The Gist - Are We Oversaturated With Futuristic Shooters?

More Mass Effect games.

I first person hockey game.

OMG, Jess is so beautiful, who care about video games?

Great show.

We could use more variety, I suppose. Western cowboy shooters? Heck, give everyone bows & arrows and set them loose in a forest.

Advanced warfare is using the most realistic tech out of any game, you should check out the last gadget show episode where they show EXO suits and other tech from advanced warfare in action :)

Futuristic setting is not to my likening. Not a mild future, but these tech say robot ruled worlds!

These four specific games have distinct enough reasons to exist, and I am grateful for the choices they provide. I hope those who like BL enjoy The Pre-Sequel as much as I enjoy the action movie feel of CoD. I am a casual FPS player though; I didn't pre-order any of these games, and I expect to play only one and maybe one other. I am no FPS enthusiast, but I'll even go a step further and say the current glut of FPS is a great opportunity for players to be picky.

Does that prevent "better" games from being made? Maybe. I'm not about to stop buying what I like just so I can force developers into making something different in the off chance I'll like the new game more. To say that these iterative games somehow take gamers' attention away from existing "better" games is to sell short player agency in the most fundamental way.

Now, if someday even a shooter simpleton like me has a problem deciding between multiple FPS, futuristic or not, then I think we have a problem.

I'm not that much of a FPS person myself but did enjoy Half-Life and Half-Life 2 when they came out. I couldn't believe the clever A.I they had. I also bought BF2 and all it's maps at a low price, that was a decent FPS. I currently bought and still playing Borderlands 2:GOTYE at a ridiculously low price(Glad I waited), It's hilariously fun and addictive to play. I don't intend on getting BL: Pre-sequel as a friend got it and said it wasn't that great. I just bought COD:AW as I never played a COD game before plus I love Kevin Spacey as an actor so thought I might try it out. I agree also that the market is heavily over saturated with FPS each offering little or nothing else new.

We are over-saturated with first-person shooters, period.

We are oversaturated with shooters, overall. That has been the case for the last 15-20 years approximately. We definitely need something else other that "shoot/slash everything on site".

They need to go back to WWII for a game or two maybe even WWI im sick of modern/quasi future FPS. I haven't bought a COD at $60 since MW2 and the only reason I have the new AW is because I wanted the custom console.

Asking if there are too many shooters is like asking if people go out of their way to say "selfie" way too much. The original Bioshock was a huge breath of fresh air for the genre, and unless someone can similarly come up with a very innovative way to play, a shooter is a shooter.

Not at all. What we are oversaturated with are pointless videos like these.

I don't mind futuristic shooters, but I don't like how serious a lot of them are in their story tone. I'd love to see more shooters that have that SSX Tricky vibe, where the characters are doing amazing things and are having a blast, shouting "WOOOOOOOO!!" as they get insane air. In Advanced Warfare it just feels like the characters are unable to really revel in and have fun with the cool futurestuff they have, mostly because the story is too Supa Seeryus for that sort of thing.

Day off today. What am I doing? Saving stuff by shooting dudes. Best status update ever.

Isn't this rather Danny's territory? The difference between 'The Gist' and 'The Point' is becoming very unclear. The desription of 'The Gist' seems to be irrelevant now. Just saying...

Are we oversaturated with futuristic shooters? YES!!!

We're oversaturated with shooters. It's extremely visible on consoles.

Start making FPS games with fully destructable environments, merging multiple genres, shooting/rpg/racing/flying (like battlefield) with CREATIVE elements, base building, resource gathering with friends.

A little more than just dropping the occasional turret! I want to build a fortress with my friends - during intense combat.

I think it makes devs lazy the whole going into the future thing

Ohhh thats something is better than nothing :D

I'm surprised that Crysis did not come up more, since that, having launched in 2007, seems like one of the earliest 'near future' shooters (with the exception of the not so popular Battlefield 2142).

I am almost tempted to look at it a different way though - SciFi shooters with futuristic weapons have been around much longer (Halo, or even earlier games like Doom or Deus Ex) and I am not sure if that genre is going through a revival, since it never really struggled. Noticeable is more that traditional shooter series CoD and BF have worked their way through 1940s to present day and just kept going. It is almost a coincidental mass of futuristic shooters. That is also not a bad thing - it all flows into some great shifts in gameplay, esp. high jumping (jet packs, exo-suits, and whatever) and environment interaction...

