the first person shooter game thread (eew fps)

[worstplayer]

I just played Terrorist Takedown 3.
Oh. My. God.
This game is so fucking horrible. I really tried to find something good about it, but can't find anything. Godawful graphics, inconsistent controls, level anti-design, weak weapons, no AI at all (literally, enemies DON'T MOVE!), some of the worst scripting in history (in first level, a grenade spawns from thin air, flies through intact window, and spawns a very obvious sprite supposedly representing some kind of explosion), amateur porn voice acting, insanely high HW requirements (A game running on ancient Lithtech engine chugs along at 20fps, and that's when there are no enemies on the screen. Have they ever heard of this thing called optimization?).
Pure shit.

EDIT: I almost forgot to mention how it attempts to copy Call of Duty. You know how in CODMW2 you can blow up some doors with explosives, the game goes to bullet time, and you have to quickly kill all enemies?
Well, here's this game's take on this scenario: You must stand at exact spot, some voice counts to 3, game goes to bullet time. Then you can open the door, but whether you do it or not, the game proceeds as if nothing happened.

[worstplayer]

Oxymoron of the year: "choreographed sandbox"
Saddest part: being able to freely move around a single room is a big deal nowadays. I hate where this genre is going.

[Cthulhu]

So...Sniper: Ghost Warrior. I found it for cheap and picked it up...

I kinda wanted to try it but the reviews were almost universally meh so I didn't. Not really regretting it, sounds like you found similar meh-ness.

[Ed Oscuro]

I just played Terrorist Takedown 3.

They made three of these already?! I haven't played any but read a review of the first a while back...oh, the horror.

Anyway guys, instead of playing Cyvern, I got off on a dinosaurs games kick. Unfortunately there's not a lot that's good there.

Does anybody remember how long there have been rumors of a multiplayer Jurassic Park mod for (insert cutting-edge FPS here, starting with at least Half-Life)? They usually seem to be based on three factions (evil park agents vs. commandoes vs. dinosaurs) and so on. Obviously, nothing ever comes of these projects, no matter how many awesome dinosaur meshes and MP5s the modellers put out. Sadness, really.

However, I did (finally) get ahold of the Half-Life 2 version of Dino D-Day. I've yet to install it yet, but after my latest run through first person shooters with dinosaurs, well, let's say I'm hoping it breaks the mold.

Turok: The original on N64 is a lot different than what I had expected. It's kinda neat. Looks like it was made outta legos for the most part - lots of dropped-in prefabs. My version of Project64 (thanks for no new versions since this game was originally released, seems like...) won't load level 4, so I looked into the PC version. Neat but music on CD - meaning pauses when the levels loop - and the cool swimming music seems to be gone. Damn shame. Bad things about this game: Can't swap ammo types, can't replace the normal shotgun with the autoshotgun (only would make sense; now you have to spin the inventory of weapons just a bit longer). Also, horribly limited draw distance, and stupid mazes. That's not all, but it's a start. Some decent enemies though. Also, knifing raptors for northwest coast native style masks (the "Mortal Wound," another inadequately named item) = YES

Turok 2: Only looked at it briefly. Had this one back in the day (still do) but I'd like to try it out on PC with DarkMan's DInput plugin instead. PC version as well. Respectable game, all around.
Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion: I actually had a game of this going a couple years back with Project64, looked at some info online and was surprised to see how much stuff is in there that I've forgotten. I rather like the setting. Didn't get all the way through the game. At the same time I was trying out Rage Wars (lol) as well.

Carnivores: Buggy DirectX rendering, software mode is ruinously ugly (never realized I'd think that way) but it works. Skipped more or less to try out Carnivores 2.
Carnivores 2: Hunting game, seems to consist of trying to sneak up on a dinosaur, and then:
a.) chasing it onto a peninsula (lucky) for a quick death by pistol
b.) chasing it all over the landscape until it eventually doubles back and you get another quick death by pistol
c.) it turns out to be a carnivore, and after chasing it across the landscape for years, another appears unexpectedly and eats you immediately

Nice maps though. Nifty details, a bit like Trespasser except more varied in a given area (small sandy beaches) and much more dense (the second map is kind of neat - I haven't even seen the village mentioned in the text, though I did find Stonehenge).

