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First Person Shooters (Games)

E3 2005 First Person Shooters 63

Posted by Zonk from the another-year,-another-chance-at-duke-nukem-forever dept.
John Callaham writes "Computer Games Magazine takes a quick look at the upcoming first person shooter games that are expected to be show at this May's Electronic Entertainment Expo." From the article: "Today we start to look at all the games that have been announced and are out in the open and are likely to be show at E3 this May. First up: first person shooters. 2004 was truly a banner year for this genre; how many years can we have that contain UT2004, Doom 3, Painkiller, and Half-Life 2? Will this year be any different?"
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E3 2005 First Person Shooters More

E3 2005 First Person Shooters

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  • One? (Score:5, Funny)

    by yotto ( 590067 ) on Tuesday April 12, 2005 @12:59PM (#12214316) Homepage
    ...how many years can we have that contain UT2004, Doom 3, Painkiller, and Half-Life 2?

    One?

    Or, to be even more pedantic, all of them after 2004?
    • I was going to make the same post, but you beat me to it.

      So to answer the question of the article poster - YES recycled games will continue to be released every year as long as people line up outside EB to buy them.

  • stalker.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Tuesday April 12, 2005 @01:04PM (#12214385) Homepage Journal
    ..is the one i'm really waiting for, seems like the one of the bunch with potential to have some real depth in it. you know, the kind of depth that makes you immersed in the world, the kind of depth that gives you some OPTIONS in how to advance rather than something tha makes you just scale the walls looking for the hole to the next room(or in the case of dull ww2 shooters.. something else than a shooting alley with invisible insta-death walls - it's fucking boring to play the same part over and over again to find the 'right' way out of the pothole).

    (fuck the dots- you'd have to be braindead to not make the connection between stalker and s.t.a.l.k.e.r)
    • I agree. Look at the significant FPSs. For me:

      Doom, because it was the first one that didn't suck.
      Duke Nukem 3D, becuase it had humour.
      Quake, because it was real 3D.
      HL, because it had an immersive storyline.
      Counterstrike because no AI in the world delivers like human opponents do

      (I loved plenty more FPSes, currently playing a mixture of day of Defeat and Serious Sam for example, but these are the ones that took the genre to a new level)

      Now, here I see three different threads.

      In the iD corner, make the g
    • I've seen/played some Alpha of Stalker ;
      While an alpha is nowhere near a good representation of an endresult, it didn't look too special.
      Also, I haven't really been following reviews of this game, so what specifically do you think is gonna rock (read : evolutionary) in this game ?

      • look? I wouldn't give two shits if it looked 3 years old.

        gameplay - discovering a world that doesn't feel like a tube - adventure. that's what i'm looking for, an adventure FOR ME. not just a movie i click through(which hl2 and doom3 are).

        basically.. i'm excepting it to be a first person elite with some fallout thrown in.

        "The player travels over immense world of the Zone, its all locations joined into one global map. He can choose any route and will not be limited in his traversing the Zone. The player
        • I didn't mean 'look' only in how the game looks, but just the overall sense of it.
          I don't give two rat's asses about graphics, as long as I have good gameplay.

          The Stalker-alpha played alot like Far Cry (with vast landscapes), but from the sounds of your description (-and- if they can live up to it) it surely sounds promising.

  • That's all i have to say...

    Well.. maybe a nice preview of Call of Duty 2 too!

  • Any innovation left? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KDR_11k ( 778916 ) on Tuesday April 12, 2005 @01:14PM (#12214513)
    I'm pretty tired of the standard FPS formula by now, those games don't seem to offer much in terms of new gameplay. The only one that even tries is Timeshift and even there you could argue that idea has been seen before and overdone.

