Why modern fps aren't fun, or rather why some people feel they aren't.

[Popido]

May also be another factor in why most seem rather... boring.

Think I'm going to go play DOOM now.

You know the funny part about that? The one on the right is half-life 2, which is considered by many to be considered one of the best if not the best FPSs of all time.

Linearity is bad when done badly. Some of the modern games should be played by remote with "Play" and "Fast-Forward" buttons.

 

[VaudevillianVeteran]

The fact that it feels like work a lot of the time. Not to mention some people get way too into it and start treating it like work. The realism doesn't help it's case. Videogames are made for escapism, not for a life simulator.

 

[Keava]

My biggest gripe with FPS genre? It seems to be built around copy pasting the competition. If company A releases a shooter with chest-high walls suddenly all following shooters include it. If one game comes with blood screen all next do it as well. Each next FPS is just a clone of previous ones and in less ignorant world would be called a mod, because all that changes is scenery, weapons and protagonists name. If you randomly pick any modern AAA FPS you may as well give up on even trying any other because it will play and feel exactly the same, quite often even with exactly same mechanics behind weapons and nearly identical map design.

 

[SoulSalmon]

The last time I ENJOYED a FPS was back when Unreal Tournament was the latest thing and the first ever Halo fanboys began to emerge...

I never really LIKED FPSes but the crap companies are churning out today actually make me DISLIKE FPSes... heck the crap being churned out collectively by companies as a whole gives me little to do :/

 

[Cai1911]

Dammit, WHY DOES EVERYONE THINK THAT COD IS FUCKING REALISTIC?

Sorry, just needed to get that off of my chest. Call of duty is a joke compared to games with an actual goal for realism, such as Milsims like ArmA or Operation Flashpoint. However, these games DEFINATELY arent for everybody and they are still a far cry from realism.

But OT, FPS's are the current trend at the moment. Personally Im not affected by it, as I havent been playing much else other than minecraft recently or Fallout: New Vegas... so meh. Cant wait for BF3 though.

To back this guy up. In Black Ops, most of thier realistic guns didn't exsist yet... they all exsist now but not in 1968.

http://www.imfdb.org/index.php/Call_of_Duty:_Black_Ops

I knew some of these but not all... Kinda shoot the whole "realism" thing down tho...

 

[eels05]

That was a good post.
Seriously,no word of a lie I'm a big fan of FFS but haven't bought or played one since the original Modern Warfare.Nothings looked worth spending money on quite frankly.
Guess I'm just waiting for a game with a hook that interests me but it just ain't happening.

 

[MR T3D]

In the end, I suppose if you're the kind of guy that just skips all cutscenes, and doesn't like getting "stuck" on a hard part, MW2 can be seen as better than COD4. Coming to that conclusion, my face does resemble my profile picture, however.

And that is the wrongest conclusion you could possibly make. I NEVER skipped the cutscenes in any CoD game and I played all of them since number 1. I'm probably the most frequent surfer of the CoD wiki on the site. I breathe with that franchise.

Yeah, CoD 4 had a better overall story. Yeah, it was more Black Hawk Down to Modern Warfare 2's The Rock / Red Dawn.

Boo-hoo. I don't play CoD games for the story. I play them for the moments. You could take out any individual mission in Modern Warfare 2 and have it be one hell of an experience.

-The rooftop chase on Favela
-The shower shootout in the Gulag level
-The snowmobile chase thing
-The stealth part in the beginning of the last level
-Arguably the best mission in the history of the franchise, "The Enemy of My Enemy".

Every mission has something about it. I can't say that about CoD 4 - great overarching story, sure, characters that are much more memorable, eh, disputable, more subtlety, yeah.

So? For every annoying sequence in CoD 4, Modern Warfare 2 responded with pumping, jaw-dropping action with Infinity Ward throwing everything at you. If that's too much for people, fine by me, but don't criticize a CoD title for being too exciting.

But is it really exciting? Pretty much all of those "moments" are heavily scripted events, and realizing this, they really lose their lustre (at least to me and other people ITT who are not satisfied with current state of AAA games)
-I didn't chose to drop my kit to run for the chopper, the game did. I didn't navigate a maze of rooftops, my route was rather clearly laid out in front of me
-snowmobile chase was meh, nothing special, no intense challenge like the rail missions in previous games, because they had to make it doable for people that can't drive.
-"stealth" part was meh, its something that I'd already done with the first flashback as Price to Pripyat. The stealth wasn't me outsmarting the AI of the game, it was the game making the AI not notice you so long as you do what it wants you to.
-Best mission being the one where the enemies fight among themselves for a little bit until you start to do stuff? Sure, it was new for COD, but it was still pretty meh as well, the AI merely engaged each other for a little until you become "known" to their scripting, when it becomes the same old linear shooty shoot with no real significance.