Carnivores Cityscape: An infamous game running on the Serious Sam engine. Has been very stable - I've even been alt-tabbed out of it for minutes on end going back and forth to pull out some quotes for this writeup, and it hasn't flinched. Good ol' Croteam made something some incompetents in American couldn't break, I think. Before playing I saw one good review; there's another which is idiotic and badly written. Eric Wolpaw (of Old Man Murray / Left 4 Dead fame!) versus New Games Journalism (TM) right thurr.

What's the scoop on Cityscape? It uses the Serious Sam engine, and it's split into two campaigns, rather like Aliens versus Predator. Unlike the famous AvP, it's bad - but I managed to have some fun with it anyway (mainly with the human side).

Starting up the game: Comical picture of a black t-rex-like thing bursting out of a glass jar like the Kool-Aid man. Didn't take a close look at it until beating the game the second time through - was too happy about the music to care. Seriously, there's a couple decent tunes in here.

First aggravation comes quickly: Had to dick around with the control settings more than usual. Didn't spend hours with it, but I had to give up and delete all the changed configurations from the game directory and start over before I got it working. See, there are some really obscure mouse configurations possible (i.e. map mouse X, Y, and even Z to various things, like "banking" or "move F/B") and at first play moving the mouse up and down wasn't doing anything. Then it was moving up and down slowly, then quickly, as if it was moving relative to a point (like an analog controller...makes no sense for a mouse). Went through the mouse configuration and tried to fix it there by setting relative to "off" in every mode, even those not being used. It finally started working (though I can't claim a cause and effect to any particular change...wonky fucking game right here). Oh, did I mention that if your mouse moves at all when you're changing keys it will select "Joy 1 Pov N" instead of whatever key you wanted to. So here's what controls entry is like: Press backspace to clear out an entry. Hover over the entry and either press left mouse button or Enter so the game will wait for a key - and then immediately try to press that key. If you're lucky you'll get it in the first try. If not, you'll need three tries. I love being punished for having a high DPI mouse! You can press Enter to wait for input, but Enter isn't an option (so I had fun jumping with Right Shift instead). On the plus side, there's not very many controls worth changing. There is a button for thermal vision, but I didn't even use it until the very end of the game (and only the Agent gets to use it). It would have been nice in a few spots, but battery life is counted in seconds, followed by a nice long recharge.

Gameplay (on Normal): I did Agent (the right side, dude looks like a Boba Fett model with a slightly different skin - you get to inspect this model often through the game since they're lying dead everywhere) first; Dino(saur) much later (a relatively very quick campaign). Agent (Philips?) is a slow bastard, and only has six guns including an incredibly weak (but fast-firing) pistol with infinite fire (that will take down a big rat in...three shots!): (drum fed; 50 shots) shotgun, (automatic; 120 bullets - only two needed to kill a rat!) rifle, grenade launcher (20 rounds, lotsa damage but lotsa splash too), sniper rifle (only 10 shots, why bother? You never need to snipe flying monsters - though you can - and for that the pistol works fine, just much more slowly). Finally, there's the X-Rifle, which I was putting off using at first, only to discover it incredibly useful later. I think that I more or less had the right weapon selection through the whole game. Fun fact: I don't think the pistol, assault rifle, or really any weapon has a muzzle flash, just a kickback animation.