    Is there something about first person shooters that requires them all to play the same plus/minus squad tactics? Some break the mold by adding character development and multiple playstyles but those are few and rarely the ones that get all the hype. How many different takes on "run into room, kill everything that moves, repeat" do we need? Yes, economists would say a whole lot because that's profitable. Or even better, make the game stealthy so the player moves much slower and your content lasts longer. But hell, what if I don't want any more of that? Usually people tell you to go with indy games then but the singleplayer FPS is one of the hardest arenas for independant development and quite frankly I don't know of any indy FPSes.

    Another point: What happened to the more freeform level designs of "back then"? Back when people played Doom or Descent levels weren't just one long path with obstacles strewn in, they were always areas with keys and switches, making you stay in a level much longer (and making them better for deathmatches) and sometimes run through familiar areas again. Especially with no clues about where to go these levels just felt much more non-linear than those found in HL2 or Doom 3. It worked back then with small dev houses and primitive graphics, why doesn't it work with today's huge dev houses and impressive graphics anymore?
    • The sad thing is, there's not much left that can be done with an FPS other than increase the graphics, level size, number of players/monsters, and fiddle with controls and play styles. It's just the way it is. I mean, can you think of anything cool to make an FPS that isn't just a rehash of something already out there? If you can't, what makes you think someone else can?
      It doesn't help that most of the boring, tired, formulatic FPSes are selling (because, really, what would you rather play tonight, Doom2

      • Re:Any innovation left? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by KDR_11k ( 778916 ) on Tuesday April 12, 2005 @01:34PM (#12214791)
        If you can't, what makes you think someone else can?

        I would never have thought of doing e.g. Katamari Damacy.
        There are some ideas I have, though:

        1. We haven't seen something like Uprising/Battlezone "Remake" for quite some time now.
        2. How about, instead of having enemies die when you pour enough lead into them, have them have weak points you have to hit in a certain order to destroy them (more suited for a slower, perhaps horror game)?
        3. Alternative modes of attack. E.g. all enemies have cybernetic enhancements and you can use some special power to hack them and disable/control/hurt/whatever them as an integral part of gameplay.

        I've got some more ideas but many of them are pretty much entire games and I don't feel like writing out design documents here :p.
        • Sad to say, but none of the so-called "straction" games of 1998-2001 (the first Battlezone, the two Uprisings, Urban Assault and Hostile Waters) sold worth a damn. :( Peter
        • How about the Metroid Hunters game for the Nintendo DS... using a stylus to control an FPS? And it works AMAZING!
          Who'd of thought that? Not me. But someone did.
        • Your ideas suck.

          2. is the method used for pretty much any boss battle in an action game.

          3. can be seen in many games such as the Deus Ex series where you can hack robots or cameras and use them against the opposition.

          I can't go into further details because your descriptions are too vague, but basically if you're the type who can't come up with 'Katamari Damarcy' your games are just going to be combinations of others in subtle ways. I'm tired of playing those games.
          • There's a major difference between adding an element into one level or a few times troughout the game and making it a major part of the game. Mostly because you can flesh out a common system much more because the player gets used to it. Compare, say, the vehicular combat in Gunman Chronicles and UT2004.

            I meant 2 with no obvious weak points (i.e. no glowing things or something), you actually have to figure out where they are and in what order they need to be triggered (and, of course, one incorrect hit will

      • Re:Any innovation left? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Ford Prefect ( 8777 ) on Tuesday April 12, 2005 @01:41PM (#12214890) Homepage
        The sad thing is, there's not much left that can be done with an FPS other than increase the graphics, level size, number of players/monsters, and fiddle with controls and play styles.

        Treat the 'FPS' thing merely as a user interface, and there are loads of possibilities. Wild examples: Deus Ex, System Shocks 1 and 2, Oni (okay, third person but used an FPS control scheme), Natural Selection (a semi-conventional FPS crossed with an RTS), Darwinia (absolutely not an FPS, but uses WASD and mouselook!) - and these are existing examples I've actually played.

        I've got an idea for a single-player HL2 mini-mod with no combat whatsoever. First-Person... Something?