I've had many more exciting moments when the developer lets me, the player, complete their objectives in the way I like. with technology where it is today, we should be able to do our objectives in different ways, to have fun because WE are choosing our actions, not just moving along as they want us to. That is exciting.

 

[Mastercylinder]

I kinda agree, but if every shooter tried to hard to have unique controls, you would have pretzels for hands.

I think one thing dragging FPS's down right now is creativity. Bioshock, Doom, Dues Ex etc. They all have good stories, interesting enviroments, great game-play elements and creative map design: Things that make the shooting part worth-while.

 

[Hgame]

The problem nowadays is lack of weapon variety. Let me compare two games:

Unreal Tournament 2004 (In my opinion one of, if not the best FPSs of all time):

Lightning gun
Shock gun
Bio gun
Sniper rifle
Rocket launcher
Redeemer
Shield gun
Assault rifle
Translocator
Link gun
AVRiL
Grenade Launcher
Flak Cannon
Mine layer
Redeemer
Ion painter
Target painter

All available at the same time and all with a Unique attack and secondary attack(sometime even a tertiary attack


Call of Duty: Modern warfare 2:

The sniper
The assault rifle
The 30 assault rifles with slightly different paintjobs
The shotgun
The grenade launcher.

All with almost exactly the same attacks.

Vehicles:

UT2004:

Ion tank
Scorpion
Manta
Goliath
Hellbender
Raptor
Leviathon
Paladin
SPMA
Cicada

All with unique uses:

Cod:MW2:
None

Cod:MW2- up to 18 people in about 12 different small maps
UT2004- up to 64 people in hundreds of massive maps( the simpsons house is my personal favorite.

 

[Mista Gav]

From what most people have said it sounds like the general problem with modern FPS's is that although they seem like they are innovating, in fact they are moving backwards from what made the classics so great in the first place.

Level design is linear compared to these free roaming worlds. Weapons are usually bland and uninteresting to fire compared to things like Unreal/quake. The gameplay is simplified and the stories are shorter in favour of a new and younger generation of gamers focused on multiplayer and with less attention spans for campaigns. The settings are also less unique and special focusing on the more military aspect which again, the kids can relate to.

The thing is though there's certainly potential for a fun/goofy or a serious shooter (or even both!) but no ones really trying and when they say they are, they tend to still stick to systems that have worked as current trends e.g. Bulletstorm!

 

[Wicky_42]

The problem nowadays is lack of weapon variety. Let me compare two games:

Unreal Tournament 2004 (In my opinion one of, if not the best FPSs of all time):

Lightning gun
Shock gun
Bio gun
Sniper rifle
Rocket launcher
Redeemer
Shield gun
Assault rifle
Translocator
Link gun
AVRiL
Grenade Launcher
Flak Cannon
Mine layer
Redeemer
Ion painter
Target painter

All available at the same time and all with a Unique attack and secondary attack(sometime even a tertiary attack


Call of Duty: Modern warfare 2:

The sniper
The assault rifle
The 30 assault rifles with slightly different paintjobs
The shotgun
The grenade launcher.

All with almost exactly the same attacks.

Vehicles:

UT2004:

Ion tank
Scorpion
Manta
Goliath
Hellbender
Raptor
Leviathon
Paladin
SPMA
Cicada

All with unique uses:

Cod:MW2:
None

Cod:MW2- up to 18 people in about 12 different small maps
UT2004- up to 64 people in hundreds of massive maps( the simpsons house is my personal favorite.

The sad thing is when you come to compare market share of the two games. Turns out most people don't want crazy awesome and diversity, they just want an assault-rifle to paint the gritty brown walls red.

Which kinda sucks.

I want a studio to throw some of the wacky awesome from UT, Painkiller and Bulletstorm together into a BF2 style multiplayer. I think it may well be one of the best games ever

 

[cgmetallica1981]

I'm curious: do you think there's a way to fix the standard control scheme or do you just thing that the genre is doomed to repetitive mediocrity for all time?

I think the control scheme from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Tactical setting, switches the knife button with the crouch button) should be used as a standard. It works much better than most other games. For example, Killzone 3's (Normal or Alternative) controls are unbearable for me. In the Alternative control scheme (the one I prefer), the left trigger is all the way at the left trigger. Then there is PS3 shooters, which have left and right bumpers used to aim and shoot. Who's idea was it to switch the triggers with the bumpers?

