Last week, I commented on one of JohnSteed's blog about how I stay away from top 10 lists and such, as it often ends up with me just ranting against the FPS genre. His response, to paraphrase, was basically to say it must be difficult to be a gamer that hates that sort of game, since they make up such a large part of the market.

This got me thinking - where exactly did all this start? I've not really thought about WHY I hate the things in a long time, it's just one of those accepted facts. Sort of like tying your shoes, you probably don't remember when or how you learned - but you did, and you don't give it any thought every time you tap into this knowledge. It's a stretch for an analogy, but I'm still kind of drunk from last night, so bear with me.

This is going to be a very long entry - so I won't be offended if you aren't up to reading it. I make no promises that this won't end up just another angry rant at the rotting carcass that is the FPS genre, stinking up the gaming Indus.... *ahem* I'll do my best to show that my opinion actually has a background with some merit and keep away from the ranting as much as possible.

That said, the best place to start, I suppose, is the beginning.

The year is 1992. My PC gaming days were still ahead of me, and I was entirely focused on my precious console systems, the NES and the Genesis. My experiences were firmly planted in side scrolling platformers, vertical scrollers... basically "go right" games. I had a few computers in my life at this point, but all of them were hand-me-downs from my grandfather's office, which meant they served no purpose other than to allow me to say "yes, I have a computer." I could play SimCity in glorious monochrome or CGA madness, or Commander Keen in similar color schemes. Incidentally, playing SimCity without a mouse is a *****.

The PC gaming was left to my best friend - He always had the latest available tech in his system. He was the first to get a CD-rom, he was the first of us to upgrade to an independent graphics card, blah blah blah, you get the idea. So it was no surprise when he calls me up and tells me I *HAVE* to come check out this new game he got. :roll:

So I hop on my bike and off I go. I can't say I wasn't intrigued - new games were few and far between for me back then, so I had to get my fix through my friends. What he showed me was by far the most badass thing I had ever seen.

The game was of course Wolfenstein 3D. I think there may have been one or two other games before Wolfenstein that used the first person perspective, but for me, and most gamers I'd wager, this is the first of its kind, and certainly my first exposure to it. That said, my reaction was probably similar to a lot of gamers back then... it was something completely different, you were IN the game - looking through the eyes of the character! "HOLY MONKEYS! This is sweet! Is that supposed to be me there!? What's the story!? Oh well who cares! This is AWESOME!" bam bam bam!!

As luck would have it, my parents had decided around that same time that it was time we had a proper computer in the house, and it wasn't long after that I had my own copy of Wolfenstein 3D, and life was good.

For a little while anyways... You can only play one game so many times. Fortunately, my mom saved the day, and gave me one of those Sierra 10-packs. Among these ten games was King's Quest V. The remake with the awful voice actors (curse you stupid owl!!) and full color, and it was also my introduction into the point and click adventure games, as well as the beginnings of what would evolve into a very unsettling obsession with RPGs, gaining levels, and deep storylines.... That's another blog.

Around Christmas time in 1993, I was unceremoniously dragged to a Christmas party by my parents. They had kids also, but they were an infant and a 4 year old. I was 12. Socializing was out of the question... so I sat quietly as the adults talked about... whatever it was that adults talked about at Christmas parties in 1993. I went outside and amused myself playing fetch with the dog. Woo. Bill, the man half of the couple who was throwing the party stepped outside. "Bored?" he asked. Not wanting to be impolite, I said no. "Yeah you're bored. Come on in, I'll set you up on the computer" I followed him into his office, and there sat the biggest screen I had ever seen. When he turned it on, it was like a turbine revving up. I stood at his shoulder and watched the system load itself to the c prompt. He handed me some headphones, and typed something in. He had me take his place in the chair and simply said "just press enter when you're situated." I looked at the screen and this is what I saw :

C:doom

Ooooookay. So I pressed enter, not sure what to expect, and was met with a whole new level of badassery. Holy crap! This is awesome! Is that me!? What's the story!? Who cares! This is freaking AWESOME!!

This game was MUCH darker than Wolfenstein, there were more guns, more enemies, more levels, and frankly just MORE of everything. The environment was creepy, with the headphones on, in the dark, I could hear the heavy breathing of the demons that may or may not have been hanging around the next corner. I did not leave that chair until my parents came to collect me several hours later to go home. So delighted was I with this new found magic, I told them allllll about it on the way home... and wouldn't you know it, for Christmas - I got my own copy. I also asked for a BFG9000, but that was strangely absent from under the tree.

My best friend got one as well - and it was then we discovered that we could connect our games together... it was also here that we discovered the beauty of the deathmatch.

