Is it really worth it to bash every popular FPS?

[MrTwo]

Eh, people can bash it for all I care. Both Cod, Battlefield and Halo all have solid shooter mechanics, even if the communities (of cod at least, and the others, to an extent) are utter douchebags. I play cod for some quick fun. Although it does annoy me when people say all they want is just good single player and they don't care about the multiplayer. Multiplayer has become the focus now. The majority of people prefer multiplayer as it offers much more replayability. Activision doesn't give a shit what you (or anyone, really) think.

 

[Vibhor]

You know people would hate on something else IF THERE WAS SOMETHING ELSE!
90% of the games being released are FPS. Battlefield, Bioshock, Sydicate, Call of duty, Serious Sam and Xcom
The non FPS games include Arkham Asylum and Skyrim.(Only counting multiplats here)
See the numbers?

 

[repeating integers]

Eh, people can bash it for all I care. Both Cod, Battlefield and Halo all have solid shooter mechanics, even if the communities (of cod at least, and the others, to an extent) are utter douchebags. I play cod for some quick fun. Although it does annoy me when people say all they want is just good single player and they don't care about the multiplayer. Multiplayer has become the focus now. The majority of people prefer multiplayer as it offers much more replayability. Activision doesn't give a shit what you (or anyone, really) think.

Small thing, but I think you might want to change the word "both" before people start thinking you can't count .

OT: Well, yeah, I don't think there's much point. I get it if you don't like the direction shooters have taken, but ranting about it on the Escapist will do nothing to change it. That said, most topics on internet forums have no real "point".

 

[Bran1470]

If they suck then yes! its really worth it *cough* MW3 *cough*

 

[Mr Somewhere]

If it in any way combats this dreary tide of mediocre first person shooters, then, yes. Now, I don't agree with the extreme of this, if the games honestly good, of course it should be praised. But I'm sick of shooter after shooter with thoughtless campaigns and tired mechanics. I think it's justified if developers take note.
It's been a very long time since I was impressed by a shooter.

 

[Pearwood]

To me FPS games are just popcorn, I can get through a couple and enjoy them just fine but there's very little real flavour to them. Of course there are exceptions, some of them are packed full of flavour like the popcorn that gets totally covered in salt or whatever you put on them, some of them are not enjoyable like the little bits at the bottom that are just corn, no pop.

Tortured metaphors aside I think they're ok, just not especially memorable for the most part. Stuff like System Shock 1/2, Fallout 3, Mass Effect 2 are exceptions.

 

[Something Amyss]

Stop picking on the things I like, guys. It's not fair!

 

[Dalek Caan]

That said I'll still pick up MW3 because of my morbid curiosity just to wrap things up with Soap/Price AND for some decent thrills.

Do we actually know for sure that they are in? Because the only reason I play COD is for the story and if there not in it I won't bother with the game.

OT: I to are also getting sick of all the FPS bashing. All the things that people say make FPS bad, same levels, repeating colours, nothing new over the course of each game can be taken to other genres of games. RPG are all basically fetch quests and hitting things, RTS are always just tell Pvt. Ryan to move to next base and then spawn yourself 40 tanks, Sports games just consist of moving a ball around a place(never played to many sports games) and all that matters is how the game itself is done, not what genre it belongs to.

 

[Michael Hirst]

Depends if the game deserves it. They definitely deserve bashing for making single player campaigns almost non existent. COD deserves a lot of bashing for being more of the same but more expensive every year and Battlefield 3 although a fairly good game needs the hell bashed out of it for the Batllelog system, it's just so uncessecary.

 

[SidingWithTheEnemy]

Yes it is, why not? I don't like FPS anymore.
I don't like games where you just have to kill the ordinary terrorist cliched person with the Nazi-African-Islamic-Russian-North-Korean background. Additionally I don't want to be rewarded for it. There are millions of reasons why you can bash a perfectly popular FPS so why shouldn't you do it. The last shooter I really played obsessively was DukeNukem 3d, there were other shooters people call "mediocre" which I liked but not to that degree.

 

[Robert Ewing]

No matter how many people thrash it, it's called a popular FPS for a reason, it'll sell like hotcakes.

 

[Raika]

It's not just FPSs. Don't you know? It's "cool" to hate popular things.

This is pretty much the extent of it. You may notice that other popular games, such as World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy VII, are regarded with universal contempt on the internet. This is because the internet is full of idiotic "nonconformists" who will rabidly screech that Call of Duty is the cancer killing the medium, while at the same time implying that The Legend of Zelda is some sort of niche, underground cult piece. It's just little kids trying to look cool on the internet. That's all it's ever been.

First-person shooters are the predominant genre of gaming at this particular point in time, but they're no different than the 2-D platformers of the early nineties, the fighting games of the mid-nineties, or the J-RPGs of the late nineties. It's just what's popular right now. It'll change at some point.

 

[Crazy]

Every Escapist knows that FPS' copy Doom and the likes, but what they don't know is that every game is a copy of Pong. Therefore, every game is unoriginal except for Pong.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

God forbid people that are allowed opinions.

With the thread you made your effectively hating on haters.

 

[direkiller]

Seriously, every day I come on the Escapist I see three new threads about how popular FPSs are unoriginal and are ruining the industry. This topic is like the freakin' Hydra- every time one thread dies, two more sprout up in its place. Can we give it a rest?