 

[cgmetallica1981]

The problem nowadays is lack of weapon variety. Let me compare two games:

Unreal Tournament 2004 (In my opinion one of, if not the best FPSs of all time):

Lightning gun
Shock gun
Bio gun
Sniper rifle
Rocket launcher
Redeemer
Shield gun
Assault rifle
Translocator
Link gun
AVRiL
Grenade Launcher
Flak Cannon
Mine layer
Redeemer
Ion painter
Target painter

All available at the same time and all with a Unique attack and secondary attack(sometime even a tertiary attack


Call of Duty: Modern warfare 2:

The sniper
The assault rifle
The 30 assault rifles with slightly different paintjobs
The shotgun
The grenade launcher.

All with almost exactly the same attacks.

Vehicles:

UT2004:

Ion tank
Scorpion
Manta
Goliath
Hellbender
Raptor
Leviathon
Paladin
SPMA
Cicada

All with unique uses:

Cod:MW2:
None

Cod:MW2- up to 18 people in about 12 different small maps
UT2004- up to 64 people in hundreds of massive maps( the simpsons house is my personal favorite.

Replace Modern Warfare 2 with Black Ops and we will be in agreement. Modern Warfare 2's weapons felt different (compare the AK-47 to the ACR, both Assault Rifles, or the MP5K to the UMP45, both SMGs, they are not similar), but in Black Ops I couldn't tell the difference (compare the FAMAS to the AUG, or any other automatic weapon, they all feel the same). Also Modern Warfare 2 had a few controllable vehicles in the form of killstreaks, but that doesn't really matter because vehicles don't fit Call of Duty (see: Call of Duty 3, World at War).

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

I've had many more exciting moments when the developer lets me, the player, complete their objectives in the way I like. with technology where it is today, we should be able to do our objectives in different ways, to have fun because WE are choosing our actions, not just moving along as they want us to. That is exciting.

So it all ties down to linearity? And yet you like Call of Duty 4?

Nope. Both can be exciting. A sandbox can be exciting about as much as a heavily-scripted shooter. There's nothing wrong with scripts. This is how Call of Duty has always worked.

I mean, damn, you say that the rail shooter sequences in CoD 4 were exciting, yet say that "exciting is having fun because WE are choosing our actions". That's a contradiction.

A game doesn't have to be super-sandbox to be exciting. I mean, Crysis was sandbox, Crysis had you approach objectives differently and it was a badly directed, poorly structured game. Call of Duty (and that goes for number 4, too) knows what you're going to be doing and is able to shape the experience accordingly.

 

[Hgame]

The problem nowadays is lack of weapon variety. Let me compare two games:

Unreal Tournament 2004 (In my opinion one of, if not the best FPSs of all time):

Lightning gun
Shock gun
Bio gun
Sniper rifle
Rocket launcher
Redeemer
Shield gun
Assault rifle
Translocator
Link gun
AVRiL
Grenade Launcher
Flak Cannon
Mine layer
Redeemer
Ion painter
Target painter

All available at the same time and all with a Unique attack and secondary attack(sometime even a tertiary attack


Call of Duty: Modern warfare 2:

The sniper
The assault rifle
The 30 assault rifles with slightly different paintjobs
The shotgun
The grenade launcher.

All with almost exactly the same attacks.

Vehicles:

UT2004:

Ion tank
Scorpion
Manta
Goliath
Hellbender
Raptor
Leviathon
Paladin
SPMA
Cicada

All with unique uses:

Cod:MW2:
None

Cod:MW2- up to 18 people in about 12 different small maps
UT2004- up to 64 people in hundreds of massive maps( the simpsons house is my personal favorite.

Replace Modern Warfare 2 with Black Ops and we will be in agreement. Modern Warfare 2's weapons felt different (compare the AK-47 to the ACR, both Assault Rifles, or the MP5K to the UMP45, both SMGs, they are not similar), but in Black Ops I couldn't tell the difference (compare the FAMAS to the AUG, or any other automatic weapon, they all feel the same). Also Modern Warfare 2 had a few controllable vehicles in the form of killstreaks, but that doesn't really matter because vehicles don't fit Call of Duty (see: Call of Duty 3, World at War).

I will admit that MW2 does have some different weapons, however the variety is nothing compared to UT2004, where each weapon has a completely different use. Plus there is the issue of the lack of map variety.