A Look At How Far PC Gaming Has Come 427
Bit-tech is running a feature examining the progress PC games have made over the past couple decades. The article highlights aspects of modern games we often take for granted or nitpick, and compares them to earlier games in which such features were implemented poorly or not at all. Quoting:
"Doom's legacy is still being felt today in fact and it's a fair bet that you can take any shooter off a shelf, from America’s Army to Zeno Clash, examine it, and list a dozen things that those games owe to Doom. Things like the wobble of the guns and the on-screen feedback that tells you which direction you are being shot from — these were things that id Software invented. On the other hand, from a story perspective, Doom was absolutely rubbish. You start in a room, no idea what’s going on and you are surrounded by demons. You have to read the manual and supporting media to get a grip on it all — something modern games would get heavily slated for doing. Yet the idea that plot was optional caught on and the same flaw was replicated in other games of the era, such as Quake and (to a lesser extent) Duke Nukem 3D. There were years and years where the lessons of early story-driven games were forgotten and all anyone really cared about was having as many sprites or polygons as possible."
doom didn't need a story noob! (Score:5, Insightful)
I admit I am a carmack fanboi but damn that's how good doom was. It didn't need a story. It didn't need a manual even. Heck it didn't even need a mouse. There's also the important open source aspect of the game that gamers can create their own WADs which later turned into an integral part and the games themselves in Quake TF, and for the real CS:S and TF2. All because of doom.
Doom isn't a game, it's an attitude.
Doom's gameplay (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:doom didn't need a story noob! (Score:1, Insightful)
(well apart from the requirements bit)
Re:Doom's gameplay (Score:2, Insightful)
this is so NOT true.. I swear there's a story in Wii Bowling!! wait..
Crazy DRM and Phone home games (Score:5, Insightful)
For the last 5 years the evolution in mainstream PC gaming has been all around fancy new graphics.
The only new original gaming style that poped-up was MMORPGs (not really new, but it did became mass-market in the meanwhile).
[This point was really hammered down for me when "Supreme Commander", highly hailed as innovative, came out and it turns out it's an almost 1-to-1 copy of the old "Total Annihilation" from 10 years ago only with better graphics]
The other grand "evolutions" have been the not releasing of demos anymore, the crazy DRM + phone home features, the rise of the "major game publisher" and the death of the small independent software house.
Totally disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense. Doom wasn't supposed to be story-driven game, it was an action game. You grabbed your minigun, charged into a room you'd never seen before and blasted away. You even had a chance of surviving. There are no story lessons from Doom because there weren't supposed to me.
It's exactly the lack of immediate mindless action that's put me off gaming for a long time after. I want gaming, not cinematic experiences. If you prefer cinema that's fine and there's room for both, but for me all the plot-driven stuff is a turn-off. I still want to grab a minigun and charge into a room blasting widly in a totally unrealistic fashion as strange creatures fall in front of me. Shortly before being overwhelmed by ridiculous odds, of course.
When I do play acrade games, I tend to head MAMEwards. Plot-driven stuff just doesn't do it for me at all - if it does for you then that's fine and I'm certainly not criticising it, I'm just saying there's more than one type of gamer and Doom appealed to me in a way that almost none of the other FPS stuff has. That's precisely because it has little story or plot.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:doom didn't need a story noob! (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. Let's face it, DOOM! is basically first person Robotron. Which is Asteroids with walls.
Those games have no story to speak of, and they're fun to play.
The big problem with stories is, you usually have to interrupt the game in order to tell them.
Re:Totally disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonsense. Doom wasn't supposed to be story-driven game, it was an action game.
Doom1 wasn't the problem. That game came out when adventure games where still alive and well and simply did its own thing, nothing wrong with that. The trouble with storytelling in games only started when games like Half Life and friends tried to reinvent storytelling for the FPS, while completly ignoring what was learned in adventure games over the years. The trouble with the Half Life kind of story telling is that its narrative is completly uninteractive, you run through a series of nicely textured corridors and are pushed from one scripted event to the next, which looks all fine and good, except that you have no way to actually interact with the people in the world other then shooting them. Why isn't there a talk-button? Even a game like Bioshock, praised for its "story", completly falls flat in that area, even worse it uses it for a cheap story-twist gimmick at the end.
Games like DeusEx have shown that you actually can combine a FPS with a good interactive narrative, but after DeusEx there just hasn't been all that much new in that area and most games follow the Half Life kind of dragging the player through the narrative by force.
Who needs a story line? (Score:5, Insightful)
PONG didn't have a story line either, and what's good enough for PONG is good enough for me!