Game start: As Eric Wolpaw says - the game is confusing. Go find the ship! Well, you start right next to a ship that looks out of Star Trek-meets-Spy Kids (a couple vestigal warp nacelles too many). Cool ship! We'll be seeing it later. It does nothing. So, pull down your objectives to see a picture of where we need to go (I was not advanced enough to do this the first time, sniff - instead I discovered that I couldn't jump onto the ship's warp nacelles due to a very primitive square clipping / bounding box, sadness). So there's another ship. This one looks a bit more like a Star Destroyer, or (from this view only) maybe like the Millennium Falcon-ripoff that haul your prizes away in the old Carnivores games (doesn't really look like it). So, off we go. You go along, getting bitten by these little anklebiters all the way. Here I had the assault rifle and it did pretty well. There's enough ammo to use it. Shotgun would probably not be the greatest choice since you need to be very close to anklebiters (i.e. within their melee range) to hit them, and there's also tons of shrubs here. Melee range - yes, dinosaurs can hurt you with a close-range look. Does this sound like a great game yet? Shrubs you can't see through + dinosaurs + useless "walk to avoid attracting dinosaurs" stealth message (it doesn't seem to work but I didn't care, all dinosaurs / anklebiters need to die) + useless weapons.

Lessons: In Carnivores, you can fall a long, long way without damage. You can get an idea how far by falling down the primitive purposeless castle-like stonework at the beginning, and noting how far you have to fall before you take damage. That stonework seems like a neat nod to the original Carnivores series, with its odd "there were people here before on this planet somewhere in outer space, but now there aren't" storyline. No more archaeology to be had in the game, for better or worse (I'm going to guess "worse" but with these developers, I guess you're getting caves of one sort or another no matter what). Soon enough you get to small pond, and then another (there's an easter egg hidden somewhere in here - it's on YouTube, along with a bunch of others; apparently the developers put as much time into easter eggs as into the actual game). Then you go along further - still beset by anklebiters - until you finally see the big ship above. Then you climb up underneath it, wondering how to trigger the level end because you've certainly achieved the objective. You actually have to go up to the left side of it, and then around some suspiciously mazelike wall / spaceship sections until you find a door. Hooray! Level complete!

Rundown of some other levels: Rescue two people on the spaceship. Turn off the spaceship's reactor. Get to the city. Then a neat stretch of levels ensues where it becomes more clear than before that hey, for some reason the levels often are actually only being played in a small segment of the loaded level - so there's one thing to like about the game, though it seems a bit resource-wasteful. Croteam's engine allows it, but it's certainly not usual. There's a benefit to having more level loaded (that you can freely pass into!) than is being used - on Agent mode, you can run around and collect more ammo in the deserted areas (the only dinosaurs that still appear are the flying ones, which never pose a threat and are essentially decorative). I died a few times on the "get to the city" (The Truck) level, but was becoming complacent at The City due to its large sight lines and easy kills.

It's kind of a remarkable area: It's a big city! You can't go inside buildings, but there's tons of ramps, bridges, elevated walkways and the like to run across. Of course, all of them are useless (aside from a few that are used to trigger easter eggs). All you have to do is shoot the dinosaurs (if you please) and enter the building at the end. Then down comes the hammer: This is another rescue mission, except you have miniature t-rex specimens to deal with. I used the grenade launcher with all its lovely splash damage. Deaths from t-rex on the other side of the door (they can get you surprisingly quick sometimes) and quite a few times the Senator got killed seemingly accidentally by the dinosaurs (they mostly target the player). Eventually I got through it. I have to admit, this part of the game was actually rather fun, partly because the central elevator hub (useless, didn't even work from the ground floor, couldn't get the Senator inside, and it's not on the way to evacuate him anyway) has a sound around it that reminds me of the Thief series. There is some neat texture work here, with gold / bronze colored doors and tiles with a dinosaur motif - it's actually kind of cool looking. On the whole the area reminds me of a cross between the Mages' Tower from Thief Gold and the Opera House from the same. Anyway, we're off to a section with blue wall stripes (where's the Water Mages? Looks more like offices out of the Soviet Union, though) to find the Senator (the audio messages are actually helpful here). Then you find him and have to wonder about where to go. Well - we have to go back into the City. I ran all the way to the beginning of that damn city with the Senator in tow. Apparently my dropship wasn't a cool enough ride for him. Then I realized that the miniature version of the spaceship from the beginning of the game was his. Was pretty easy from a new game to get him there by taking a walkway down to it.