Well shooters in general, but that has been the case for years. At least now it's futuristic shooters and not lame ww2 stuff which is a craze i did not understand.

Yes, I would say so. I guess it doesn't really matter if the games are good, but it would be nice to see some new settings and stuff...

We really need more dinosaur shooters, like Turok. I mean really.

I think factual history is boring because it won't ever change. It has happened and no matter how many times I play historical games I feel I've seen it all before.

Fictional alternate histories like Wolfenstein are great because they can basically do whatever they want inside a fictional old world.

Present is good at highlighting current issues in the world that make you scared or think about what could be happening in your own life at the current moment.

The futuristic game makes you look forward to the future or not. It again is simply pure fiction and they can do literally whatever they want. Use whatever governments they want, locations in time they want, hell any solar system or planet/asteroid they want. Which is why I will always like Sci-fi games. I mean Borderlands, Destiny and COD might all be first person shooters but they are so different to one another they are still very different. If anything I want MORE futuristic shooters.

What I definitely DON'T want is more boring World War stuff. We get it the World Wars sucked, move on. If I want to know more I'll buy a history text book.

How about some olden day shooters? With supernatural themes. Clive Barker's Undying anyone? Great potential for story-telling in a realistic period in time, mixed up with supernatural themes. Amazing possibilities are to be had.

I would say its too many FPS's period. Getting very annoyed at the fact that there's so many new FPS's coming out in the next year. What about top-down shooters? Third Person shooters like Sunset overdrive? Make some more of those!

Ever since I played Galaga way back in early 80s, I haven't stopped shooting crap. Shooting crap in a staple of gaming and it will ever change.

Genre is largely neutral unless it's a matter of personal taste - and even then "future" doesn't matter as much as "FPS". So you can make a good future shooter with good gameplay and an engaging campaign - people will buy it.

It's also cyclical, as with most media. In the early 90s, I worked as a game consultant at a company that was run by big shots from EA. Just pitching gaming concepts.

So I tell the producer: let's do a world war 2 game that takes from D-Day into Paris where you track down Nazis.

Old guy producer says "I'm sick of WW2, I grew up with it." I wanted to say, "I'm younger, I grew up with Vietnam!".

A couple years late the first COD WW2 games came out, then Company of Heroes, Battlefield a d nauseum. Then Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, etc.

My theory is: you can't go wrong killing Nazis or Zombies. Aliens, it depends.But it is cyclical.

I am burned out on futuristic shooters, I am going to wait for a past time period game.

Can't think of any better franchise than Mass Effect & Dead Space.Great games on their unique way.


P.s - Still waiting on Fallout 4

Sci-fi rocks. There are effectively infinite creative directions developers can take when in comes to future settings, it's hard to get sick of them, as opposed to strict time periods like WW2. And you can bet they will take alternative creative directions to stand-out from similar titles.

I do look forward to the eventual return of WW2 though. Games and computing technology will be able to recreate it in mind-blowing ways.

I only care about one futuristic shooter: Cyberpunk 2077.

Short answer: yes. Long answer: YES.

I would like to see them visit civil war era....I played a mod that had musket rifles and pistols along with a sword. You could not just run and gun unless you were a really good shot and knew how to juggle reloading.

These guys keep making the same thing...

I wish they would go back and make a game like Modern Warfare 1 or 2.

You could barely use a sniper anymore, go back to the farm or the jungle!!!

Snipers should prone, wait, breathe and fire...Not run, jump shoot and keep running cmon man...

you really mean are we over-saturated with COD's...and the answer is yes....yes we are...

I just don't need to buy every new game that comes out.

There's plenty of diversity, just need to take it slow

the problem is not futuristic shooters, but the same vision of future over and over again.

I mean, high-jumps, super strength, invisible stealth kills... crysis did it in 2007!

Jet-packs have been around even before Duke Nukem!

While I agree that choosing a future setting gives developers more room for creativity, there has been a great lack of creativity.