Doom grabbed a larger part of the market, all my friends had this game, it was THE game to have if you were a gamer. If you didn't have it, you were a lesser being... you were tainted, your mother hated you, your dog blamed awful smells on you, and basically, you just flat out sucked. I would argue the elitist attitude that you run into with some gamers in online FPS's has its roots here, but I think it's more to do with people liking to be **** with the cloak of internet anonymity protecting their precious egos.

In any case, many, MANY morning hours were spent deathmatching, and we had a great time. This online aspect gave it a much longer life, and it carried it to its successor in 1994, Doom II.

NOW we're in the thick of it! The upgrade was a no-brainer. Doom and Wolfenstein were not even a blip on the gamers radar when this gem hit the shelves, and I was all over it. My first reaction set me apart from my friends for the first time. Theirs was "HOLY ****! This is ******* AWESOME!!" (We were older and cursing had become infinitely more fun) Whereas I was much more on the "This.... This looks the same as Doom." And, having become semi-spoiled with my moonlighting as an RPG'er "Where is the story!?"

"WHO CARES? IT's DOOOOOOM TWOOOOOOO!" cried my friends in unison.

Okay, fine. I'll go with it. So we play through the single player campaign separately, and we are back to deathmatching. Now I'm getting burned out on this sort of gameplay, but it was popular - and if I wanted to play my friends, then this was the only option. Eventually, I gave up - as much as I kept telling myself I liked Doom, I just couldn't take it anymore, and I distracted myself with the Sierra's Hero Quest. (Later renamed Quest for Glory for reasons of copyright)

Enter Heretic. This game was doom all over again - and when my friend showed it to me I gave a very audible sigh. "no no! it's not the same! Look!" With that he brought up an inventory screen.

:shock:

Do my eyes deceive me!? An INVENTORY SCREEN!? Good heavens! This element reminded me of my Sierra games, and immediately I was intrigued.... It was short lived though. The inventory was clunky, the story, while they tried on this one, was still unintelligible, and it quickly passed from the forefront of my mind and into this vague recollection I've just given. As a side note, it's the first game of the genre I can recall being able to aim up or down. So in that respect, it made use of, if not started a new gameplay mechanic.

As luck would have it, Blizzard came out with a little game called 'Warcraft : Orcs and Humans' - this game more than sated my desire to play friends, not to mention to build my own little mini empire. It appealed to me to start from the absolute minimum, and every map I made in the editor was always on the largest available, and each player started with one Peasant (or Peon if you were Orc) and building up the cities or whatever and blitzing your opponent was WAY more fun than deathmatching...Well, I thought so anyways. I love the RTS genre, and it starts here with one of the pioneers of its kind.

Meanwhile, the FPS genre had established itself, and was growing. Rise of the Triad came out and my cousin bought it for some reason. I played it, and my first thought was.... "This looks a LOT like Wolfenstein" Turns out it pretty much was. It was based on the engine behind Wolf3D, and it was incredibly dated for the time, it was the last game to use the Wolfenstein engine I think... and it vanished as quickly as it came.

This made room for a game released about the same time that actually pulled me back into the genre for a time. Dark Forces.

This game did some new things (at last) The environments were multi level, and for the first time you could actually look all around. Time was actually spent on having a story line, which you got with cutscenes and briefings. There were a good number of weapons to choose from, and a lot of items that were handy, most notably the headlamp.

This game took all the good things about Doom, expanded on them, and added its own touches as well. I had hope again. Limited as it was.

It was with this game that I also discovered something new to hate. Jumping in a first person view is a pain in the butt. Trying to jump from ledge to ledge and not being able to gauge where you are standing relative to where you are trying to get to is something that plagues these games to this day... and also made me realize these games are just a camera with a bobbing gun in front of it. When I look down, I see legs. Period. Despite my growing list of complaints, it was a good game, and, despite a growing excess of poor quality FPS, I would argue that Dark Forces was the start of this genre's golden age.

Hexen. Back like a case of herpes, this was Heretics sequel. This game suckered me in almost the exact same way its predecessor did. This time with the advent of being able to choose a c_lass just like in my beloved Quest for Glory series, Mage, Fighter or healer (Thief in QfG).... And once again, it was just another run of the mill FPS based on the Doom engine. Again. Ugh. The game apparently warranted some expansions but I didn't touch them.

On to Duke Nukem 3D! I know there were a couple of games before it; Duke Nukem I and II, but I never played them. This game subjected a lot of us to our first look at pixilated bewbs, and man did that sell. It was the only game you could go into a strip joint, watch a dancer, and the OJ Simpson car chase on the TV. Good times. As a game I suppose it was decent, but beyond the adult themed gimmicks, it was just another shooter to me.

