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FPSs are starting to feel the same. The genre needs to evolve.

DrinkDuff · 2009-02-06 09:03:58

There is something going on here. There is something amiss in the FPS market today. Normally I am an advocator of the genre(s) both in first-person and third-person form. You could say that I am a fan, or at least, I was.I'm not so sure anymore. It's all becoming rather disappointing.The more I play FPSs these days the more I begin to wonder why I am enjoying them less and less. My enthusiasm grows smaller for each title with guns as the main focus. It didn't just start with this generation, but I think its finally starting to sink in: I can't seem to enjoy any of them anymore. And I think I figured out some of the reasons why. There isn't enough variety in the genre. Most first-person shooters in the market are starting to become clones of one another. The developers seem to be more concerned with presentation than they are about ingenuity. And it doesn't seem like anyone is willing to take the risk of coming up with something new. They don't want to entertain the brain, they want to keep it busy. Flashy graphics and good level design can only do so much to hide the simple-minded repetitive gameplay and the familiar environments that most games in the genre share. We get gray, war torn battlefields, gritty atmosphere, smooth animations, gray, lots of swearing, depth of field, motion blur, and even more gray. When you take those out, what do you have left? A hollow game with nothing to offer but a basic, impulsive, barely-gratifying shooting mechanic. The coat of paint can't cover up the rust decaying the cheap metal underneath. They aren't so much giving us a game, as they are giving us a program that gives you the same gratifying task to do over and over again. I feel like I am part of a sick experiment where I am being told to buy and judge a couple of different FPSs only to realize that they are the all the same game, and the scientists just wanted to measure my lack of awareness of the fact. We are like monkeys being trained by a reward system to do medial tasks. In all honesty though, that is what the FPS genre (in general) seems to have become: redundant. Sure, maybe every once in a while you get a cover mechanic thrown in, but you are still a commando god in a state of zombie-like trance, shooting an endless supply of walking bullet-fodder. You shoot a group of enemies only to find out that there are still more enemies to shoot. You move forward to one checkpoint only to find out that there are more checkpoints to reach where you are shooting even more enemies to complete your next arbitrary goal, (where you defend a position and shoot more enemies). Hide, recharge health, shoot, hide, recharge, shoot, reload. You go through the same dull, unrelenting pattern over and over again and then 6-10 hours roll by and then you are done. There are no compelling puzzles, there are no real tactics, there is nothing open-ended, there is no reason to fear your weak enemies, there are no choices that challenge your brain beyond that basic impulse. and there is no real incentive to go back and do it hundreds of times over a different backdrop. Then you realize you probably would have had more fun in a shooting gallery. When is it going to end? When are we going to see a fresh FPS again?

[QUOTE="mitu123"][QUOTE="AdrianWerner"]Well..first of all...it doesn't break the pacing. Second ...there is a limit to those health packs, not just those you find, but those you carry on. Plus often have to decide if it's better to use it now, when half of your health is gone or wait till it's almost fully gone. It adds far more variety.
Regen simply completely destroys the pacing, you constantly run like a rat and wait and wait and wait for regen, then some action and then again waiting... action..waiting. It makes the games horribly schematic.
AdrianWerner

So health regeneration is a bad idea overall, I think I might agree with you.

Full regen definitly is. Now partial regen isn't a bad idea. I mean like in FEAR2 where you will always regen like up to 20/100 points of health, it prevents you from rat tactic, but prevents backtracking.

Far Cry2 also had good idea, because you had to heal yourself when dying and it would take time and if you were prevented from it..then bam, you were dead, it wasn't perfect, but it a huge improvement over the regular regen

I think for arcade fpses the ideal solution is if you have let's say 100 points of health total, then having regen for first 20 points and then the rest be replenished by collectible health packs

That sounds like a good idea, it would still add more challenge to the game. Even beating today's FPSs with health regen on the hardest difficulty is still not mind blowing challenging for obvious reasons. I think Halo 2 invented the full health regeneration, even the original Halo had health packs, blame Halo 2, LOL.

FPSs are starting to feel the same. The genre needs to evolve.

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