Decline Shooters used to be better (but not as much better as we think?)

[asper]

On a slightly unrelated note, one thing which I find sad is that with the demise of oldschool FPS, also a form of very fast gaming completely disappeared. Not many games play very fast nowadays.

 

[felipepepe]

On a slightly unrelated note, one thing which I find sad is that with the demise of oldschool FPS, also a form of very fast gaming completely disappeared. Not many games play very fast nowadays.

You know the answer to that... you can't have even 1/10 of that speed with a console controller, and since every FPS is multi-platform...

 

[Darth Roxor]

I'm referring to variety and pacing in terms of level design, not enemy and weapon variety.

You can't be serious. Where's that variety? Probably in like 90% of cases, the only variety in "pacing and level design" in modern shooters, other than getting into a mission with a new shade of brown and part of day (i.e. completely useless and irrelevant), is "HOLY SHIT IT'S AN MG-42/TANK/BUNKER! QUICK, FIND A WAY AROUND AND TOSS A GRENADE!". And you mention variety in Half-Life 2? Nigga please, it's exactly the minigames you find a shit activity in the OP. O hey, here's a clunky buggy for you to drive in. Fun and varied! O hey, here's a clunky motorboat for you to drive in. Fun and varied! O HEY ANOTHER COMPLETELY USELESS PHYSICS PUZZLE THAT BREAKS ANY SENSE OF PACING THIS GAME HAD LEFT.

And I find it somewhat funny that you essentially attribute "level design variety" to "levels have different textures", considering that just about every single level in all the latest emotionally-engaging shooters are literally corridors. Show me variety in the use of different axes and open levels, and then we can talk.

And so what if Unreal had Sunspire? You wanna tell me old games also had shit elements? Holy shit, the epiphany. Who cares about the Sunspire when it also had the Vortex-Rykers, ancient Nali ruins, mountainous regions with titans, abandoned mines and that floating castle, aka, gasp, variety that is supposedly missing from the old games?

Thread is shit, op is a fag.

 

[evdk]

Talking like the Build Engine games have no variety is madness. Madness I tell you. When playing DN3D for the first time I was admiring the vistas quite often.

Also I have just recently played Doom 1+2 for the very first time (I know, I know, but I got into PC gaming around the time Duke came out and FPS not being my favourite genre I had little reason to get the classics) and let me tell you that the games blow all the modern manshoots out of the water, it's not even a contest. There's a plenty of variety in the levels - you can have that without stupid overblown set piece combat encounters, just with clever map design.

 

[Groof]

There's a plenty of variety in the levels - you can havethat without stupid overblown set peice combat encounters, just with clever map design.

Yeah. http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/John_Romero#Design_rules



I'm pretty sure a lot of old FPS games are, like, bad. A lot of games are bad. And in that sense sea is right. But DOOM pretty much defined the genre, and DOOM is fantastically super-good. So we remember DOOM and a couple of other really good games and forget a bunch of bad games. And at least the bad games were DOOM-clones and not HL2-clones.

Playing through some of these older titles also makes me realize that shooters back in the day weren't as huge or lengthy as we like to remember.

I didn't know that we liked to remember that. I play through some of those games reasonably frequently and I know how short they are.

It's worth keeping in mind that Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM and such had arcade game sensibilities. When you play DOOM you can start at the beginning of an episode and play until you win or die. Arcade game length is not measured the way movie length is measured. Call of Duty is not a "longer game" than chess. And so on.

I also think that older shooters sometimes weren't so smart with pacing new enemies or weapon types out. In Unreal, you find pretty much every gun in the game by the halfway point through, and there are pretty much no new enemies to see beyond then as well.

Haven't played much Unreal, so a lot of this stuff is kind of yeah whatever for me.

But having all the weapons when you're halfway through the game sounds fine. The idea that you must get some new toy every couple of minutes is unwholesome. It can be nice to spread the weapons out a bit so that you spend some time with each gun before you get the "next" one. But you should get all/most of them reasonably early in the game. When you're near the end of the game, you should have had some time to understand and master the different weapons.