        I realised a while ago that I can't stand most conventional FPS games. Some I do like - for plot, adventure and setting. You can't really get much more immersive than an FPS, and the control system both is intuitive and can be extended in many different directions. I wouldn't dismiss the FPS so quickly... ;-)
        • Speaking of System Shock, anyone have any news on Bioshock? Suppose it could be considered an FPS. I haven't seen any updates on the web recently, was hoping this article (or blurb) would have mentioned it.
    • there doesn't _need_ to be innovation - just solid gameplay, solid story, a world full of choices - for the game to be good.

      just bolting on a grabber tool is NOT innovation, though. look at resurrection of evil - fucking lame copy with the grabber tool, snowblind too, and in neither game would you have needed a grabber mega weapon(what's wrong with hands? oh yeah, it's harder to do 'realistically', more convinient to have a magic grabber).

      remember - first person is just a camera angle, it doesn't have mu
    • Wait, you actually liked the whole, go here, find key, backtrack and unlock that door objectives in FPS games? Cuz I thought it sucked. It I want to wander around collecting useless crap I don't care about, I'll go play Pokemon. And this wasn't just a FPS level design thing. I refer you to pretty much any Rare platformer, and any 3D Mario game, the Resident Evil games, etc. If you wanna see some excellent level design, go check out Splinter Cell Chaos Theory.
    • Back when people played Doom or Descent ... levels [made] you ... sometimes run through familiar areas again.

      You should try Halo. I hear it has that sort of level design. (For the record, I loved Halo, but I did get confused about where I had been or where I was going on more than one occasion due to the repetitive level design).

    • It's been said before and better, but the larger the development house, the lower the risk tolerance?

    • I think that one of the main reasons the mainstream, multiplayer FPS games haven't changed too much, business aspects aside, is the learning curve involved. Granted, there are some differences in your movement, aiming, and of course weapon-effects from game to game (e.g. compare Counterstrike to Unreal Tournament 2004 or Quake 3), but once you've played one, it is relatively easy to pick up others.

      This shallow learning curve is also what prevents some of the more innovative FPS-style games from becomin

  • First Person sans Shooter (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I would love to see more games like Morrowind come down the pipe. The first person perspective is one of my favorite devices in modern gaming, but it is, so far, still severly limited in how it is actually applied.

    We are still playing Doom over and over again, but with prettier images, better effects, and (sometimes) smarter badguys.

    Apart from Morrowind and Vampires:The Masquerade and perhaps the underwhelming Myst sequels; where else is the First Person perspective being used in new and interesting ways
  • I think that we'll see some beautiful looking games with the introduction of the Xbox 2 this year and it's only going to get better from there. With the advances in the havok and unreal engines(and the other engines that exist), the next-gen games will become more story oriented and just more fun to play. Especially if you can play Xbox2-ers games against PC-ers , that will just open a whole new experience.
    • I would love to be able to play against Xbox2 players. They can't move well or aim well. They can't even see well unless they have an HDTV. They would just be free kills to up my score.
      • I bought Thief 3 for the XBox because I didn't have a good enough PC to play it. I just couldn't take the interface, and the single speed with which to turn. So having bought it for the Xbox, I felt justified in downloading it for the PC. Nothing beats the mouse for a quick glance to your right to check for a guard, while staking out a doorway.

        But I'm sure they'll make a keyboard and mouse for the Xbox (they probably have it now, but I don't care to check) so you might be in for a surprise :P

    • Re:it can only get better (Score:3, Insightful)

      by UWC ( 664779 )
      Console vs. PC games will result in either console players getting outmaneuvered by mouse-and-keyboard users or the PC players complaining about the cheapness of the auto-aim assistance the console players will need if they want to be competitive. That's, of course, if you're talking about FPS-type games.

      I am definitely eager to see what the new round of consoles is capable of, though.