Then there's a bunch of mostly godawful levels: Aqueducts (i.e. sewers, every game has to have sewers), subways (protect Norton! Not the guy from American History X, just some guy in a fancy jumpsuit who works on glowy blue shit hidden under the outer walls of subway cars with his bare hands. Also, the announcements are spoken in English *and* Spanish, hooray multilingualism!), industrial levels, and - oh hey the game is over already. Actually, there's a lot of stuff here, but none of it's especially good. Most levels are over in merely minutes. My favorite was trying to hunt anklebiters in pitch black with only a bit of fog lighting from the distance (too bad it doesn't cover the immediate foreground, where anklebiters always are found). Now, let's try doing that as a dinosaur...who doesn't get the option of thermal vision. I eventually learned to respect the shotgun / x-rifle (shock rifle) combo, even if it always put the weapons in the wrong selection order (mouse wheel down: pistol - x-rifle - shotgun - took me many maps to finally get used to it).

You thought humans had it bad with six guns? Dinosaurs have two attacks, both claw attacks - and only one is really useful, the leap-forward attack. 80% of your time in a map as a dinosaur is spent holding this button down because it also makes you move faster. You can time it with a jump for a nice arc through the air, and in combination with some old-fashioned Quake-style physics (step up on a short curb + jump = you sail into the air), and we have the next best thing to flying dinosaurs. Nobody is safe, not even humans with grenade launchers or x-rifles (alright, the x-rifle always spooked me; once got killed in two shots from one at full health with one of the bigger dinosaurs). Dinosaurs also get to eat humans (or other things that normally have a "use" option in Agent mode - nice to see a dinosaur trying to eat a switch box in the early ship level) for half of their health back. The camera allows you to inspect the feasting action from a tastefully distant skewed side view. Meanwhile, you will likely be hearing the footsteps of more agents coming. Bad times are when get get you while you're trying to get your health back. Good times are when they all bunch up and you punch through three or four of them.

I hate being a race traitor, but being a flying dinosaur almost makes up for it - it's great not to crawl through the levels on my knees like the Agent seems to do.

There's no real convergence of storylines. There are Agent corpses through the levels when you play either mode (Agent or Dino) and most of the time the objectives simply oppose each other. Interestingly (...as far as interest in this game goes), only the Dino can come across Agent corpses holding something other than the rifle (i.e. by making humans with other weapons dead). Spoiler time:


In mission briefings, dinosaurs are told to do things like "seek out the ship reactor for warmth," "contemplate how nice a full belly will be," and other things that make them possibly smarter than everything else in the game - possibly including the Agent, whose only redeeming grace (besides winning the game) is not crashing his (?) dropship between levels (there's no cutscenes in this game so I have to guess...), as the Senator seems to have crashed his ship into the side of a building later on - damn nonthreatening pterodactyls getting sucked into the turbines / warp coils. At one point the Agent is tasked with escaping rising waters - AND saving some trapped workers. Well, throw a switch, and what do you hear but them getting eaten? Then the game ends the level and congratulates you on extracting them. OK! My favorite briefing (aside from the ending, and the level title "Dont use your lunch" [sic - meaning, as a dinosaur, hunt down agents and kill them all for lunch) is this one for the dinosaurs, from the level "Beam Out" (REP. TRAFICANT APPROVES):

You are one of several Nanotyrannus who has found [sic] a Suchomimus carcass [note: on the teleporter pad, and not skinned like all other dinosaur carcasses yay!] to feed on. Agents are trying to kill you and destroy the carcass. Prevent this outrage.

A ha-haa, god...naturally, you're not being accompanied by AI teammates; as usual, the briefing lies.

The final objective for the Agent is like this: Stupid dinosaurs are converging on a "lab" (actually just a warehouse) where a "top secret biological weapon" is being developed because the dinosaur pheremones DinoHunt Inc. uses in its hunts are also there, strewn around it on the shop floor. (This is actually the setup.) Prevent the stupid dinosaurs from releasing the bioweapon!