I won't lie- I like FPSs, and if they're popular all the better. I enjoy online play, I enjoy cheesy campaigns, I enjoy some of the outdated mechanics (though I must say that although I love Halo, regenerating health grinds my gears a bit in games like Call of Duty). I don't expect every game to be the equivalent of the Divine Comedy in terms of writing. Hell, even our most advanced games still display some pretty mediocre writing (I personally believe that the Mass Effect writing is highly overrated).

Is it really that bad to have some fun that we just demonize so many popular games? More coming later, time for school right now.

Its not so much the game itself(BF,MW are ok games)

its just the bissness practices of makeing the same game with a grapics update while makeing millions doing so

my stance
i don't mock them
but i don't buy them eater
same thing for ( Nintendo games, Dynasty warriors,Sports games, and L4D2)
if i own it already your not getting my money for the same thing I already have

 

[Assassin Xaero]

Seriously, every day I come on the Escapist I see three new threads about how popular FPSs are unoriginal and are ruining the industry. This topic is like the freakin' Hydra- every time one thread dies, two more sprout up in its place. Can we give it a rest?

I won't lie- I like FPSs, and if they're popular all the better. I enjoy online play, I enjoy cheesy campaigns, I enjoy some of the outdated mechanics (though I must say that although I love Halo, regenerating health grinds my gears a bit in games like Call of Duty). I don't expect every game to be the equivalent of the Divine Comedy in terms of writing. Hell, even our most advanced games still display some pretty mediocre writing (I personally believe that the Mass Effect writing is highly overrated).

Is it really that bad to have some fun that we just demonize so many popular games? More coming later, time for school right now.

Sure, if the game is bad, or if they just keep rereleasing the same game over and over again (like Halo unless you're a narrowminded fanboy), I can understand the hate. But recently, it has just been stupid. People were bashing Duke Nukem Forever because you could only hold two guns. Really, it was the worst game in existence because out of the three decent guns you could only hold two? And now Rage. Every time I see someone list all the things that are bad with it, half or more of those are "graphics". I guess we left the world where games were fun and now entered the world where we ***** about every little thing in them. Thanks for preventing games from me an accepted form of art...

 

[Bishop99999999]

I think that at this point the CoD hate has come full circle, and bashing Modern Warfare is actually more mainstream than Modern Warfare (at least on the internet).

I for one am happy because I actually enjoy the spectacle. And after BF3's disappointing single player, I'm ready for a competently done and completely ridiculous showing by MW3.

 

[TheGreekGeekPrick]

The debate about the validity of bashing on x or y genre and/or game reminds me of the global warming debate between the two extremes.

Yes, some of it is done purely because it's funny (mainly anything revolving the increasingly irritating fanbases), but pretending they don't present an issue at all will eventually come back and bite us. The problem with popular shooters isn't what they are and it's certainly not the fact that they're popular (an attitude that has effectively spawned the Internet anti-nonconformist, i.e. the guy who disagrees with the supposed "nonconformists", but maintains all the pretense and smug attitude).

The problem with these games is simply the fact that they dominate the industry. They're not just at the top, they outright dominate it. No variety, different flavor or color is to be found, save for the occasional title that may pop up once every blue moon. That's not a good thing about either the genre or the industry as a whole.

Worse yet, they represent an attitude that's been rubbing off on other genres as well. Somebody already mentioned the RPGs and they're not wrong; but it's the same idea that's seeping into their territory now. So, yeah, if you like COD or Halo you're fine, but there's something wrong to watch out for in the bigger picture.

 

[Xanadu84]

The biggest problem is that people confuse quality with context. Call of Duty, for example, was praised highly around the first Modern Warfare game because it did something different and innovative. It then continued to evolve and iterate about as quickly as beloved games like Mass Effect of Half Life, but it got attacked for being stagnant and cliche. This is because of the constant slew of games that tried to be Modern Warfare clones. If Modern Warfare were to disappear for 15 years, and re-emerge in a world where all shooters are Serious Sam style cheese fests, Modern Warfare would be put on a pedestal by, "Core" gamers as a savior of creativity and good design. People attacking popular shooters arn't really angry at the game itself. They are angry the stagnation of the medium at large. And honestly, lack of variety is the source of most video game criticisms. A scantily clad piece of feminine eye candy isn't bad, its that every female in video games are like that. good graphics arn't bad, its bad that everyone seems to feel like they are priority 1. Regenerating health isn't bad, the lack of games that truly benefit from a style of play that benefits from health packs is bad. And so on.

Oh, also, some innovations by popular games are innovative and cause popularity by changing the game away from what some gamers expect. Call of Duty introduces elements of randomness and a focus on kill streaks that don't match shooter expectations. It's not bad, but it does confuse old players while drawing in new ones. Old gamers basically try Call of Duty's pancakes and say, "This is horrible French Toast!" Well of course it is, it's not french toast.

 

[getoffmycloud]

I just tend to ignore the people who bash all FPS games as unoriginal because people say they want something new but when it comes along nobody buys it. Perfect example here is Bulletstorm if you used the skillshot mechanic well it didn't like a normal FPS and it was a lot of fun but hardly anyone bought it so that just sends a message to developers that nobody wants anything new and we shall just go back to making the same game over and over again.