Sure, we have Serious Sam, but most of the self-styled old-school shooters out there tend to have a lot more in common with modern games than they like to admit - namely, far more restrictive level design and lack of creativity in mechanics, enemy types and so on.

Yes. Serious Sam levels are mostly bad (the games tend to have a few decent levels at the beginning before they turn into Robotron). Painkiller levels are all bad.

 

[sea]

Talking like the Build Engine games have no variety is madness. Madness I tell you. When playing DN3D for the first time I was admiring the vistas quite often.

I never said that. In fact I said in a later post that Duke Nukem 3D was an exception to the rule as far as clever secrets go, which in my opinion is a big part of its appeal and the uniqueness of its scenarios, but more broadly I think that the game just kicks ass regardless. The first Blood is also great that way. Other Build Engine titles, not quite as much, but a lot of those games had their quirks that made them unique at least.

You can't be serious. Where's that variety? Probably in like 90% of cases, the only variety in "pacing and level design" in modern shooters, other than getting into a mission with a new shade of brown and part of day (i.e. completely useless and irrelevant), is "HOLY SHIT IT'S AN MG-42/TANK/BUNKER! QUICK, FIND A WAY AROUND AND TOSS A GRENADE!". And you mention variety in Half-Life 2? Nigga please, it's exactly the minigames you find a shit activity in the OP. O hey, here's a clunky buggy for you to drive in. Fun and varied! O hey, here's a clunky motorboat for you to drive in. Fun and varied! O HEY ANOTHER COMPLETELY USELESS PHYSICS PUZZLE THAT BREAKS ANY SENSE OF PACING THIS GAME HAD LEFT.

Half-Life 2 does this better than most other shooters I've played. I never found the controls on the vehicles to be very clunky and those sections were welcome changes of pace in gameplay. The hoverboat chase in City 17 early on and the Highway 17 section, with its more open-ended levels and free exploration, are some of my favorite parts of Half-Life 2 (compared to some of the pretty poor, more shooter-driven corridor-crawling later on).

Furthermore, you are confusing subjective evaluation of execution with intent. My point regarding modern shooters and pacing/variety/consistency/etc. is that modern designers tend to be much better at finding more unique challenges, objectives and scenarios for the player to take part in on a minute-by-minute basis, not whether or not we think a particular example is lame. However, I also do note that sometimes (or even most of the time) this comes as a result of more restrictive gameplay overall, such that any number of gameplay scenarios which could happen now only happen in the confines of more scripted situations.

And so what if Unreal had Sunspire? You wanna tell me old games also had shit elements? Holy shit, the epiphany. Who cares about the Sunspire when it also had the Vortex-Rykers, ancient Nali ruins, mountainous regions with titans, abandoned mines and that floating castle, aka, gasp, variety that is supposedly missing from the old games?

The funny thing is that I actually finished Unreal after posting this, and I had not yet played Bluff Eversmoking, Nali Castle and one or two of the other best maps in the game. Those levels were great, and embodied everything good about old-school shooter level design. But I'd say at least 50% of Unreal's levels were frustrating corridor crawls (Dasa Mountain Pass + Cellars were horrible and basically just an endless wander through corridors pushing buttons and fighting respawning enemies, forcing you to figure out exactly what random identical-looking door that last button unlocked), and that is also a pretty similar experience to what I've had with most older shooters which aren't considered cream of the crop.

Also, I appreciate that some stuff I said in the first post was not necessarily the most prescient. I wasn't intending to make a broad declaration - it was a collection of observations made after playing a few specific games and therefore my thoughts at the time were obviously influenced by them (including/especially negative experiences).

 

[DraQ]

Ok, this is going to be fun.

Developers "back in the day" very quickly understood that hitscan weapons being used against stationary targets were fucking boring, and the shooting itself is just so much more enjoyable due to their attempts to avoid just that. Going all the way back to Doom, basically the king of shooters, even id Software realized that shooters live primarily in the temporal space - that is, it's not just "aim at target, press fire key" that makes them fun, it's the short-term goal of setting up and executing the shots, and the long-term goal of resource management that are where the fun part lies.