Re:Duke = Citizen Kane (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's fairly obvious that the numerous cultural references found in Duke Nukem 3D were intended to be homages instead of being passed off as original. These comprise one of the main reasons I was looking forward to Duke Nukem Forever - the gags, the easter eggs, the nods towards low culture. Without all that you miss the essence of Duke and have just another generic FPS.
Re:Doom's gameplay (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes, entertainment doesn't need a purpose. It can just "be" entertaining!
Apparently, Guy Ritchie is going to direct a film featuring Lobo. Seems I have all of the good ideas just a little too late...
Re:Doom (Score:3, Insightful)
And didn't it all start with Wolfenstein 3D [wikipedia.org] back in 1992?
Of course there have been other FPS games too, but Wolfenstein 3D was a revolution at the time.
Growing up on Wizardry, Empire, Starflight (Score:3, Insightful)
and even later the Wing Commander series I am actually disappointed with many of today's games. Haven't found a space game that makes me feel like the explorer that Starflight did and Wing Commander was simply amazing in both story and game play.
What do we have now? Dozens of games with either space marines or commandos? Yawn.
Re:Doom's gameplay (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Doom's gameplay (Score:5, Insightful)
Doom is like tetris. You learn the game mechanics and you play and play and never get bored.
If it had a story, once you go through it and learn how the story ends, that's it. you are not going back to play. This may be good for the publishers that can sell you a new game with a new story, but I contend that a game that is as enjoyable as Doom without a story is better.
Re:Doom (Score:4, Insightful)
Prior to DOOM!, most decent PC games were available for Amiga / Atari ST, with better sound and graphics.
A few years before that, my Amiga/Atari buddies were already salivating when i could play Wing Commander II, Falcon 3.0 or Civilization.
I'll grant you that Doom put the final nail in the coffin, but the PC had already taken the edge for high-end quality games when it came out.
Re:Doom (Score:5, Insightful)
What about Myst? I'd say it was a pretty significant PC game in it's day.
Re:Doom (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>I do find the general idea of trying to trace where particular things originated int
Almost everything traces back to the original Atari console, early 8-bit computers, or 70s-era arcades. Just picking some random games off the top of my head:
Space Invaders - shooter
Space War or Star Raiders - first person shooter (ship)
Hostages - first person shooter (person)
Donkey Kong - platformer
Crystal Castles - 3D platformer
Pitfall 1 2 - Adventure
Haunted House - survival-horror
F15 Strike Eagle - simulation
M.U.L.E. - real time strategy
A D & D - stat-based RPG
Re:same as life (Score:2, Insightful)
need to read holy book (manual) to get a grip on it all
That'll learn ya to RTFM!
Re:Doom (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, everything traces back to a rock and a stick. Or in the case of the Inca, a head and a stick.
Re:same as life (Score:2, Insightful)
You start in a room, no idea what's going on [...] You have to read the manual and supporting media to get a grip on it all
Damn straight! What kind of game would start with such a vague premise?
Re:doom didn't need a story noob! (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny how a comment that's flat wrong gets modded "insightful". Not every IBM PC game was a sim. Ever heard of Lemmings? Or Populous? Or Shadow of the Beast? Or Wolfenstein? Or Hostages? There were tons of games before Doom that were simple enough to just pick-up and play them.
BTW I agree a good game doesn't need a story. Use your imagination.
Re:Crazy DRM and Phone home games (Score:3, Insightful)
However the games were actually too different in style. SupCom had a lot of positive improvements, most significantly the strategic zoom, but also the formations, speed matching and coordination, path modification, etc. But IMO the super units, while fun, did kind of intrinsically unbalance the gameplay. In TA, turtling/porcing was a very valid play style, but just try doing it in SC. Without 3rd party units it isn't as easy and definitely not as fun. The lack of good 3rd party stuff for SC compared to TA also really surprised me.
Maybe I'm just a weaksauce n00b, but I also find SC to be too big and too fast. The resource curve seems a little too steep, and eventually I'm just not able to utilize it efficiently. SC is built for really dynamic and dramatic conflicts on a scale that makes TA look like a backyard snowball fight.
Re:Doom (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, thank you, whoever you are. I will most certainly check this out.
I was a fiend for Total Annihilation. It was the first game I played against other people via LAN and it gave me a hint of what was to come.
Re:doom didn't need a story noob! (Score:3, Insightful)
You're a marine, one of Earth's toughest, hardened in combat and trained for action military group. Three years ago you assaulted a superior officer for ordering his soldiers to fire upon civilians. He and his body cast were shipped to Pearl Harbor, while you were transfered to Mars, home of the Union Aerospace Corperation. The UAC is a multi-planetary conglomerate with radioactive waste facilities on Mars and its two moons, Phobos and Deimos. With no action for fifty million miles, your day consisted of suckin' dust and watchin' restricted flicks in the rec room.