Final objectives for the dinosaurs:

You are a Gigantosaurus driven into a frenzy by the overwhelming scent of pheremones. One particular tank, however, has an offensive odor to it that you must eliminate. Destroy it.

Humans didn't get any sort of finale at all, just the credits roll and your radio guy saying a few nice things. (Actually, I think the player character just gets on the radio and talks to himself, because even sounds that ought to come from you (like the "I really need to find a bathroom" easter egg - don't ask...) are played over the radio in the same voice. All radio messages are the same voice. Clones versus dinosaurs huh? Man, this is getting more like AvP every minute!) What does the dinosaur get? A quick trip to the gas chamber? No, somehow, activating that gas made DINOSAUR VICTORY! happen. It's not clear how what is probably nerve gas caused this, but you get to hear the radio guy saying he's surrounded, and a Gigantosaurus (aka t-rex's black cousin) going "oh yeah" over the city background. The end!

It's a compelling kind of idea - who doesn't want to explore a planet that mysteriously has dinosaurs, and ruins (so some kind of ancient human culture, kind of like that Star Trek episode where Kirk falls in love with the Space Indians girl? LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL), and also a modern city run by a company that made its fortune setting up dinosaur hunts? Actually, just keep "who wants to hunt some dinosaurs" and you've already theoretically got a winner. Unfortunately, I don't know of any games up to now that have lived up to the promise, aside from the narrow limits for success set by Carnivores (and the one-map wonder Primal Prey, which I actually like). Too many budget games, and too little time. I'd like to take Uncle Sam's advice (as in the third poster here) and "make 'em extinct!" What, dinosaurs? No, dinosaurs are great. Bad budget games are what I mean. Making good use of flying dinosaurs would be a bonus.

Next up...Dinotopia - The Game? Primal Prey as well. Oh, let's not forget the Shick Dinohunters games - Shick razor adgames based on the HL2 Source Engine code, run on the Kuma Games platform and never acknowledged by Valve anywhere. Four blades good! Yes, as crazy as Cityscape is, and as pedestrian as Turok is said to have become - I think this only covers the tip of the dinosaur FPS iceberg of crazy.

[worstplayer]

I'd like to apologize to Terrorist Takedown 3. I just played something much, much worse.


PC version of Halo 2. This thing is an abomination. Vista exclusive too. Good job showing off your new DirectX 10, shitheads, no wonder Vista flopped. I don't think i've seen worse port since Atari2600.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Halo: Combat Evolved for PC (oh, hi Gearbox) was a joke too. The animations were fixed at 30 fps and the actual sytem requirements were insanely high (higher than UT2004 or even H-L2 if you ask my rig). Needless to say, it had the same lo-res textures, polygon count etc.

[worstplayer]

Oh, Gearbox is responsible for this one too? There go any hopes of DNF being decent

[Kaiser]

Oh, Gearbox is responsible for this one too? There go any hopes of DNF being decent

But they made borderlands which is a very decent production. So lay off the past crap game bullshit guys and rate the DNF being decent hopes on THEIR latest works. Not old shits or old shitty ports.

[Ed Oscuro]

I'd like to apologize to Terrorist Takedown 3. I just played something much, much worse.

Anyway, Halo 2 on the Xbox isn't really that great looking a game either...up the rez and the failings in textures etc. are all the more visible.

DNF being decent or not is predicated on whether the material they have to work with is good or bad. It's developed for the PC, so as Kaiser says, console-to-PC ports aren't the best indicator.

Also, for what it's worth the DirectX 10 pages used Crysis screens to sell it, not Halo 2.

Thanks for warning me off Halo 2 though - I was interested in buying it some time ago. At least I can be sure my laptop will play it...

[Battlesmurf]

As far as I know, Gearbox has been responsible for roughly 5% of DNF, so some of those arguments shouldn't happen to begin with haha

Borderlands is great! Brothers in arms was awesome. The old HL one stuff is alot of fun as well.

I'd say rest easy all things considered

Oh, Gearbox is responsible for this one too? There go any hopes of DNF being decent

But they made borderlands which is a very decent production. So lay off the past crap game bullshit guys and rate the DNF being decent hopes on THEIR latest works. Not old shits or old shitty ports.