Here's an example. In Unreal, firing a razorblade at a fast-moving enemy is not just about reflexes, but control, coordination and timing. You need to judge not just where to fire, but when, by figuring out on the fly, through experience, knowledge and your own skill, how long a projectile will take to reach its target, and where the target will have moved by the time the projectile reaches it. It's no coincidence that the only hitscan weapons in these older games tend to be either weak (basic pistols), limited on ammo or situational (sniper rilfes), or special power-ups, while the most powerful have significant time delays in the form of projectile movement and charge-up (such as Unreal's multi-shot rocket launcher).

One thing I like about some semi-recent shooters (not popamole trash, but stuff like STALKER), is combination of more exact collision envelopes with previously hitscan weapons (firearms) firing actual projectiles.

What we have instead are mini-games. They're called things like "press the throw grenade button when an icon appears on your HUD", "press the knife button when an enemy pops out in front of you" and so on.

Ok, I don't even want to know.
Even enemy grenade indicators piss me off to no end.

If modern shooters have one strength, it's variety. These games are expertly paced such that you're going to be seeing a new vista, a new interesting encounter, a new weapon, a new enemy type, and so on every few minutes. You rarely have to go too long without something happening. In the worst modern shooters, that's overly-scripted cutscene nonsense, but in the better ones, like Half-Life 2, the game always has something new and interesting to show you.

Ok, the fuck are you talking about?

One thing HL2 was particularly notable for at release was shit enemy and weapon variety compared to its prequel.
Environmental variety wasn't that hot either, although the environments were nice, atmospheric and gave clear sense of spatial and narrative progression.

Since FPS games aren't typically known for their compelling narratives (another area where modern shooters generally fare somewhat better), sense of spatial progression is particularly important in them.

This is achieved with diverse environment, distinct landmarks, usually environments changes having some definite direction as game progresses, and foreshadowing - it's good if you can glimpse your goal a long way before you reach it as it helps make the experience cohesive.

This is clearly evidenced in my recent shooter experiences - Unreal, though a great game, has tons of horrible levels which make so many fundamental mistakes that would never get past even the most popamole, committee-driven studio. One level in Unreal in particular that I learned to loathe is called The Sunspire. This level is a veritable maze of identical-looking corridors with no clear way forward, no good points of reference, and a complete lack of enemy and visual variety (save for one or two rooms) that make even basic navigation a chore, much less figuring out where you've been and where you need to go. Pretty sure it has respawning enemies too, so you can't even go by the trail of bodies you have left behind.

Again, the fuck are you talking about?

One thing Unreal was known for was grandeur and distinctness of its locations. Pretty much each of its 38 levels can be described with 1-2 sentences in such way that anyone who has played the game will immediately recall it. Try doing it with Quake1-2, Doom (even though Doom had some fairly distinct levels), Heretic or even DN3D.

Level design was also a strong point of Unreal - despite quite a few being fairly linear, a lot of them were anything but - huge levels with multiple alternative paths, optional content and distinct sub-locations.
Sunspire happens to count among those - while it admittedly is possible to get lost in its corridors and it could have used some more interesting interiors, it also features both multiple paths towards your objective as well as clearly defined direction of progression - of all possible directions UP is one of the less likely to lose, topped only by DOWN, because of gravity.

So, tl;dr - yeah, you could get lost in Sunspire *IF* you wanted to explore it exhaustively - that's a good thing if exploration is involved - but you could also just go to the top without ever stopping to think about direction.
Basically you only got lost there if you wanted to.

(I know what I'm talking about, I once mapped it out on paper to make sure I haven't missed anything - that's 'sperg for you)

There are several more such levels in Unreal, many of them full of switch puzzles.
At the best of times, these can be pretty intricate but also logical order-of-operations sorts of scenarios. Most of the time, though, they're simply set in a large, sprawling level which lacks clear landmarks for navigation, and which does not make clear what the cause and effect of your actions is (like a random lever opening a door on the other side of the map).

Again, the fuck are you talking about?

Ok, there are around 2-4 switch-hunt levels in Unreal (most notably Cellars at Dasa Pass which plays as if lifted verbatim from Quake) - out of 38.

The majority of levels, however, are either large, sprawling nonlinear ones that have few things other than enemies and space itself impeding your progress, or are linear enough to make finding the switch non-issue.
Additionally, most levels offer you hints telling you what to do in form of translator messages.

So really, accusing Unreal of switch-hunts - when they only affects 5-10% of its levels, and copypasted corridors when it's one of the few games where nearly every place is distinct from all the others is just dumb.

Now, if you were speaking of RTNP it would be true - with exceptions.

Want a switchhunt and copypasted corridors?
Go dungeon delving in Daggerfall and have fun determining which level raises which grate or trapdoor in several kilometers of interconnecting spaghetti corridors.

I also think that older shooters sometimes weren't so smart with pacing new enemies or weapon types out. In Unreal, you find pretty much every gun in the game by the halfway point through

Which is a good thing. There is nothing shittier and more annoying in an FPS than "hey, take this awesome weapon of doom! Happy? Good - now shoot this boss with it 3 times and watch the ending cutscene. Why u mad?".
In fact one of the trends I really like in FPS games is breaking up the weapon progression.
It did happen in old games too (see RL in first level of Doom 2), just not very frequently.

Sure, Call of Duty is a 5-6 hour campaign, but so are these older games if you don't stop and smell the roses or try to find every single secret.

The difference is that you could stop and smell the roses.

When I say "fuck it, I just want to finish the level", I'm often left in the situation realizing it's not clear at all where I'm supposed to go to do that.

Which is pretty much never the case with Unreal.


One thing that is bad in Unreal is weapon damage. Not weapons themselves, because those are excellent, but damage they deal is just too low.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Is there any post-2000 fpp shooter that you consider canon? Like Quake or Doom or even Blood.

Seriously, I cannot point a single game (except RTCW maybe), nothing was able to cross 8/10 border, blah even to reach that point.

 

[catfood]

Is there any post-2000 fpp shooter that you consider canon? Like Quake or Doom or even Blood.

Seriously, I cannot point a single game (except RTCW maybe), nothing was able to cross 8/10 border, blah even to reach that point.

NOLF 1

 

[Roguey]

Talking like the Build Engine games have no variety is madness. Madness I tell you. When playing DN3D for the first time I was admiring the vistas quite often.

DN3D is shit. ^_^

Also I have just recently played Doom 1+2 for the very first time (I know, I know, but I got into PC gaming around the time Duke came out and FPS not being my favourite genre I had little reason to get the classics) and let me tell you that the games blow all the modern manshoots out of the water, it's not even a contest. There's a plenty of variety in the levels - you can have that without stupid overblown set piece combat encounters, just with clever map design.

Last two proper levels of Doom are shit, Doom 2 is an annoying grind. ^_^

 

[evdk]

How can Doom 2 be a grind when you are not collecting anyt... MY HEAD.

 

[zerotol]

When you use HL2 as an example of doing something good, then something is very very wrong.

HL2 is a definite downgrade from HL1

 

[Infinitron]

Talking like the Build Engine games have no variety is madness. Madness I tell you. When playing DN3D for the first time I was admiring the vistas quite often.

DN3D is shit. ^_^

Also I have just recently played Doom 1+2 for the very first time (I know, I know, but I got into PC gaming around the time Duke came out and FPS not being my favourite genre I had little reason to get the classics) and let me tell you that the games blow all the modern manshoots out of the water, it's not even a contest. There's a plenty of variety in the levels - you can have that without stupid overblown set piece combat encounters, just with clever map design.

Last two proper levels of Doom are shit, Doom 2 is an annoying grind. ^_^

Commentating on first person shooters now, Roguey? Whatever happened to "write about what you know"?

 

[J1M]

Everyone should take this opportunity to go and replay Republic Commando.

