To the Shooters I Treated Badly

[Darth_Payn]

I'd love to see another quality WWII shooter, haven't had one in a while amidst the sea of "gritty" modern shooters.

Something like MoH:Frontline, with an epic soundtrack and great story...and historical places!

Man, i'm gonna have to whip out the PS2 and play that badboy again!

You got some good taste. My favorite missions from the first game are tied between infiltrating that power plant in Norway where the nazis were making material for their atomic bomb and breaking into the V2 rocket plant to blow the whole damn thing up, with a V2 rocket.

And can somebody get on that bin Laden/Midgard Serpent game? Oh hell, I think that will be on Kickstarter soon enough.

 

[Rachith Sridhar]

Use the wingsuit to get access to a vantage point and snipe everyone in the enemy outpost silently....never done it in any other game..this game is awesome

 

[Oskuro]

I'm getting the feeling that Far Cry 3 is a very polished Mercenaries 2.

Not complaining, I like Mercs 2, specially in co-op. We need more co-op games where you can support your partner by firing missiles from a helicopter into fuel tanks that blow up bringing down entire buildings, while said partner, a Norse Guy (voice in Spain by the same voice actor than Homer Simpson), rides around in a tank-thread motorcycle (Aptly named Panzercycle) armed with miniguns, spewing one liners all the way.


So yeah, saturation of the style that is "in" right now is helping realize how many cool ideas were left behind.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

I love Far Cry 3, it's a fantastic game and a great example of how games don't have to be linear in order to be enjoyable or well presented.

In defense of more linear games, though, I'll point out that the campaign in Transformers: Fall of Cybertron benefits from it's more focused, linear game play and story. The lack of co-op made it a lot better, though it still would have been great to play with a friend.

 

[romxxii]

I don't understand all the emphasis Yatzhee puts in "character arc" in Far Cry 3. It makes me think he was playing a different game. To me, the character arc was incredible. The main character goes from a smug, shitty tourist to being able to stab people in the eye with a machete from 50 yards in the spam of 1 hour. In the opening he is barely able to run in the jungle and gets freaked out by everything, and 10 minutes later he is able to kill (and skin) a tiger using a bow?

Actually, there's a bit of a logical progression from douchebro to death machine. Take for example, the takedown skills. Before you can purchase the skills, you have to perform a set number of takedowns, melee kills, or extremely situational kills. In other words, you have to practice in order to get better. Then there are the more ridiculous skills, which you can only get after reaching a particular checkpoint in the main quests. So the game doesn't just hand you everything from the get go.

Sure, you can try killing a tiger with a bow in under an hour, but without the proper attachments (which need money, which you get from killing) or skills (which requires main quest progress, also more killing), then you'll have to be really good, because that tiger can close the distance before you can nock another arrow.

That's just game mechanics; story-wise, there's his harrowing first kill, the mumbo-jumbo tattoo mysticism (which is apparently functional magic in the FC3 universe), and the copious amounts of drugs Jason takes. All of that lead to his desensitization to death and destruction, such that he's actually whooping it up by the time he's rescued Liza, while she's the one freaking out.

 

[Razorback0z]

Spot on to all of that. FC3 is the game I have enjoyed most in 2012 which is kind of sad given how many potentially great titles have hit the market and turned out to be um.... spunkgargleweewee...(eeww)

The wing suit! Oh man the wing suit. I LOVE that thing. I did a jump from a comms tower nd managed to fly NOE for ages, everytime I thought I would have to pop the chute I managed to squeeze between a hill nd a tree or something and just keepon flying. Its a heck of a lot of fun and would maes some great videos if you chse the right spots.

FC3 GOTY for me

 

[Do4600]

I have mixed feelings about Far Cry 3. It's certainly a good game but I can't shake the feeling that it could have broken through barriers that have existed in this genre, and in video games in general for the past decade, if it had just followed through.

Yahtzee is correct, the story and the main character are very much the antithesis of modern shooters.

My question then is this:

"If this story and these characters are the antithesis of the modern shooter why am I still shooting grenades out of a speeding Jeep being driven by an npc?"

"Why must I 'mash spacebar' to shimmy across a burning floor?"

"Why am I still opening doors and being knocked unconscious in a cinematic and then taken prisoner AGAIN by the main villain so I can watch him be crazy for another two minutes?"

