I’ll start straight out with this little opinion piece and say this – I like the FPS genre. I lost many hours of my life to the original Aliens vs. Predator, and multiplayer Goldeneye was the very reason I bought a N64.
In recent years, though, the appeal of FPS games has waned with me greatly. I’m not a huge fan of Call of Duty, Homefront, or Killzone, and the more experimental games such as Bulletstorm didn’t really strike a chord with me.
After enjoying Crysis 2 far more than I thought I would, I started to think why, exactly, the FPS genre has become so hit and miss with me, but that game stood out. And then I realised: with the rare exception (such as Crysis 2), FPSers don’t actually exist any longer, at least compared to early classics in the genre – they’ve been largely replaced with what is better described as light gun shooters.
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| So much has changed since these days |
The modern FPS typically uses the following formula – cut scene, travel down linear path, bullet ballet, cut scene. The corridors that you’re travelling down have limited scope for exploration, and little room for strategy – the duck behind objects mechanic is there to be sure, and you might even be able to cloak and heal allies, but for the most part you’re being led by the nose from encounter to encounter.
The light gun genre does exactly the same thing, just without the ability to move back and forth. You’re still ducking behind cover. You’re still moving from set piece to set piece.
But the comparisons run deeper. The single player mode of most modern FPSers is only a couple of hours long… exactly the same length as a light gun game. Three hours is somewhat acceptable when you’re paying by the dollar. For $110 (in Australia
In multiplayer, the genre has also experienced a fundamental shift that has left it almost unrecognisable. Although nominally from the FPS genre, modern shooters introduce a host of new features that have taken the genre far from the skills it originally required. Perks and unlocks introduces a kind of RPG grinding; the modern focus on team-based shooting requires a level of strategic thinking that the simple “retro” games lacked.
Early era FPSers were about twitch reflexes, understanding weapon balances and map layouts. It’s a different experience to the modern FPS which is about teamwork, killstreak rewards and ‘levelling up.’ It was a more simple time, to be sure, but the ‘sport’ of being good at a FPS game now requires different talents to what it once did. And for someone that happened to enjoy the early-era FPS, this has left me somewhat cold.
Of course, the modern “FPS” has a very large fanbase – that’s why we keep getting more new entrants into the genre. But it’s also a very different genre to what it used to be, and much more closely related to lightgun shooters to the FPS of old.
I used to play shooters competitively and I can't agree more. Today's FPS's are more about being easy and accessible than about solid game balance. I could live with aim assist and bullet magnetism to help people enjoy the game, but strategic elementse of the classic shooter have all but been removed.
I would even go so far as to say that today's most popular shooters are actively trying to remove the need for teamwork. Halo is chalk full of "get out of gunfire free cards" from armor abilities, to poorly balanced weapons, to maps designed with endless escape routes. Even MLG has had trouble salvaging the game with custom settings. You just can't fix something that never worked to begin with.
Halo isn't alone either, COD, rewards selfish individualistic play like no other. Killstreaks and Level based equipment together create an online environment where you will never find more than a handful of team players per 100. To those few of you who try, I salute you.
The one thing that's changed shooters the most in recent years is multilayer map design though. Under tested, imbalanced pieces of garbage. COD is an endless game of ring around the rosy, and Halo is continuous spawn hell. The Maps seem designed so that no position is truly defensible and spawns never set. You end up with a mess where you have an endless rotation of who's getting ambushed and who's not. There's no objective, no goal. They killed map control as an objective, they killed weapon control as an objective. It's just mindless killing.
The thing that pains me the most though is that head to head battles no longer happen. The death of hitscan and the inconsistency of weapons in modern FPS's have eliminated the one on one death matches that occurred in older games. Not to mention general changes in map design and gameplay mechanics. Remember dancing? Remember dodging bullets? Remember three spartans jumping on you from every side and dropping them all with your trusty pistol? It's all gone. Today, every kill is taken by trickery rather than finesse.
I said more than I intended, but I guess it doesn't matter. If people listened to me, the FPS wouldn't have become what it has today.
Hi there, anonymous,
Thank you very much for those insights and opinions! I guess at the end of the day genres will always evolve, but I (and I guess you) just prefer the old way. It's a pity, because there are so many of 'me too' games in that genre, and not a lot of willingness to invent outside of the box… But I guess as long as people keep paying for COD clones…
You hit the nail on the head. I started my fpsing on a DOS pc with Duke3d and Quake. I really miss the fast pace of Quake 2 and 3 and Unreal Tournament (Quake 2 holds a special place in my heart). I have Quake Live on 360, UT3 on ps3, Doom 1 & 2, Duke3d… you get the idea. Short of those though, there really isn't much out there for those of us who enjoy, as anonymous said, finesse. I miss it.
I feel the same way about COD, it's a different skill set that I don't care to acquire. Give me twitch (Serious Sam anyone?) over lightgun any day.
Anytime you want to play some of the above (or Crysis), find me on Live: Slapped Dog, and PSN: Slapdogg. I'll spread word of this article and pray some developers who care about games being FUN find it.
You hit the nail on the head. I started my fpsing on a DOS pc with Duke3d and Quake. I really miss the fast pace of Quake 2 and 3 and Unreal Tournament (Quake 2 holds a special place in my heart). I have Quake Live on 360, UT3 on ps3, Doom 1 & 2, Duke3d… you get the idea. Short of those though, there really isn't much out there for those of us who enjoy, as anonymous said, finesse. I miss it.
I feel the same way about COD, it's a different skill set that I don't care to acquire. Give me twitch (Serious Sam anyone?) over lightgun any day.
Anytime you want to play some of the above (or Crysis), find me on Live: Slapped Dog, and PSN: Slapdogg. I'll spread word of this article and pray some developers who care about games being FUN find it.
I am really looking forward to the new Serious Sam… I hope it's a return of that old school gameplay (the can't "modernize" Serious Sam, surely?!?).
Thanks for the feedback Brandon! I'm glad to see my little piece is resonating out there… Glad I'm not the only one that thinks this way!
I am really looking forward to the new Serious Sam… I hope it's a return of that old school gameplay (the can't "modernize" Serious Sam, surely?!?).
Thanks for the feedback Brandon! I'm glad to see my little piece is resonating out there… Glad I'm not the only one that thinks this way!