[Khan]

SNIP

Ed that is one humoungous post and normally I wouldnt read something like that wall of text but I cant deny I find your posts entertaining so I read all of it and it took me some time but it was worth it.

I also bought Turok 2 when it first came out and decided to reinstall it a while back, it physically made me sick gave me vertigo or something I had to hit the uinstall button but looking back maybe I should have tried a different render i remember some of the weapons were pretty cool infact I think it was the first fps game where I was able to use a bow and arrow plus you had a nuke...I never did have the sense to complete it and just going to gamefaqs now I learn that the final boss was one tough son of a bee maybe I should give it another try.

I still remember Tresspasser too although in all honestly never did play it much, UT99 had me glued up pretty tight. I do remember playing SiN rather fondly and having a passing infatuation with Alexis Sinclair *ahem* the bath scene made me reload my save file a few times not to mention the steamy ending hehe and it was one of the few fps games that had an end boss that scared the crap outta me I mean this guy had quite the impact on me and literally made me jump in my seat at 2am on a week night I couldnt believe beating something like "daddy" was even possible I wont spoil it too much incase anyone is reading and wants to check it out for themselves but this is one of the things i really admire about fps games their imaginative intimidating final bosses, when it comes down to it with fps games they are very basic in nature you just point your cross hair and click a button most of them suck but there are some that you will truly enjoy and that for me was one of them.

Anyway im back on left 4 dead 2 for a little bit the back drop story of how bill lost his life in "the sacrifice" inspiried me to reinstall if anyone wants to play some versus or just shoot some campaign mode any difficulty give me a shout steam id is Rugal bernstein786

[Ed Oscuro]

Haha, yeah, the posts get huge. I oughta collect all this shit into a properly organized websight with pictures sometime.

Turok 2 does have a good number of awesome weapons but the levels (and the general slowness of everything...) sucks too much fun out of it.

Trespasser is pretty interesting from a technical standpoint, but the actual shooting and item carrying part is pretty horrible (also lol @ checking your life by looking at your boobs). When I played it a little (not the whole game unfortunately) a few years ago I was able to use a community renderer (or something) which increases the draw distance to that of modern games. The game still plays at a quick frame rate. Getting rid of the sprite "stand-ins" is the best thing that can happen to the game...probably ahead of even fixing the dumb and awkward hand-moving minigame system thing (who thought that was a good idea?)

Right now I'm going through the freely released Wanton Destruction addon for Shadow Warrior...good times

[Sasupoika]

i good pyro i best

[Blue Protoman]

GoldenEye, The World Is Not Enough, and Perfect Dark. The only three FPS's I need.

[KBZ]

GoldenEye, The World Is Not Enough, and Perfect Dark. The only three FPS's I need.

apparently

[Slump]

Been into the STALKER games lately. Just finished Call of Pripyat and now going back to play the original Shadow of Chernobyl since I missed it the first time around. Just curious if anyone is very familiar with SoC, I'm installing the complete 2009 mod for it to update the graphics and what not but are there any other mods that are must play? I've read a few lists and it seems like the complete 2009 mod is one of the best cosmetic mods for the game but I've also read good things about s.m.r.t mod and others.

[Khan]

Yea stalker SOC is great, if i were you personally I would get the trainer so you can have unlimited carry weight, there are some really cool weapons that you really wanna carry but you cant in vanilla so I had no choice but to use a trainer, oblivion lost is probably one of the best mods around so id try that.

Do yourself a favour goto youtube and download some of the music, the music in this game is soo underrated its not even funny it gives the game a sense of desperation and lack of hope really adds to the atmosphere...compared to most other fps game this game really does provide on the scare factor too, the first time you run into an invisble beast in pitch black darkness with nothing illuminating cept toxic green slime will make you wet your pants (it did me )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RqozXtFfoU

GET OUT OF HERE STALKER!...HEY YOU CANT GO THERE!