If this game is supposed to be the antithesis of the modern shooter why is it relying on every cliché in the Call of Duty playbook to move us through the main story arc?

This is why I say it didn't follow through. It breaks with the conventions of what makes a compelling story in a first person shooter. This game demonstrates the ability to engage the audience in a much deeper emotional intrigue than most games allow themselves to attempt. The scenes in this game where the main character interacts with his friends are rather well done. They feel naturally intimate and they lack the artificial urgency of many other games because this game allows the characters to have serious weakness instead of having them be a 10 kill a day marine who shrugs off literally everything. The flashbacks provide a haunting contrast and they actually allow them to have a dramatic pause and silence afterwards to allow them to have their proper weight.

This game has a conspicuous lack of gameplay analogues to match the bold story and depth of the characters, as a consequence I can't help but feel that the greatness of the game is being painfully restrained behind quicktime events and vehicle sections. It embraced the fact that it was doing something relatively new and unique within the genre but didn't make the players involvement within that story matter any more than it did in Call of Duty.

Far Cry 3 went somewhere that first person shooters didn't have the courage to go previously, but it didn't take us with it, it left us in the back of the truck mashing spacebar to blow up Nazis in Kübelwagens.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

Say what you will about the carrier soldier trope, but at least it makes sense for someone like him to be able to handle a AK47 effortlessly. Brody goes from white boy to ultimate badass in a few hours and no one bats an eye at it. I was expecting some Matrix-like revelation some time along the way.

Agreed and agreed. There was a lot of room with the super generic story and Alice quotes to make this something akin to Silent Hill or (so I've heard) Spec Ops the Line.

The story in Far Cry 3, and therefore the emotional bond with it, is objectively better than a generic shooter's in both content and delivery. Also you could defeat your enemies by literally releasing the tigers. That counts for a lot.

I can't speak for 'generic shooters', having not played any of the military multiplayers, but the story was garbage imo. My only emotional bond was to hope Vaas or Buck succeeded in horribly maiming or selling them all into slavery. Or learning that perhaps Vaas and Brody were the same person (see above).

And the gameplay. Oh look you made up a bunch of special ways to kill people for bonus points. Okay, too bad that it's useless because you threw in crap regenerating health, so after I take a few shots I have to promptly abandon doing anything cool and find some cover to snuggle

This is one of those few games I'd recommend turning down the difficulty for enjoyment. I don't think I ever set it harder than medium, and in reading your comment I wonder if I'd have an even better time set at Easy.

Is FC3 worse than Crysis or FC1? That's a question.

People are different, but FC1 is my favorite linear shooter, Crysis[1] probably 2nd favorite, and I find FC3 mediocre. The open world waters it down. Just my opinion.

snip

Yes it can be argued that there's some progression, but it kind of goes out the window when he's still saying 'eww gross' while skinning animals at the very end of the game, or switches from howling about how great a flamethrower is or howling in ecstacy to hyperventilating at the prospect of superficially roughing up his little brother.

 

[Do4600]

Such that he's actually whooping it up by the time he's rescued Liza, while she's the one freaking out.

Should he really be whooping it up? Should his character progression really go from whooping before taking shots and skydiving out of an airplane to whooping after clumsily rescuing Liza and killing four dozen people? If that's his character progression then he goes from being an upper class white bro to an upper class white murderous sociopath...bro. Shouldn't he be so alienated that he develops a 1000 yard stare and loses the ability to meaningfully communicate properly with others, thus fulfilling the ironic twist that he becomes a monster to save what he loves?

 

[romxxii]

Spoiler: snip

Such that he's actually whooping it up by the time he's rescued Liza, while she's the one freaking out.

Should he really be whooping it up? Should his character progression really go from whooping before taking shots and skydiving out of an airplane to whooping after clumsily rescuing Liza and killing four dozen people? If that's his character progression then he goes from being an upper class white bro to an upper class white murderous sociopath...bro. Shouldn't he be so alienated that he develops a 1000 yard stare and loses the ability to meaningfully communicate properly with others, thus fulfilling the ironic twist that he becomes a monster to save what he loves?

But that's exactly what happens! The whole point of that scene was that he's starting to creepily enjoy the whole murderous hero routine. He starts alienating his friends, and is by rights near the end, a monster that Western bro-douche society can't -- or shouldn't -- accept.

