I agree Kinn. I think one of the reasons I loved the heck out of Dark Souls was that it was totally surreal AND you go wherever the hell you want (seriously, my usual route through the game skips the both the taurus demon and the hellkite bridge, and for a bit more flavour I go straight to Quelagg).

I think the realism angle is just an easy sell, the problem is that the easy sell eventually gets stagnant and innovation tends to shine through. Remember the early 2000's when *every* game was a WW2 game? Yeah that didn't follow to this gen. Even the newest COD has futuristic elements and nazi zombies, eventually they have to do something different.
Also I think the Oculus Rift will really create whole new genres and gameplay innovations the likes we have not seen for decades. 

Are games made like this (dumbed down) because players want and like it, or do players want and like it because games are made like this?

In other words, who raised (or spoilt) whom.
Then, consoles are to blame because of the bottleneck controller; the publishers are to blame because they only care about maximum profit, not in the slightest about originality. It's an industry alright.

I agree there's nothing to be expected from the big players anymore. Unfotunately, in most cases indie devs don't have the budget/manpower/skills to pull off something of equal (visual/technical) quality as the AAA titles.
FPS were better off back then when they were developed for PC and only then (and only sometimes) ported to consoles with the corresponding neccessary simplifications - today it's the other way around, and obivously that cripples the games and everyone involved in longlasting terms. I applaud companies that decide to develop exclusively for PC and not follow in with the bullshit that made gaming/the industry go downhill (apparently without even realizing). Ok, admittedly, right now I can only think of the Stalker games. But still. 

First comment, too vertical, xbox users don't look up!

That's pretty circular.

1) Exploration created by the existence of multiple alternate routes and optional areas.

2) Surreal environments that don't allow themselves to be compromised by "realism".

Yeah I agree, I would add

3) Revisiting or backtracking areas through unlockable routes and/or new means of transportation. (eg, learning to crouch, jumping further, using a grapple hook, etc...)

I'dd put Zelda games in the same category.

Creative ways of solving the won't look up problem do exist, and I think it's just a case of finding them.

Half Life's Barnacles instantly come to mind :D
The Half Life games have some good vertical sections.
(not terribly 3D, per se, but certainly with a strong verticality). 

It's true that players "don't look up" but this is also due to games not requiring it.

If you make the player look up constantly, if you teach it as a basic skill early in the game, then they will look up.

Just don't expect them to look up for your ONE puzzle halfway through a 15 hour game, if the rest of the game never requires looking up. 

I just read through an entertaining, depressing and sometimes annoying essay which is very relevant I think (at least to negke's comment): http://www.learntocounter.com/the-history-of-why-im-tired-of-your-modern-shooters-part-one/

Takes an hour or two but imo it is worth it. It is 2-3 years old. Very grumpy but raises many good points and is a nice historic overview at least.

----

The old Zelda games (I only played the NES and GB ones, couldn't get into the others at all) have many mechanics that would work in Quake like FPS. I wrote about some monster designs somewhere once. 

I've been seriously thinking about how I'd go about making a modern Quake-like for the past year or so, and as you guys touch upon; Metroid Prime and Dark Souls are absolutely games to look for inspiration from.

One thing I think that would be a really good thing to borrow for consoles, is the Metroid lock-on mechanism. When you lock on to an enemy, you enter circlestrafe mode, where jumping allows you to do a quick dodge move. Coupling that with some spatial awareness to try to prevent unintended falls off edges, I think that would go a long way towards a more Quake-style combat feel.
For PC mouse and keyboard would of course be the preferred way.

The meat and bones of a modern Quake would be the monsters and the world though, so that's where most of the effort would have to be focused in my opinion. :)
I can't even count the number of different weird-ass monsters in Dark Souls, so it is always so disappointing when I see a game that only features Men With Hitscan Weapons. 

3) Revisiting or backtracking areas through unlockable routes and/or new means of transportation. (eg, learning to crouch, jumping further, using a grapple hook, etc...)

Yeah, that's also a good one. In Quake, this basically amounts to "u must have teh gold key", but Metroid Prime goes absolutely balls-deep with it. In fact, it's kinda the driving force of MP's entire world structure. 

in his if games are our movies, what are our films article? 

about it.

The metroid series sometimes makes the lock-and-key mechanic too obvious and gamey, and that's not always desirable.
I know I kinda failed on that myself with honey.

In MP2 I especially remember the multi-lock-on doors which made no sense besides being a progression blocker.
I never really enjoyed MP2 & 3... :-| 

but money talks as much as your modern day average 15-29 year old male with internet access and a smartphone. 

Quake's monsters were just bullet sponges, with one or two exceptions, and one thing I would change in Nu-Quake, would be to add a healthy dose of monsters with non-trivial defeat strategies. Zelda and (again!) the Metroid Prime series have plenty of good examples of this sort of monster. 

Heh, yeah I gave up playing Metroid Prime 2 very early in the game, but I can't for the life of me remember why (I think I got stuck during a section of incredibly obtuse gameplay, which bottomed out my give-a-shit-ometer for a while, and I never did get motivated enough to play it again.)

I think I played maybe half of Metroid Prime 3 before real-life monopolised my time, and I remember liking it a lot more than MP2 but still not as much as MP1. 

Oddly, games like DeusX:HR or Dishonored have more quake-like level/game design with multi-routes, secrets etc, than 'pure' shooters.

Cant complain about games overall btw. Things are much better now compared to ~5 years ago. Plenty of good games for different tastes/needs these days and many more games with freedom and "consistent response", instead of linear rides with arbitrary scripted bs and "tap x to win". Even AAA action games.
Don't even have the time to play everything that I'd like to. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx40CRwwkS8

From last October, but they are doing some cool things with WebGL. They are making a 3d model editor for it ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=qx40CRwwkS8#t=1563s ) 

I was just going to suggest that it might be cool to have a Quake editor that works on any WebGL browser (well, probably just Chrome...) 

http://radiantjs.com/ 

that's a pretty nice start.

Some weird pauses when moving around with the camera, but it seems like they can load an navigate maps nicely.

Would love to see a TB port of course ;) 

Using 1bit stainmaps and modulating the edges using detail textures (or something among those lines) to get perma-blood and the like in maps. 

DP has stain maps. 

I like the idea of stain maps, but I really kinda wish it looked a bit more pixelly and bold than aiming for realistic. I really am a purist for these things I think. 

I'm thinking about this with DP's blood particles in mind. Stainmap res is typically too low to look convincing for hard edged stuff (such as blood decals). Could look better when combining with detail textures to get 4* the res (or more for high res stuff). If you take it as grayscale and combine with detail texture before doing alpha-test you could get more irregular looking hard edged stuff. Could look more like decals when done right... Just think it would be cool to be able to paint a map with blood, lol.

(and please don't turn the particle thing into a style argument, you can make it look like Duke3D style 8-bit with custom textures + effectinfo.txt and nearest neighbour filtering, etc etc) 

It's not a problem if people play cubism, fitzquake or dark places. Each to their own, I'm just saying it'd be nice if some of these fancy new features were added in a more classic flavour.
For the record I think Dark Places is cool, kinda wish the Rygel set included the knave textures and the id_base_ultimate too. 

I'm just saying it'd be nice if some of these fancy new features were added in a more classic flavour.

I can totally agree with that. 

It's a small-medium sized base map.

I have posted it as news but I didn't know how long it would take to get moderated (or even if it would pass!! (joke)) , and I'm hellish impatient.

Screenshots:

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/screen_shots/quarantine.jpg

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/screen_shots/quarantine2.jpg

Download:

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/single_player/maps/quarantine.zip 

http://celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=60921