That same year we got Quake. As soon as I heard about this I could feel shards of glass or something beginning to dig into my temples. My computer was beginning to struggle anyways, and just barely ran Duke Nukem. Quake was out of the question. However, like I said, my best friend always had the best crap, so I got to play it over at his place. This game was graphically superior to any before it thanks to its Quake engine, which helped, but as usual the story was barely present. :roll: This game eventually pushed my friend to get the first 3d accelerator I had ever heard of. I didn't notice much difference, I think it made the water look more.... Watery or something.. it was minimal. The big thing with this game was that it finally made use of the internet connectivity, and allowed for computers to connect to a server, and thus several players could be in one game at once, deathmatching to their hearts content. It was here I was introduced to the obnoxious world of 'other people.' For someone like me who had been trying to escape this festering genre, I had quite the handicap when playing against those who devote their lives to this. If I managed to frag someone, it was luck and I will suffer for my insolence, if I myself am fragged, then it's because my mother beat me with a brick and my dog blames awful smells on me, and I just flat out suck. Wow.

As compelling as it was to play with these charmers, I passed. I appreciated what the game was doing on the multiplayer level, but I decided at that point that I just want to play my friends, or play by myself... and I did try to play through Quake on the single player, all I could think was "... this is just.... Doom. AGAIN." Just as well, my computer, as I said, couldn't handle it anyways.

Then came Jedi Knight : Dark Forces II, I took my first stab at building a computer from scratch for this game. I saved up my weekly paychecks from working at a grocery store for 2 months... which gave me a budget of like 600 bucks. (yeah minimum wage is balls)

Oh BLESS you LucasArts! You have shown me the light once again, THANKYOU! This game was the definition of awesome. It was FPS... or was it? This game gave you the ability to switch to a 3rd person perspective, which that alone was breath of fresh air to me - but then the game hands you a lightsaber.... And then force powers! This may as well have been labeled porn. It was the greatest thing ever. It had story, it had weapons variety (why? You have a LIGHTSABER!) puzzles, and a main character that you could finally start to invest in as he was being developed. A FIRST. Plus, taking a page from the book of Quake, it allowed for online connectivity for up to 4 people, which was perfect for my cadre of misfits. This game clicked with me, it didn't force me into the first person perspective, it didn't make me use guns, and it had a great story. I know it had its flaws, as no game is without them on some level - but for the life of me I can't think of any.

This game was awesome enough to make the release of Quake II go relatively unnoticed by me and my friends, which looking back I'm very thankful for. I never played Quake II, so I'll leave it alone.

As it turns out, it doesn't matter... consoles had a big push back into the spotlight, Nintendo 64 hit the market, the Playstation was making its own splashes, and the Dreamcast was trying it's hardest to keep up. (I miss my dreamcast.... *sniff*) One of the breakout hits from that generation of consoles was Goldeneye. This was the first time I got to play an FPS using an analog. It made the overall experience more enjoyable, but....I kept getting that awful feeling of déjà vu... "this is just... Doom.... AGAIN."

I'm sure you get the point by now.

DEAR HOLY LORD MONKEY **** BALLS, does no one else notice this!? It's the same ******* game over and over and over and over and over again!!! It's been this way for over a decade! How do you not get tired of this!?

Now, I realize that the same could be said for most any genre of game, but with the FPS - and this never fails, there is little to no story, and for me it takes away immensely from the game - if I am to play doom over and over again, at least give me something more engrossing than "there are aliens/demons here. Kill them all." Conversely, a great deal of RPGs have basically the same story, but for me, I can still be involved in it - even in the crappy ones, there are always a few little twists or something that change it up juuuust enough to make it bearable.

So another decade has passed, and in that time, I've seen stealth FPS, (which is a complete contradiction, but I'm not going there) the team based FPS, i.e. Rainbow 6, etc. and one type of FPS that I think should just be a genre all by itself at this point, the ENDLESS barrage of WW2 shooters. The whole genre is completely over saturated; it's like dipping a stick of butter in a vat of lard - which is not only extremely unhealthy, but all kinds of gross.

Sure they've all upgraded their graphics, they add new weapons in from time to time that do different things, and try to pass it off as a 'groundbreaking' game mechanic, but frankly - it's just Doom.

Is it easy to be a gamer that hates FPS in a time where there are so many? Well, yes. It is easy. We have a lot of options. It's true, I think there are WAY too many shooters out there, but that's what most everyone likes, and I'm in the minority here. Which is fine... one of the great things about being a gamer today is we have so many choices, a lot of us just don't even know what to do with ourselves. I will never be the one to get between a gamer and their controller, whatever game he or she chooses to play, more power to them. Just don't ask me for a deathmatch.... Or I will seriously kill you.

With a spork.

:evil: