First Person Shooters: The Thread

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

For what its worth, I think that The Arbiter and the prophet of Truth were MUCH more interesting characters than any of the humans. With The Arbiter, you actually got a sense of character progression and development with the character itself, though that was pretty much dropped in the 3rd game as he just became more like the Chief's side-kick until towards the end of the game. As for Truth, I feel like he was actually a genuinely interesting concept for a villain, being viewed as a savior to the Covenant while pretty much manipulating them to his will, including The Arbiter. That said, any interesting parts of the plot brought up in Halo 2 were easily just treated as a second thought in Halo 3 in which it just focused mostly on the boring humans again.

[Rynnec]

A rather good video on what makes Doom special to this day. Worth a watch, even if his points have been gone over before dozens of times.

Watching it really did get me interested in playing Doom for myself though. Any game where you kill demons set to a heavy metal-inspired soundtrack has my attention.

[Foggle]

Doom is great, and definitely worth playing (along with Doom 2, Final Doom, and Doom 64). But I feel that its level design doesn't hold up nearly as well that of Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, or Shadow Warrior, which are some of the most creative and timeless games of all time. You should pick up copies of those as well!

[gunswordfist]

Ah sweet, I finally got to see John Romero's head and I loved that John Carpenter's The Thing clip. Anyway, this video
was a great love letter to Doom. Makes me want to see more videos on this game.

Doom is great, and definitely worth playing (along with Doom 2, Final Doom, and Doom 64). But I feel that its level design doesn't hold up nearly as well that of Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, or Shadow Warrior, which are some of the most creative and timeless games of all time. You should pick up copies of those as well!

I still need to get all of those games DN3D is like at the top of my list

[Spark Of Spirit]

DOOM 2 is really just that much better than the original. The original is still a great game, but it was totally outclassed by the direct follow ups.

[Rynnec]

Doom is great, and definitely worth playing (along with Doom 2, Final Doom, and Doom 64). But I feel that its level design doesn't hold up nearly as well that of Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, or Shadow Warrior, which are some of the most creative and timeless games of all time. You should pick up copies of those as well!

Downloaded Shadow Warrior earlier today (since it's free on Steam) and I kinda suck hard at it. Like, can't even beat the first level on the easiest difficulty hard.

It's probably because I'm not used to using a mouse and keyboard yet, hopefully I'll get better when I get used to the controls and such.

[Foggle]

Old shooters are hard, so that's pretty normal. Just be sure to quick save a lot and you'll do fine!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, continuing the running question from the other "genre" threads: Just how good do you consider yourself to be at FPS games?

For me, I have to split it in-between old-school and modern style shooters, as well as single-player and multi-player.

Old-School FPS:

Single Player- I'm pretty average at these, for the most part. I've really only had the DOOM games to go on, as well as what I've played of old Duke Nukem games and other older shooters, so its not much to go on, but while I'm not great at these games, I do love playing them and don't find them to be too difficult for me to handle.

Multiplayer- I haven't had enough experience with old-school multiplayer to tell if I'm generally good at it or not, so I'm just going to assume that I suck at it for the time being.

Modern FPS:

Single Player- This is the one other genre of gaming where I consider myself to be slightly above average at it. With the movie-shooters, they are usually predictable and hand-holding enough to just be flat-out easy no matter what difficulty I play them on, unless it just goes the route of being outright cheap on its higher difficulty settings. As for the more strategic and hardcore experiences like the original F.E.A.R. and Halo games, I am pretty decent at learning enemy AI patterns and using my environment and weapons intelligently to strategize the best ways to take on certain situations. I have not played F.E.A.R. on Extreme difficulty yet, but at the risk of sounding overconfident, I'm pretty sure that I could handle it if I tried, even if I'd probably die a lot in the process. As for Halo, I can beat pretty much all of them except for Halo 2 on Legendary mode. I could probably beat Halo 2 on Legendary as well, but I'm not patient enough to put up with the frustrating cheapness of that game's difficulty. That said, I am not nearly masochistic enough to consider playing these these games on Mythic difficulty (otherwise known as the LASO challenge). The hindrances of Skulls in this game are nice when I use 1 or 2 at a time to increase the challenge, but turning them all on makes the game nearly impossible for me to beat, so kudos to whoever can beat these games with that level of handicap against them. Also, I utterly suck at speed runs of this game, and I'd probably get myself killed in Zero Shot and/or Pacifist runs as well. Other than Halo, I'm also pretty good at Half-Life and other good modern FPS games.

Multiplayer- With the EXCEPTION of Halo games, in which I think I'm just a bit above average at their multiplayer, I utterly suck at the multiplayer in FPS games. I'm especially garbage at stuff like Counter-Strike.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I'm pretty bad at old school FPS games because I'm bad at circle-strafing, but I'm pretty good at modern FPS games because aiming down the sights is pretty close to an instant kill. Multiplayer, I'm bad at both.

That said, I prefer the old style because the level design is frequently more interesting.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I mostly agree about the level design, though I still say that the level design in the original Halo (minus The Library) and especially in Halo: Reach is terrific, and pretty much the best in the modern FPS genre in terms of that style of gameplay.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I mostly agree about the level design, though I still say that the level design in the original Halo (minus The Library) and especially in Halo: Reach is terrific, and pretty much the best in the modern FPS genre in terms of that style of gameplay.

I would agree. The wide open maps with different weapon types and cover add a lot to strategy.

[gunswordfist]

I am currently trying to beat Duke Nukem 3D. The without warning of enemies spawning because they were too stupid to gave the alien's teleportation a sound effect, the unexpected obstacles (mostly the explosions) and trying to figure out how to advance through some parts of levels are the only things that have really given me any real trouble in the game. Besides that, it's been a piece of cake. But then again I've been abusing user clips. Doom 1 and 2 are much more enemy heavy which makes the combat harder than DK3D for me but still not cheap since I KNOW WHEN THEY ARE COMING! As for modern games, Halo on normal is easy, 2 is a joke on that difficulty. I am not that good on the higher difficulties in Halo but they are a lot of fun. I remember pretty much walking through Half-Life. I started playing Crysis and Blood Dragon around the start of this month. They are similar games (Blood Dragon being the better evolution of the original Far Cry) and I've been pretty good at them both even though my aim sucks.

[Rynnec]

I'd say I'm decent-to-terrible at modern FPS'. I had trouble beating Halo 2 on its default difficulty, but I can play Republic Commando and Borderlands just fine, and I'd probably be better at Halo and RC if I played them today. I don't play modern movie shooters, so I can't judge my skills on those.

I've only played two old-school FPS' so far (Shadow Warrior and Doom). I'm pretty terrible at Shadow Warrior, but I've been pretty decent at Doom so far. I do tend to get lost in both games though.

[gunswordfist]

I want Republic Commando

[Foggle]

So the BioShock Infinite DLC is going to take place in Rapture. I'm... no longer excited for it.

I mean, it's Rapture before the fall, so it'll be very different from the first two games, but it's still fucking Rapture. I'm tired of Rapture. Columbia was about 500000000 times more interesting.

Then again, maybe if it's still functioning like a real city, I might enjoy it more than I think. I hope they find a way to work in skylines, at least. Loved those.

EDIT: Never mind, I just watched the trailer (don't read the actual article unless you've beaten Infinite). It's a 1950's period piece detective story taking place in still-functioning Rapture. Now that's fucking awesome!

...I still hope they find a way to work in skylines, though.