[drauch]

Aye, yeah STALKER SoC is pretty frickin' awesome. Starts off kinda hard, but a great game. I really need to start playing it again, as well as the new one.

Didn't realize of this Shadow Warrior "Wanton Destruction" until I just looked it up. Definitely one of my favorite DOS FPS's, so I must give this one a try asap...

[drauch]

Anyone here played Cryostasis? Been tempted to pick it up as it goes for cheap. Kinda mimicks Bioshock in ways, but still looks pretty original and spooky.

[Lance Boyle]

I fucking love DOOM. The last year of my life was spent playing DOOM, and the months before that were discovering it. DOOM is my favorite game of all time now, although DoDonPachi seems is battling for the position strictly on design merit (it's hard to compete though, since I refer to DOOM as the entire universe of content for it as long as it does not substantially alter the mechanics to make it something... not DOOM).

I should make a thread on some of my favorite PWADs.

SCREENSHOT!

[Ed Oscuro]

I refer to DOOM as the entire universe of content for it as long as it does not substantially alter the mechanics to make it something... not DOOM).

Funny, I keep hoping for something to add depth to it. Predictable monster behavior, a not terribly exciting time and completion percentages "scoring" system, and the same ol' weapons over and over don't really help the old replayability. Now if somebody made something like The Club for DOOM, that'd be great, but you couldn't do it on the current DOOM engine (without it being pretty cheesy at least). But playing through well-made DOOM maps (or DOOM style games...BUILD is pretty close) is still pretty fun.

[Lance Boyle]

Predictable monster behavior

What forum are you on?

the same ol' weapons over and over

What forum are you on?



DOOM is actually the game that got me into shmups - when I first had the revelation that shooters are much more fun when you can SEE and DODGE the bullets. Some slaughter maps, like in Scythe II, resemble the intensity of a CAVE STG in pure bullet density.

[ST Dragon]

Last FPS I played was the recent Aliens Vs Predator (3) game, but I only completed the marine campaign. I lost interest after that as it paled in comparison to AVP2 deep & sinister story-line, plot & dialogue.
Is the Predator & Alien campaign any better and worth playing through?
The marine campaign was super short with no secrets what so ever.

[drauch]

I wish I was DoomGuy.

[Ed Oscuro]

Predictable monster behavior

What forum are you on?

You added one of the other related issues that hurts DOOM a bit further down. Personally, I think the enemies from Heretic are a lot more fun to fuck with, although melee against Imps is admittedly pretty fun for a while.

the same ol' weapons over and over

What forum are you on?

Doesn't much matter. The newer Half-Life 2 games suffer this problem of falling into a design rut as well. When Quake and especially the Unreal Tournament or Team Fortress games let you change up the game somewhat significantly from weapon to weapon, the old 1993 thinking of "you need a shotgun and then a rapid fire weapon" seems limiting and even repetitive. Depends on the game of course - some games have some kind of game mechanic that's interesting enough that I never had time to think "wow this is a pretty shit loadout," like The Club (which doesn't actually have great weapons but you never think about it).

And, incidentally, some shooters share more with Team Fortress 2 than they do DOOM in that the game changes radically depending on which ship, fighter, or player side you select (like the differences in a Cave or Psikyo ship selection). Sometimes there is a "best" ship to select for scoring, but in DOOM, there is almost always just one "best" weapon to use in a set type of situation (nevermind the complicated damage calculations going on).

That level of control - being able to see bullets, being able to predict how shots will harm an enemy (or not) - is one big difference between DOOM engine games and shooters, but generally speaking more shooters have been more challenging and engrossing than DOOM style games (which so far only seems to know too speeds - either "too slow" or "not really controllable" i.e. Nightmare mode which is definitely like hanging on to a bucking bronco to try to play).

[drauch]

Doesn't much matter. The newer Half-Life 2 games suffer this problem of falling into a design rut as well. When Quake and especially the Unreal Tournament or Team Fortress games let you change up the game somewhat significantly from weapon to weapon, the old 1993 thinking of "you need a shotgun and then a rapid fire weapon" seems limiting and even repetitive. Depends on the game of course - some games have some kind of game mechanic that's interesting enough that I never had time to think "wow this is a pretty shit loadout," like The Club (which doesn't actually have great weapons but you never think about it).

