PlayStation 4...

Bafitis wrote:

Fred Buer wrote:I'm also very sick and tired of FPS games who solve violence and damage with a simple clipped 2D animation sprite of blood gushing, or a simple particle effect for concrete and wood taking a hit, as if that's all there is to it. It's time to start work on more realistic damage - both to people and environments.

I couldn't agree more... I think they have over flooded the market with these... Sometimes it is hard to tell one from the other... It's sad that the majority of today's gamers have such short term attention spans that these games have gained such popularity..

I don't think you and Fred are talking about the same thing at all. He's looking for more procedural destruction of environments in FPS games. Which there's great progress on in Unreal Engine 4, so we should see that happen.

As for your complaint, I definitely lament the extent to which other genres have shrunk, and it feels like the AAA console market is less diverse than it was, but I couldn't disagree more with your assessment of the FPS genre.

This past generation has seen first-person gaming become more diverse than I ever thought it could. Games like Call of Duty are nothing like Crysis, which is nothing like Fallout 3, which is nothing like Dishonored. These games may all feature a first person view with a gun, and share similar control conventions, but they're very, very different sorts of games. And then you have amazing stuff like Mirror's Edge, Portal 2, etc that just defy any kind of genre categorization, but also share that FPS DNA.

There's never been a time when this genre has been better or had more choices. If you're just turned off by the whole thing, I can see why that would be frustrating, because the genre has sort of swallowed up other genres along the way, but it's just wrong to say they're all the same.

No I agree with Fred, I'd like to see bullets and bombs doing the damage they would normally do, but with most games if you shoot a wall turn your head and look back it is like you never shot the wall at all, plus it is usually just a little hole when bullets do much more depending on the material of the wall...

As for First Person Shooters, I'm guessing you're a massive fan of the genre, because if you're going to sit there and tell me that Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, SOCOM, Navy Seals, Homefront, and the like are all different, then there is little to no point in having this discussion... Sure the storylines are a bit different, but they are basically the same games with a few curve balls here and there to change it up for the attention deprived consumer...
I wouldn't really consider Dishonored a First Person Shooter, I would lump that in more of the Assassin's Creed style game...

Just because something shares the view point of First Person Shooters doesn't make them a First Person Shooter game... You can have a First Person Point of View without it being a First Person Shooter... Even if you have a gun and have to shoot occasionally doesn't make it a First Person Shooter...

I don't recall naming any games at all in my other post, so it is kind of ignorant of you to just blindly assume what my opinion of a First Person Shooter is... And I stand with my comment, I think the market is flooded with them and I find it sad the momentum they have with today's gamers...
I don't mind a shooter from time to time, but there's just no reason to have so many... And the fact that I don't mind one occasionally is why I agree with Fred on the detail aspect... If I throw a grenade at a car where 2 bad guys are hiding behind, I want to see them explode as well as the car burst into flames and become a hunk of twisted metal... But instead all we get is a cloud of dust and 2 dead bad guys, the car sitting there is untouched... And if I use a rocket launcher to take out a guy up in a window, I want to see a big hole in the side of building, not just a cloud of dust and a dead bad guy...
There just aren't that many gamers our there that care about these factors though, so why should the developers bother with them when they know their target audience doesn't care... So you end up with countless games that when you boil it all down, they are pretty much the same, but the attention span of that target audience is too short to understand that...


Personally, I'm really looking forward to Watch Dogs coming out at the end of the year, as well as The Last Of Us in May... Among a few others... And Tex of course, that should go without saying...

Lets keep it friendly.

I don't think he meant to insult you Baf.

I agree with Baf on this one with the FPS genre.
Just because there is a first person view, does not make it a shooter.

Take Deus Ex for instance.... I would never call the a shooter.
You can play it like one, but you can play it many different ways.
Fallout is not a shooter.... It is an RPG with a first person view.

And yes. I have always wanted extreme detail. I think it may be a hardware limitation in some instances. Either that, or designers have just gotten lazy due to the hardware limitations of the past... because, a decade ago, it was due to hardware.

With fps' there are exceptions to the rule.
Crisis, Far Cry and Half Life are exceptions to the rule.
These are what FPS should be.
The army fps, though, are flooding the market and those are pretty much the same.

Anyway, that is my 2 cents.

I do admit I look forward to DayZ. The standalone version, that is. I tried the mod for Arma II last year, and I had a helluva time playing it. If the standalone delivers a complete package, then I know what game I'll be spending most of my time with, that's for damn sure.

