Genre Study: FPS

[BreakABone]

Its been a slow slow year here on the site and I assumed we've grown tired of the same ole video game discussions/fights we use to get into so wanted to try something slightly different.

Each thread will focus on a different genre of game, just to get a focus on that, and figured we'd start with the FPS which is perhaps the most high profile genre in gaming this generation.

What's your favorite?
Least favorite?
What do you look for in a shooter?
Are there any features you wish were standard?

And anything else you can think of!

[TheGame]

What's your favorite?
Overall? That's a hard one... I guess all time it would have to be Perfect Dark for nostalgia reasons.

Least favorite?
Doom series.

What do you look for in a shooter?
Same things I look for in any non sports games.. Strong single player game, deep story, weapon progression etc. I prefer my FPSs to have less action though.. I like more stealth, or the ability to avoid conflict to an extent. Some current FPSs take the action way out of hand.

Are there any features you wish were standard?
Co-Op play 2-4 players.

[Vampyr]

My favorite FPS ever is probably Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath. That game just did everything right.

It looked amazing, and the story was brilliant. Stranger, the character you play as, was mysterious but very likable. The game only had one weapon, but depending on what ammo you were using it did completely different things. That's where the game really shined - they were very creative with the ammo system. You actually shot live insects and small mammals which would do something once they landed. An example is a little skunk creature that would spray a cloud that would cause enemies to avoid that area.

You also had some options in how you played the game. You could kill your bounties, which was easier, or you could use a lasso type device to bring them in alive, which was harder but earned you more money.

Another fun aspect was the run mechanism - if you were trying to move fast Stranger would go down on all fours and start galloping, and the game would go into third person. It felt like you were driving a motorcycle.

I don't know if I have a least favorite - I don't generally play bad games.

A feature I wish was more standard is a cover mechanic built into the game. Sometimes this isn't needed, as some games aren't designed with the intention of making you take cover. Doom and Serious Sam are good examples of that. But it's absurd to me that a game like Halo is cover based but has no cover mechanic. You have to manually crouch down and just stick your face into a wall.

[KillerGremlin]

Its been a slow slow year here on the site and I assumed we've grown tired of the same ole video game discussions/fights we use to get into so wanted to try something slightly different.

Each thread will focus on a different genre of game, just to get a focus on that, and figured we'd start with the FPS which is perhaps the most high profile genre in gaming this generation.

What's your favorite?
Least favorite?
What do you look for in a shooter?
Are there any features you wish were standard?

And anything else you can think of!

FPS is probably my favorite genre so this is hard for me and I probably do not have a single answer.

Favorite? I think you need to break this down into Single-Player vs. Multiplayer/Co-Op

Favorite:
http://img.listal.com/image/229319/600full-no-one-lives-forever-cover.jpg

Seriously, this is the best fucking single-player FPS, EVER. It's like a mesh of James Bond, Archer, Austin Powers, Chuck, and Goldeneye. The dialog is the best I have ever seen, the gameplay is fun and engaging, there are a SHIT TON of levels, and it is just rock solid. The sequel is pretty stellar too.

Half-Life and Half-Life 2 probably come in as close seconds, but I could probably make a list of 10 games that are "close seconds." I just continue to revisit NOLF because it is such an entertaining game.

Now, looking at Multiplayer and Co-Op....I think my favorite is probably this vintage:
http://foamkingdom.webs.com/photos/Counter-Strike/87668_cs.jpg

I have spent - literally - years playing this game. I also spent years playing Team Fortress Classic for Half-Life, so that probably should get mentioned.

But then I could make another top-10 list of Multiplayer FPS games I have loved to death:

-Tribes/Tribes 2 (most underrated game ever?)
-Serious Sam: The First/Second Encounter
-Unreal Tournament 99
-Left 4 Dead/Left 4 Dead 2
-Halo/Halo 2
-Goldeneye
-The World Is Not Enough (hugely underrated for the N64)
-All the Half-Life mods: Natural Selection, Battlegrounds, etc.


Least Favorite:
All the fucking war games. Seriously. This all started with Metal of Honor, bleh. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was a breath of fresh air back when this trend was just starting.

