Fun little read over at RPS, one of the writers talking about how he discovered Quake :
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/06/gaming-made-me-quake/

Most of us are older than he is I think, I know I was playing Quake when I was around 14 or so, but it still reminds me of when I first discovered FPS games (was a demo of Rise of the Triad, and afterwards one for Heretic). 

awesome 

 

Some of the comments literally made my day, I haven't seen such praise for Quake in a long time, not even on here. (I also had no idea there were so many others who got to play Quake before even turning 10 year old ;)

Quake really was a genuinely top game � not a brown interlude between semminal ID titles as some people like to remember.

1000% agree. Fuck Doom. 

not fuck doom, like come on. Fuck everything post-Quake, but Doom was just as good as Quake. It might not be as artistically expandable, but I'd say in terms of vision, tech, atmosphere, satisfying violence, it's Quake's equal in terms of the release time. 

Doom already gets credited for most of that anyways Tronym, I think that's what he meant. 

 

alright I'll calm down for once.
Fuck.... Doo - oou - uke Nukem3d.
heh.

but I see the point. 

C.O.D.B.L.O.P.s 

imo all problems with FPS games these days ultimately trace back to Halo. CoD is the main culprit right now but the main issues were already in place:

Tediously slow movement: check
Weapon limit: check
Tiny FOV: Check
Regenerating Health: Check
Overwrought plot and cutscenes: Check

I would go on about how people should stop rabbiting on about Goldeneye because, seriously, Goldeneye vs Half-Life isn't even a quesiton worth asking, but I'll throw ye olde N64 owners a bone and leave it.

So fuck Halo. With a giant spike. 

But I just have speculation, that slow player movement can be traced to the limitations of consoles. Without a mouse, getting accurate aiming can be very tricky without auto-aiming buttons, so slower player movement helps to avoid what would be an incredibly awkward aiming system on a console.

Tiny FOV also probably traces back to limited console hardware processing power, which seems less of an issue today but I don't have any numbers to back that up.

Weapon limit also goes back to not having a button for each weapon in your inventory - otherwise the player would need a huge inventory system which most likely would take them out of the game for a moment (really bad in mp) or force the player to cycle through all their weapons until they got the one they wanted.

Regenerating health - Okay this one might just be so the player doesn't have to hunt around for health packs. I'm unsure of the relation to hardware limitations with this one.

Plot/cutscenes - hides lack of gameplay brought about by console hardware limitations (pretty graphics! Yeah!) 

Points, Sharp clear points everywhere!
_,
(0.o)/ 

I thought that was mostly a cause of it looking silly to race around with fancy graphics/animation and the developers not being clever enough to just say "ok you got this super awesome suit that's painted red and makes you go fast" and choose fun over "realism". 

Code "Hangover" in the states, not sure about UK. ALL GAMES 20% OFF. I am both happy and sad. 

I think a lot of it may just come down to some (imo dumb) fantasy about being an actual soldier because it's more gritty and cool if it is superficially realistic. I've had this discussion with one of my housemates quite a lot. He's really into the 'real soldiers and tactics' thing. Except he's not, he just wants the appearance of it.

A lot of it is just armchair commandos. Like you get armchair ninjas who talk about x/y/z martial art being more deadly than another. You listen to a lot of CoD players they will sound just like the worst D&D or WoW players you know, talking about bullet spreads and damage patterns etc etc.

In the end I feel there is something more laudable about standard fantasy stuff. Okay it's just as cliche but at least it's got some more imagination to it. It's not trying to recreate some clean and glamous version of current armed conflict :p

As an aside about the superifical realism, it seems most developers believe the way to be realistic is by enfeeblement. Make the player weak and pathetic = realistic. Okay he can't sprint more than two feet without a rest, he can't drop more than a meter without breaking a hip etc. Really with the complete lack of capacity you have to avoid damage in modern shooters, regenerating health is an absolute necessity if you want non-hardcore players to ever play it. So funny that people accept something so unrealistic but want all the rest :p 

Players tend to demand realism, whilst developers know that it's crap.

No developer wants to make a realistic game, I think. Typically the investors just want to further their IP or feed off the IP of another, not make a game. 

Have you seen The Man From Nowhere?

It's dubbed, and Asian and new.

Really good, u should watch it. It's quite cliched but that doesn't matter for what it is.
Best movie I've seen for ages and ages. 

I agree. Recently played COD4 and the whole war/weaponry pr0n aspect is particularly puerile and irritating. No you're not a fucking trained marine you are a teenage kid sitting in a chair playing computer games....twats...

By contrast, Crysis and Bioshock have me way more captivated and way less irritated because they are properly escapist entertainment. 

No developer wants to make a realistic game, I think. Typically the investors just want to further their IP or feed off the IP of another, not make a game.

Having seen interviews and stuff with the people who made CoD4 and stuff, I think they really like making that shit tbh.
Might just be because they know they'll make a shitload of money out of it. Or at least, assumed they would before activision pulled the lollerskate lawyers on them. 

Some devs are really into the whole military thing, I've worked with quite a few. 

it's on order :) 

I'd just enlist...








getting a continue might be a challenge though 

...that slow player movement can be traced to the limitations of consoles...helps to avoid what would be an incredibly awkward aiming system on a console.
I don't think this is the case at all. Developers wanted real-world, realistically scaled environments, and so they slowed the player down, so he actually feels grounded in that world.

Tiny FOV also probably traces back to limited console hardware processing power
Nope, again it was for realism. People don't see in fisheye IRL.

The push to create a more "realistic" shooter had nothing to do with consoles - the same thing would have happened on PC if consoles were never invented.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not an advocate of realism in games at all. Most of the time it involves deliberately compromising some of the fun, and I don't really get the logic behind that.

Weapon limit
Yeah that might be more console-driven. Lack of buttons and all. Sounds logical.

Plot/cutscenes - hides lack of gameplay brought about by console hardware limitations (pretty graphics! Yeah!)
Not sure about this. Cinematics are usually expensive as shit. It's usually easier to generate 10 mins of gameplay that it is to make a 10 minute cinematic. 

I would say the cutscenes are shit. Mostly just a few NPC's talking in a room in a ship etc.