For the last four years the militaty, UAC's biggest supplier, has used the remote facilities on Phobos and Deimos to conduct varios secret projects, including reaserch on inter-dimensional travel. So far they have been able to open gateways between Phobos and Deimos, throwing a few gadgets into one and watching them come out the other. Recently however, the Gateways have grown dangerously unstable. Military "volunteers" entering them have either disappeared or been stricken with a strange form of insanity - babbleing vulgarities, bludgeoning anything that breathes, and finally suffering an untimely death of full-body explosion. Matching heads with torsos to send home to the folks became a full-time job. Latest military reports state that the reserch is suffering a small set-back, but everything is under control.
A few hours ago, Mars recieved a garbled message from Phobos. "We require immediate military support. Something fraggin' evil is coming out of the Gateways! Computer systems have gone berserk!" The rest was incoherent. Soon afterwards, Deimos simply vanished from the sky. Since then, attempts to establish contact with either moon have been unsuccessful.
You and your buddies, the only combat troop for fifty million miles were sent up pronto to Phobos. You were ordered to secure the perimeter of the base while the rest of the team went inside. For several hours, your radio picked up the sounds of combat: guns firing, men yelling orders, screams, bones cracking, then finally, silence. Seems your buddies are dead.
Things aren't looking too good. You'll never navigate off the planet on your own. Plus, all the heavy weapons have been taken by the assault team leaving you with only a pistol. If only you could get your hands around a plasma rifle or even a shotgun you could take a few down on your way out. Whatever killed your buddies deserves a couple of pellets in the forehead. Securing your helmet, you exit the landing pod. Hopefully you can find more substantial firepower somewhere within the station.
As you walk through the main entrance to the base, you hear animal-like growls echoing throughout the distant corridors.
They know you're here. There's no turning back now.
Compelling stuff. Then again, like Wolfenstein3D and Quake, backstory was never really essential. The endstory mattered more. Quake's story was absolutely terrible IMO (basically copied Doom but left out Mars and used a different dimension), and the game itself served merely as a long techdemo for id's first true 3D (as in polygonal) engine.
I believe Quake II was id's first serious attempt at FPS storytelling. It even had an intro movie, and you could hear voices/commands over the radio that helped remind you that you were part of a failed invasion force.
Then Doom III came out years later and borrowed the audio log mechanism from System Shock and in-game cutscenes as well as passive dialog from NPCs, though you're still a mute like Gordon Freeman. It simply retold the Doom story, but made it more detailed and added a human antagonist (Betruger).
Re:Duke = Citizen Kane (Score:5, Insightful)
Duke Nukem Forever is a homage to Zen. It's the sound of one hand clapping. It's the tree that falls in the forest with no one around. It's the rock that falls in the puddle and makes no splash. It is, therefore, the purest form of gameplay. The ability to get your heart rate up and feel the excitement of playing a game with no actual game.
It is the ZPS. The Zeroth Person Shooter.
Eventually, it will deliver, and people will be unsurprised to purchase it, take it home, and have it be an empty box. And it will get good reviews, for the game will have ended as it began.
Re:Doom (Score:3, Insightful)
But Doom was the first to bring that 3D look, with inertia, gun movement, enemies that turned on each other, lots of blood and gore, 2-4 player multiplayer deathmatch+coop over serial/modem/ipx, all of with user editable content. Each of those features had been around before one way or another, but never all of them together. Doom defined the FPS genre.
Re:Doom (Score:1, Insightful)
Moria, Nethack, Pirate Adventure, Zork, Maniac Mansion
Re:Doom (Score:3, Insightful)
well, I learned more about history from Civ IV's civilopedia then in grade school. i dont't know if this speaks more about the quality of the game, os the complete disregard the authorities in my country have for education.
Re:Doom (Score:1, Insightful)
Completely pointless post, but thanks for the link. That engine, from the meager look I've taken at it, seems absolutely astounding. Its GPLv2'd, has 5-8 full featured games running on it right now, and an active developer community. AWESOME is exactly right. (OSX, *nix, and Windows!!)
Re:Doom (Score:5, Insightful)
"Suddenly, all the industry wanted was shoot'em-ups and blow'em-ups, catering almost exclusively to the lowest common denominator. Gaming became like television, a way to waste time in some brain dead activity that reduced you to a twitching zombie-like state. "
"Suddenly"?
I think [wikipedia.org] you're [wikipedia.org] forgetting [wikipedia.org] some [wikipedia.org] history [wikipedia.org].