  • Sad but true (Score:3, Interesting)

    by El ( 94934 ) on Tuesday April 12, 2005 @01:18PM (#12214570)
    Business types are doomed to only release remakes of games that made money. Nobody will touch the first game in a new, unproven genre. And unfortunately, the time when somebody could design and implement a decent game in their basement is long gone. So I suppose we're stuck with remakes of Doom, Quake, Unreal and Halflife for the forseeable future. Unless some talented group of designers, graphic artists, and programmers is willing to work for free for about a year to come out with a really killer game that isn't a FPS.

    What I would like to see is a multiplayer game that rewards cooperative play and good moral judgements, instead of rewarding a "shoot anything that moves" approach.

    • People still make innovative games in their garage. [igf.com] With Open Source tools [blender3d.org] and engines [ogre3d.org] growing up, you should start to see alot more too.
    • Bleh. Why are new versions of games so profitable? In the movie industry, sequels tend to make less money. This is because (with exceptions of course) everything after the first movie sucks. It is different with games. In general, sequels to games are better (again, there are exceptions). They take everything they learned in the first game, improve the graphics, improve the game play, add new features, etc. So really, I am not sure why you have to bitch about "remakes"...in most cases, games get bett
  • "Will this year be any different?"

    Probably not, we'll get numerous FPS that sell tons of copies, while the few innovative/original titles get overlooked :( More than one "hit" FPS a year is too many IMO.
    • More than one "hit" FPS a year is too many IMO

      Yeah, overload for me. Most of the big names in FPSs hit last year. Doom, Halo, Half Life, and a few other really good games. Will Quake 4 be at E3? There are a few nice games on the way, but after last year, it'll be slow for the genre for a while.

      Last year was so big for first person shooters that there's almost no way the genre can match it. It's like playing all of Beehtoven's 7th symphony and then following it with a violin solo. A solo violinist can do
  • By the end of the year, Fary Cry, Half Life 2, Doom 3, Pariah, and Halo 2 (some of which are already there, obviously) will all be on the Xbox. Pretty cool really. I only mention it to the Slashdot crwod because no stories about Half Life and Far Cry have been posted, and not to start some KB/M vs. controller war.

  • This is the year... (Score:3, Funny)

    by mrbaggs ( 864520 ) on Tuesday April 12, 2005 @01:55PM (#12215070)
    I'm sure this time, this is the year Duke Nukem Forever is released! You'll all see...

  • I hope so (Score:2, Insightful)

    by soniCron88 ( 870042 )
    "Will this year be any different?"

    Well, god I hope so. A year in which every major hit was a sequel? Originality would be a nice change of pace.

  • What about Far Cry? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by osmic234 ( 807261 )
    Surely it would have to be included in the top pc fps releases of last year. At least it gave the illusion of being sightly non-linear at times, unlike the big name games. And it was much easier on the eye, without needing such top-end machine. I'd much rather see an expansion pack for Far Cry than one for Doom 3 or Half-Life 2.
  • I'm surprised they didn't mention Prey.

    After 25+ pages, it has all but been officially announced over at the 3DRealms forums [3drealms.com].

  • My friend and I always thought that the next big break through would be with a solid MMOFPS. Better than Planetside ever was.

    We need true transitions between space and ground. We need space to planet surface bombardments and vice versa. I'd personally love to see a Battletech MMOFPS, or an exosquad one.

    • "We need space to planet surface bombardments and vice versa."

      Ok, is it realy inovative to introduce a new method of spawn camping into the mix?

      I can just see it now:

      • Whole team spawns
      • Run for cover/guns/vechicles
      • Last five seconds as the next thousand megaton nuke hits your camp
      • Whole team spawns....

      Would we even need to aim?

      • You know, there's ways around that. You just need to think like a real military would if they were facing orbital bombardment. Put your base underground, shielding, shoot them before they shoot you, defense systems, etc.

  • I predict that there will be one or maybe more FPSs located in WWII.

    I also see...multiplayer...and rocket launchers. Snipers rifles are also coming. And grenades.

    Oh my god, I'm a psychic!

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