Can anyone direct me towards FPSs with good puzzles? I'm working on an FPS and would like to spice things up with some puzzles as opposed to straight kill rooms for the whole game. I've already played Half-life 2, both episodes, so I'm thinking heavily about that, but I don't have much desire to have a gun like the gravity gun, so I'm not sure how much that will help me. Anyway, hope you guys can help.

Portal is the primary example that comes to mind.

Tag: The Power of Paint is a student game from Digipen that won an IGF award. It's pretty fun. Basically, you get a paint gun, and the different colors you spray let you interact with the environment in different ways.

Hi

You say you've played HL2, but have you played the first Half Life ? This has far more interesting fps puzzles imho.

There's Project Eden where puzzles involve using the various skill sets of your team. Hexen/Hexen 2 are also good examples of puzzles (one could say they're gigantic pandora's boxes), little much on running around though. System Shock(1) also had some pretty neat idea's with hacking panels, force bridges, cyberspace, etc. Also some good puzzles in Ultima Underworld 1-2.

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Original post by Arkangel428 I'm working on an FPS and would like to spice things up with some puzzles as opposed to straight kill rooms for the whole game.

There's little I hate more than puzzles in a FPS. If I wanted to play a puzzle game, I'd do that. The mental shift required to go from move, dodge, aim, fire to 'hmm how to solve this contrived scenario' is (to me at least) very disruptive and un-fun.

I mean, if I'm not your target audience that's fine. Just something to be aware of. Variety isn't good when it breaks you away from good core gameplay.

Have you played Metroid Prime? That isn't really a first person shooter (it's a first person adventure), so I don't know if it is what you are aiming for. None the less, I think it demonstrates Telastyns point nicely, even if a player likes both first person shooters and puzzle games, they require different mindsets. What Metroid Prime does, which is incidentally why it isn't a proper FPS, is it puts the focus on the puzzles. I believe this would work both ways, the puzzles being only minor distractions from the shooting. However, to be minor, they have to be easily solved and require no back tracking. What I don't think would work is you have intense fire fights and then complicated puzzles.

Also, don't put puzzles in for the sake of it, if you can't think of an interesting and engaging puzzle, it's OK to just let the door open. If you can think of 5 interesting puzzles, spread them out through the game, don't think of 10 annoying puzzles so that you have a puzzle per level or something.