Also, I hate the duck and cover regenerating health bullshit. Back in the day, FPS required skill. Getting health packs made games challenging, and created natural choke points. Nowadays you can fly through games on all but the hardest of difficulty settings without so much as having to replay a level 27 times and frustratingly throw your control across the room while cussing "FUCK. YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!" at the TV screen. I miss that challenge, anger, and reward. Thank heavens Left 4 Dead utilizes health packs. The game is about 10 times more interesting and intense when you need health and you know the swarm is about to crawl up your ass.


What do you look for in a shooter?

Multiplayer and socializing. That's it, period. Back when I was in grade school I began my journey into video games. One of the first games I played was Doom....and I played it in the basement with my friend. Doom was INTENSE shit back in the day. Moving on, me and my grade school friends became huge fans of the car shoot'em ups. Twisted Metal, Twisted Metal 2, and Rogue Trip: 2012. And do you know what made those games fun? Multiplayer and Co-Op. By the time Goldeneye came out, I was a Twisted Metal pro. Goldeneye was further socialization for me. And then came Quake and Half-Life. And by the time I was in 6th grade I was playing Team Fortress Classic and Half-Life in social multiplayer settings regularly. I forgot to mention Perfect Dark, but that was like an extension of Goldeneye.

And then came Counter-Strike and the rest of it all.

I love single player first person shooters, of course. I have played many of them....maybe most of the PC ones....in those, I like the things that NOLF brings to the table: good story, good dialog, refined gameplay, and something that differentiates the game from the genre.

Are there any features you wish were standard?

Ummm...I wish developers would stop defaulting "crouch" to C on the keyboard. Fuckers. Crouch = Ctrl.

[Seth]

ahhaha i agree. Just started 2009's Castle Wolfenstein and the default was C
Two summers ago my buddy n I finally visited NOLF 2 and it was awesome. Still haven't played the original because I expected a step down from the sequal. You tell as if it's a bit better? wicked.

Personally, BF1942 that opened up the maps a bit, while staying to a historical setting...it was epic. I never did Tribes so i can't give it the open map praise that it probably deserves.

health regeneration sucks. What sucks more is the lack of a health meter. I don't even need a static gauge, just something that will give me a %.

I expect story now.
Bad Company 2 has been fun. But its limited in the way that counter strike is. It's merit is in the community, almost strictly. As of late, I've revisited BF2, which reminded me just how much of a console step down BC2 is.

I'm an Epic fan. UT 99 is probably my pinnacle of nostalgia for the genre.
I look for controls that aren't "american army". Castle Wolfenstein (Raven studio) imo has a great weapon control feel. Good speed, pacing.
In the future i expect melee and 'dodge' controls to become more standard, and well implemented. The trailer for BF3 hints at this but that's only based on trailers.

I'm gonna return to this with a few thoughts on dev and what I think should be added. A lot of it is contextually based on the type of shooter.

Overall, the best fps experience has to be tied between UT-RTCW-BF1942

[KillerGremlin]

Two summers ago my buddy n I finally visited NOLF 2 and it was awesome. Still haven't played the original because I expected a step down from the sequal. You tell as if it's a bit better? wicked.

Here's my disclaimer/breakdown of NOLF vs. NOLF 2:

NOLF has the better story, better dialog, and better variety of levels. NOLF has some really exotic and fun levels and those levels tie elegantly into the story. Also, NOLF has better weapons (IMO).

NOLF 2 has a more refined game design, better flow through the levels, and much better integration of all the gadgets into the spy world.

NOLF also has some annoying camera/alarm levels, especially fairly early into the game, and these can be a point of frustration.

But NOLF also features sharks, a hilarious and awesome airplane level, a trip up the mountains, a snowmobile, a motorcycle, a train level, scuba diving....and a kickback to Moonraker. And I haven't even mentioned the fun jungle level, or the skyscraper, and then the more vanilla missions in between. It's just an epic game, and it actually has replay potential since you can customize the Weapons and Gadgets you bring on missions, and it ranks you in each mission.

For me....NOLF 2 was fun in different ways, it had swords, a great built-in stealth feature, and much much better integration of the gadgets with the spy world. Both games feature a rich amount of in-game text (like the artifacts in METROID PRIME for all you non-NOLF fans out there).

So that's my disclaimer.

TL;DR - NOLF has a better story and level design but has some frustrating spots; NOLF 2 is more polished but is not quite as quirky or varied