 

[zerotol]

Everyone should take this opportunity to go and replay Republic Commando.

I actually enjoyed this game, but half-way through i formatted and forgot to backup my save games.

 

[SuicideBunny]

How can Doom 2 be a grind when you are not collecting anyt... MY HEAD.

grinding means repeating the same mindless shit over and over again, it has nothing to do with collecting stuff.

 

[Roguey]

When you use HL2 as an example of doing something good, then something is very very wrong.

HL2 is a definite downgrade from HL1

I liked 2 better than 1 because HL had a lot of really awful parts and what was good wasn't significantly better than anything in 2 whereas 2 was mostly solid from start to finish.

Commentating on first person shooters now, Roguey? Whatever happened to "write about what you know"?

I've played these things, ergo I know them. I acquired DN3D when GOG offered it for free not too long ago. I can see why Lesi was ecstatic when DN4eva bombed.

 

[evdk]

I've played these things, ergo I know them.

Modern game design approach in a nutshell.

 

[otsego]

Developers "back in the day" very quickly understood that hitscan weapons being used against stationary targets were fucking boring, and the shooting itself is just so much more enjoyable due to their attempts to avoid just that. Going all the way back to Doom, basically the king of shooters, even id Software realized that shooters live primarily in the temporal space - that is, it's not just "aim at target, press fire key" that makes them fun, it's the short-term goal of setting up and executing the shots, and the long-term goal of resource management that are where the fun part lies.

I agree and disagree with this. I agree that setting up great shots (say... blowing away a zombieman, jumping 180 backwards and hitting an explosive barrel to take out his buddies in one swift motion) is what makes the games we remember really fun, but I disagree that hitscan weapons are boring and timed-projectiles are where it's at. Obviously based on my own opinion and experience - I loved using hitscan weapons. I don't think the management of resources such as ammo was a big part of the fun factor here either... but that said, I ALWAYS have my eye on my armor count and stay vigilant about finding the next armor pick-up...

There's no denying that perfectly timing a projectile that finishes off an opponent at long range is extremely satisfying and makes you feel like a stud. Old shooters did this really well with things like grenade launchers (Quake), whereas new shooters do not (noob toob COD). It's the mechanics within the game and the shooting that makes old shooters fun, and the pace at which it happens. Watching enemies fall off their ledges when you kill them and explode a rocket near them (Doom), having them splatter if you shoot them from a height (Duke3D), improvising a force-push to send some storm troopers into a bottomless pit (Jedi Knight). Many more examples, but all of these things are based on pure gameplay and visuals that make the shooter experience very enjoyable. It helps that for the most part it is fast paced as well. I believe - of course in my opinion - that's where your (and admittedly, mine) gripe with Jedi Knight is. It is certainly a different type of shooter. It's slower. It's more about environments. The level design is incredible, but weapons are not interesting and unfortunately the lightsaber is kinda weak and dull.

The fact that some of these mechanics were brand new at the time helps, and probably drives what we call the nostalgia factor. Theres a series of videos on Youtube where John Romero is showing his friends how they just implemented explosive barrels and enemies falling from heights when you shoot them, and he is ecstatic about it. Can you picture modern developers being so excited about the 'features' they implement nowadays?

Now that it is no longer new, and current being done poorly, we are disappointed when we go back to it. I can say for myself though that I am never disappointed when that imp falls off his perch when I play Doom .

In essence, older shooter were much more creative with their weapons and gameplay. Multiplayer demonstrates this pretty well (I will NEVER forget killing an opponent using the Gauss Gun in HL1 by anticipating where he was and shooting through the ceiling and making the kill without even seeing him), but if the game can't stand on its own legs in single player, its simply poorly designed... if designed with that in mind of course.

Good thread.

 

[DraQ]

When you use HL2 as an example of doing something good, then something is very very wrong.

HL2 is a definite downgrade from HL1

In all but graphics and storytelling.

As for DN3D I don't like it that much because it lacks atmosphere and I don't like Duke as character, even with tongue-in-cheek interpretation.