And, incidentally, some shooters share more with Team Fortress 2 than they do DOOM in that the game changes radically depending on which ship, fighter, or player side you select (like the differences in a Cave or Psikyo ship selection). Sometimes there is a "best" ship to select for scoring, but in DOOM, there is almost always just one "best" weapon to use in a set type of situation (nevermind the complicated damage calculations going on).

That level of control - being able to see bullets, being able to predict how shots will harm an enemy (or not) - is one big difference between DOOM engine games and shooters, but generally speaking more shooters have been more challenging and engrossing than DOOM style games (which so far only seems to know too speeds - either "too slow" or "not really controllable" i.e. Nightmare mode which is definitely like hanging on to a bucking bronco to try to play).

I don't think I've ever disagreed with a post so much. I don't see how you can compare a game like Doom to other FPS games made over 10 years later. Are you also comparing multi-player arena FPS games to single-player ones? I am so confused by this post.

[Lance Boyle]

the old 1993 thinking of "you need a shotgun and then a rapid fire weapon" seems limiting and even repetitive.

You're ignoring the Super Shotgun, the chainsaw, the fist, (which can be upgraded to do as much damage as...) the rocket launcher, the plasma gun, and the BFG. All of which are balanced in a well-designed map (as in not having plasma ammo scattered everywhere), and all of which have optimal uses. DOOM actually has more variety in firepower than most modern FPS titles. The only overlap would be the chaingun, which obsoletes the pistol.

but in DOOM, there is almost always just one "best" weapon to use in a set type of situation

In a challenging level where ammo is scarce and monsters are plentiful, the "best" weapon to use isn't obvious at all.

but generally speaking more shooters have been more challenging and engrossing than DOOM style games

I don't think you've played Scythe II, Hell Revealed 2, Speed of DOOM, Sunder, or pretty much any recent megawad because they are fucking hard on the standard skill setting (Ultra-Violence) and require genius to complete on Nightmare. Like a shmup, you will need to play the levels many, many times and formulate a route to clear them consistently.

(which so far only seems to know too speeds - either "too slow" or "not really controllable" i.e. Nightmare mode which is definitely like hanging on to a bucking bronco to try to play)

This makes no sense because the player movement speed is the same across all difficulty levels, including Nightmare.

The Doomguy's running speed is faster than the default rate in any modern FPS, and possibly any FPS ever made.

[Ed Oscuro]

I don't see how you can compare a game like Doom to other FPS games made over 10 years later.

It's easy when you have eyes.

This makes no sense because the player movement speed is the same across all difficulty levels, including Nightmare.

Maybe you should actually think about what you're reading instead of spitting out nonsense. I'm talking about the enemies. "Controllable" as in situations. I've little to say about the DOOM player speed other than that I've scraped along walls for well over 15 years now with few complaints. It's nice to get places on time.

Rest of your responses aren't really getting to the points I was making, so I don't really feel like going through them and sorting them out. But it's safe to say that the DOOM formula is just that - a forumula, and a rather predictable one. I'm simplifying on purpose, but it's pretty hilarious your response was "you forgot the Super Shotgun!" Oh boy, another shotgun! This isn't 1993 anymore, we can have portal guns and stuff as well. In fact the Gravity Gun and the Portal Gun are pretty much on the brink of staleness as well.

In a challenging level where ammo is scarce and monsters are plentiful, the "best" weapon to use isn't obvious at all.

And I don't think you're even being fair to the game you're trying to defend. The weapons practically fire themselves; they're meant to be simple to understand, and range and enemy density is nearly all the information you need.

[drauch]

I don't see how you can compare a game like Doom to other FPS games made over 10 years later.

It's easy when you have eyes.

Cybernetic implants, sorry.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Stake Gun. I still think it should have been called the Impaler (palownica to keep things Polish), but what do I know?