-Fred

Bafitis wrote:As for First Person Shooters, I'm guessing you're a massive fan of the genre, because if you're going to sit there and tell me that Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, SOCOM, Navy Seals, Homefront, and the like are all different, then there is little to no point in having this discussion...

Stuff like Battlefield Bad Company, Medal of Honor, Homefront, are ABSOLUTELY similar to Call of Duty. And yes, there are a lot of Call of Duty clones out there, but all I'm saying is that the genre is a lot bigger and more diverse than that, and if you're dismissing them all as Call of Duty clones, just because 20% of them are, then you're missing 80% of the genre.

I will say that SOCOM is nothing like those games and, in fact, isn't even a first-person shooter. It's a tactical TPS. I'm not a big fan, but it's a pretty far cry from the Rambo shoot 'em up action of Call of Duty.

I wouldn't really consider Dishonored a First Person Shooter, I would lump that in more of the Assassin's Creed style game...

It's definitely not a straight FPS, because there's a lot of melee combat too, but it doesn't play anything like AC at all. If anything it's closer to Thief.

Just because something shares the view point of First Person Shooters doesn't make them a First Person Shooter game... You can have a First Person Point of View without it being a First Person Shooter... Even if you have a gun and have to shoot occasionally doesn't make it a First Person Shooter...

Sure, but the fact that those boundaries are so hazy now is a testament to what I'm saying. I don't consider Mirror's Edge a first-person shooter in honesty, but it's a first-person action game where you shoot people with guns, and it's amazing how many games are able to do such different things with that premise.

And stuff like Bioshock, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Crysis, STALKER... all of these are absolutely FPS games, and are nothing like the hyper-linear shoot 'em ups like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor.

I'm a huge fan of first person shooters. Along with side scrollers and adventure games, they're what got me into gaming. Frankly, I wouldn't have the enthusiasm for gaming that I have today without the FPS genre. That said, more than ever, the FPS genre has fallen prey (excuse the pun) to the production line mentality in terms of just releasing one after the other with little thought applied to innovation (Call Of Duty, Battlefield, SOCOM, the new Alien title, any Activision Produced 007 FPS game etc...).

For that reason, with the exception of a few gems such as Deus Ex, the FPS genre has come to a standstill because marketing has eclipsed the creativity that that made shooters such a watershed style of gaming back in the 1990s. There's a certain personality or unique style that they're lacking because of their proclivity to just imitate the competitor. It's time for a daring developer to step up and really turn the genre on its head in the same way that System Shock, Deus Ex, Half Life, Duke Nukem 3D and Quake did back in their respective times.

The solution? I'm no developer but I don't see why an FPS needs to just be about shooting. I'm open to the idea of the shooting element as being just one component of a bigger picture within an FPS story. Once again, apologies for the repeat bashing of this title, but see Deus Ex. This is just one of the many possibilities and under appreciated roads not truly embraced by other developers when making shooters.

Bafitis wrote:I wouldn't really consider Dishonored a First Person Shooter, I would lump that in more of the Assassin's Creed style game...

Just because something shares the view point of First Person Shooters doesn't make them a First Person Shooter game... You can have a First Person Point of View without it being a First Person Shooter... Even if you have a gun and have to shoot occasionally doesn't make it a First Person Shooter...

There's a game called Condemned that really pushed the boundaries of what defines a First Person Shooter. Although you often come across a handgun or shotgun, I still would not define that game as a First Person Shooter. Interesting topic to discuss though.

As for the Environmental damage I would have to agree that it should definitely be 'upped' so to speak. When discussing this I often think of the enemies destroyed that 'magically disappear' after their inevitable death. It bothers me a ton to see that older games like Doom I and Doom II have a more sophisticated view on this idea cause every time I go back to play one of my old beloved First Person Shooters, I kill the guy, walk all over hell trying to find a key, and when I come back to room one like a dumb ass I stumble across the friendly familiar pixilated corpse of which I shot down 15 minutes ago. Although they are undoubtedly not graphically appeasing they do at least keep the charade alive to make it believable.

I guess it could be argued that there would be too much of an overload on the system to keep 100 enemy corpses on the battlefield but I think they should compromise instead of just cutting it all out.

Anyways... Thats just my two cents.

The first Condemned is horrifying. One of the scariest games I've ever played.