 

[Milanezi]

The British bastard convinced me to buy Spec Ops: The Line, I had no regrets there. I'm looking forward to getting Far Cry 3 (next month)

 

[Milanezi]

Spoiler: snip

Such that he's actually whooping it up by the time he's rescued Liza, while she's the one freaking out.

Should he really be whooping it up? Should his character progression really go from whooping before taking shots and skydiving out of an airplane to whooping after clumsily rescuing Liza and killing four dozen people? If that's his character progression then he goes from being an upper class white bro to an upper class white murderous sociopath...bro. Shouldn't he be so alienated that he develops a 1000 yard stare and loses the ability to meaningfully communicate properly with others, thus fulfilling the ironic twist that he becomes a monster to save what he loves?

But that's exactly what happens! The whole point of that scene was that he's starting to creepily enjoy the whole murderous hero routine. He starts alienating his friends, and is by rights near the end, a monster that Western bro-douche society can't -- or shouldn't -- accept.

Heh, some poeple might get angry and call that a spoiler. I call that the type of story I'd like to experience in a game Reminds me of a book called "Devils in Exile" about a soldier that comes to the US from Iraq and lives a shitty life, until a mysterious Golf War veteran convinces him to join him and his group in a questionable vigilante operation to bring down the local drug lords, by stating that "society doesn't accept the soldiers when they come back, they want them tamed because on the battlefield they were akin to kings, and society just can't have that". Great book.

 

[LazyAza]

Fuck yeah Bulletstorm, one of the most criminally over-looked and under-appreciated shooters of this generation imo. Their is zero reason anyone can't play that game now. It's on steam for $15 atm, well worth every cent.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

I have not played Far Cry 3 yet, as I am at least waiting for a Steam sale, but honestly, I am not a big shooter fan.

Yahtzee as described himself as an "instant gratification type of gamer," while he may have been somewhat facecious when saying this, he is far from a thoughtless gamer. I suppose though that this does not mean he wishes to treat Metal Gear Solid with any more respect, though.

Personally, I think that fifty years from now, we are going to look back on the current Millitary Shooter kinda like how Hollywood looks back unfavorably on films that contained "black-face" characters. Great Military Shooters are becoming more and more rare, and even though Spec Ops: The Line tried to change things, I doubt its valliant effort will change the genre for the better.

At this rate, the market will become oversaturated and the genre will recede, just like how the Fighting Game genre did. Shooters like Metal Gear (if it can be defined as one, that is questionable) and Spec Ops are really the only kind of shooters I play. In my opinion, the rest are just too thoughtless for me, and I assure you, there is no greater insult I can give to something than to call it "thoughtless."

 

[FallenMessiah88]

Wolfenstein from 2009 was really awesome. The only thing I didn't really like about it was that it was simply called "Wolfenstein" without some sort of subtitle. Then again, it might have been meant as a reboot. I do agree with Yahtzee though that more games should go for the "alternate time period" approach.

Also, I still believe that it's possible to come up with a better name to describe modern military shooters.

 

[sageoftruth]

I'd love to see another quality WWII shooter, haven't had one in a while amidst the sea of "gritty" modern shooters.

Something like MoH:Frontline, with an epic soundtrack and great story...and historical places!

Man, i'm gonna have to whip out the PS2 and play that badboy again!

I agree. Now that we've moved on from it, as Yahtzee mentioned, I think a more tongue-in-cheek approach to WW2 would make for an interesting game, provided that the gameplay still works. Back when we were getting tired of WW2 games, they were always treated so seriously. I'd like to see a game with more wacky nazis.

 

[DataSnake]

Jason's progression from spoiled rich brat to freaky killer actually reminded me a lot of Ezio from Assassins Creed. IIRC Revelation even had a similar bit where he rescues a lady friend and she's freaked out about him killing people.

 

[TheUnbeholden]

Because lately I've been thinking back to some FPSes I've lambasted in the past for being generic or witless or a bit too fond of chest high walls. And quite a few of them in retrospect are starting to look better, now that I've seen how bad things can get:

The inevitable problem of reviews & upon reflection. The bias associated with comparing games to the ones before it. Being completely objective is not possible but subjective opinion based off the games that have come before is what we can do and sometimes we forgot about how big the margin is between good and bad, only comparing to whats come out recently.