In terms of its appeal (though not necessarily gameplay) it's a very dudebro game, and I much prefer dark and darkly humorous Blood with gleefully psychopathic Caleb, or amusingly un-PC Shadow Warrior, to popping aliens around devastated cityscapes with annoying meathead.

 

[Lunac]

Like, Admiral Jimbob, Morgoth, and many other kiddos here, Sea is too young and too tainted with the shit-stench aroma of what passes for modern gaming to fully comprehend and enjoy what came before ...and just not stupid enough like every other full-on consoletard to enjoy what is here now. Simple, simple as that.

....and no, watching two-to-three hours of crappy cant-skip-em cutscenes, popin' behind concrete barriers to which I'm cemented to shoot at poorly scripted alien/Russian/drug-cartel/mudslime enemies, all the while dealing with 9-11 era infused too-serious-for-their-own-good Michael Bayesque dialogues, plots, and pacing, third...ish person over-the-shoulder camera views, and lets not forget the invasive anal-probing DRM we have nowadays. So, yeah, not a little different. Lotsa difference son. Lotsa...


...
..
.

 

[TripJack]

the real problem is that kids these days are so medicated that they can't keep up with a real shooter like DOOM or Quake, so they get nice slow generic boring shit like halo and call of duty and half life instead

 

[:Flash:]

This thread has been a good read. I didn't even know today's shooters have things like regenerating health. Who came up with this?

Is there any post-2000 fpp shooter that you consider canon? Like Quake or Doom or even Blood.

Seriously, I cannot point a single game (except RTCW maybe), nothing was able to cross 8/10 border, blah even to reach that point.

NOLF 1

NOLF is a really fun game, it is a great example of the "coming up with something new all the time". However, it was also one of first real corridor shooters. If you are in a house, you can only open the doors of the corridor through the level. The game is terribly restrictive in where you can go. The first time I played it I thought all those doors were locked and you were supposed to find the key, but no, this game has a special hud symbol that says "this is a door that leads to an area outside of the level corridor".

 

[TripJack]

DN3D is shit. ^_^

Last two proper levels of Doom are shit, Doom 2 is an annoying grind. ^_^

no josh sawyer supporting links? i am shocked

 

[DraQ]

I loved using hitscan weapons.

Me too. But I would love them much more if they weren't hitscan.

Even traditionally hitscan firearms are simply more fun if they use projectile instead and model bullet's trajectory and velocity.
Given that projectiles also naturally handle all kinds of geometrical tricks (portals, warp zones) hitscans can't unless specifically programmed with special cases (and I haven't seen actual example of hitscan weapon with such programming), it seems like no-brainer.

There's no denying that perfectly timing a projectile that finishes off an opponent at long range is extremely satisfying and makes you feel like a stud. Old shooters did this really well with things like grenade launchers (Quake), whereas new shooters do not (noob toob COD).

Some newer shooters do.

Take STALKER, for example. It uses actual projectiles for bullets and as a result it gives tons of satisfaction once you learn how to use them.

Hitscan weapons may require great precision but there is nothing more to them, just aim and pop.
While it would seem that bullets move fast enough to make the difference insignificant, the difference, while small is actually about enough to be the thin line between blowing someone's brain out and having bullet just buzz by his ear.

It's the mechanics within the game and the shooting that makes old shooters fun, and the pace at which it happens. Watching enemies fall off their ledges when you kill them (Doom), having them splatter if you shoot them from a height (Duke3D), improvising a force-push to send some storm troopers into a bottomless pit (Jedi Knight).

Don't forget Hexen and repulsion discs.

(I will NEVER forget killing an opponent using the Gauss Gun in HL1 by anticipating where he was and shooting through the ceiling and making the kill without even seeing him)

HL1 Gauss Gun is officially one of the best FPS weapons ever.

The awesome part is that it's actually much more deadly against the targets behind cover. Without the cover it just shoots through you, if you're behind cover it blows through the cover spalling cone of searing particles that rape you.