, and it definitely took skill (skill I lacked in many instances )

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Hmm lets see you like the old games better because you played them while you were young didnt everything seem funner while you were younger,

Swings, Trees, Masturbation, Gameing.

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So, when I''m all grown up I''ll no longer enjoy swings? I''m 21, in college, and not there yet.

Although Starcraft was easy to pick up and play, it significantly increased its audience and made many more people interested in games that they otherwise would not have been. In fact, Warcraft and Starcraft are the only RTS games that I play - I don''t like the gameplay that revolves are the genre, so it was simple enough for an inexperienced player to pick up and immediately see progress.

As for twitch - I believe it is a skill. The problem, however, is that twitch-centered gameplay is so often filled with cheaters. Now it most certainly has something to do with the fact that they make the more popular multiplayer games, but the problem with twitch is that there is so little "mindful skill", that cheats are easy to create. Twitch, in the form of athletics, are very popular throughout the world; society places so much emphasis on them that they have to have some form of skill. Otherwise, no one would bother to care about them.

I wouldn't say many athletics games use just 'twitch' - not the way I've seen it defined - basically just raw reaction to extremely simple situations:

- player comes around corner into your sights
- aim and fire

I think one of the problems with FPS is too much emphasis on 'snap shots'. My own brief foray into the world of Counter Strike, one of the things I liked was the variation and realism of weapons, like there were real differences between how you used a sidearm, a long range rifle, or an automatic weapon. Again after reading my first Jack Reacher (shooter/thriller by Lee Child) novel, I've had an itching for some nice fps action. What would be cool? A game with real tactics and planning. What I saw when I played Counter Strike was a kind of 'first step' in evolution towards more tactical play; players work as a team, cover each other, move together, etc... it's great stuff.

Probably why I didn't bother with any of the Quake games much. I played Doom2 to death in single, PvP, modded, made loads of my own levels, loved it... but then more of the same, rebranded, over and over? There's nothing intrinsicly 'bad' or 'wrong' about modern fps - they're just old and offer little new in terms of gameplay - just better and better graphics.

I agree with what other people have said here. You need GAMEPLAY to make a game good. To make gameplay good, you need to evolve the genre in the direction of GAMEPLAY and not just graphics/specific puzzles. FPS need more tactics and strategy, more dependence on weapons... not necessarily more realism, just more attention to detail.

[edited by - davedx on April 19, 2004 12:29:03 PM]