Ten Maxims Every FPS Should Follow 155
The Game Career Guide site has up a story that tries to lay down some rules for a good First Person Shooter. The article advocates in favour of player choices, fast action, and rich environments; keep the boring cutscenes and make sure the players are getting a great bang for their buck. From the article: "Don't allow the player to play the game half-heartedly, which is a dangerous stumbling block at any point of the game. Example: Half-Life 2. While the introduction presenting the environment of City 17 was much more effective than the tram sequence of Black Mesa from the game's predecessor, the sheer length of time between point insertion and getting the crowbar would never have worked in any other game."
HL2 (Score:5, Interesting)
HL2 was deeper than gun and run even if that is the game play in effect. That is why it could do stuff without a weapon.
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I dunno if this is tip of the day.... I've seen this several times recently.
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What I loved about the opening segment of HL2 was the "chase" scene. You're just an unarmed civilian franticly running, trying to get away. I liked that aspect of the airboat chase as well, though that broke down a bit during a couple of "stop the boat and fix the ramp" puzzles. That stretched my suspension of disbelief a bit too far.
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I felt that, compared to the plot of the first game with it's more easily understood "Get out. Oh NOES, they want to to cover it all up! Escape!" theme worked much better at
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Re:HL2 (Score:5, Funny)
You didn't find a gun in a suitcase at the train station?
Re:HL2 (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:HL2 - solid art direction (Score:5, Insightful)
You can see how minimalist this tree really is [ign.com]. They only gave it just enough branches to cover the illusion, but not so many that it holds up to actual inspection. Another shot of said tree, from a more common angle [regmedia.co.uk]. By not wasting any polys, they really can afford to put more on-screen. Heck, look at leaves [tripod.com]. Artificially close, they are a big smear. But from the distance you normally see them, they can stick thousands of these things on screen, and they look beautiful.
Love the look of brick? Notice how in this shot [hrycaj.free.fr] they've burned the bump maps and damage maps and everything into the same texture? The increases the repetition in texture, but if you vary your geometry sufficiently the player will never notice. All they'll notice is a lot more is going on on-screen than they're used to. This technique looks terrible for big-open walls, but Half Life studiosly avoids big open walls within proximity of the player.
They even used a distinct pallete of blacks, muted browns, and light blues. [hlfallout.net] This was far before anyone else was using anything but super-saturated primary colors.
Ignoring any technical accomplishments, this [d3vour.com] is an achievement of strong visual composition and consistent, solid art direction.
I hate that (Score:3, Interesting)
Halo has decent tech, except you have to buy an xbox to experience it.
Half-Life has absolutely awful tech. Half-Life 2 still has loading screens, and they're awful -- no progress bar, bu
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Yes, they're supposed to. They're engineered, and covered in armor.
Now, the zombies, or the unmasked Combine in Ep1 -- those look a bit more detailed to me, although certainly less than Alyx. But maybe I just like Alyx.
Point being: I noticed Doom 3 graphics sucking in places, and overall boring and unreal artwork. I didn't notice anything like that in Half-Life 2, at least, certainly not to that extent.
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TFA (Score:5, Informative)
1. Get into the action early
Draw the player into the world by force; use that initial confrontation to set the tone. This first impression must be followed up by developing the tone.
Example: Call of Duty. The speech of the commissars at the beginning of the Russian campaign, mixed with the planes, explosions, and machine gun nests is dangerous, intense, and doesn't go on forever.
Don't allow the player to play the game half-heartedly, which is a dangerous stumbling block at any point of the game.
Example: Half-Life 2. While the introduction presenting the environment of City 17 was much more effectively than the tram sequence of Black Mesa from the game's predecessor, the sheer length of time between point insertion and getting the crowbar would never have worked in any other game.
2. Create a world that invites, encourages, and rewards smart thinking
Combining fallback points, fortified positions, and stretches of exposed ground intelligently allows the player to choose when to make a run for safety or to take a stand.
Example: Far Cry. The mixed terrain and objects gave the world a "real" feeling, allowing stealth or brute force to move Jack through the game.
Always running in circles or darting around the same corner to pick off one enemy at a time is boring, and forcing the player to figure out the "trick" is an exercise in frustration (not challenge) if done poorly or too often.
Example: Painkiller. Despite featuring a wide array of locales and enemies (and lots of them) every level managed to be the same combination of jumping in circles as enemies appeared from every side.
3. The game world is the real world
There should almost never be just one way from one place to another; the player should never feel constrained in their options.
Example: Halo 2. The open city environments allows Master Chief different ways to complete his objectives, adding replay value to the game by rewarding the player for doing nothing more than exploring their environment.
Highly linear game play quickly becomes repetitive and predictable; using false paths to provide the illusion of free choice only serves to make players angry.
Example: Quake 4. Every objective that Kane is given is straightforward and straight forward. The rationale behind each one is obvious: in order to delve deeper into Stroggos, the various companies need enemies cleared out. Throwing the player into a tank offers little variety; each mission is either an arena or a tunnel through the various installments.
4. No one lives forever
While playing, there must be a sense of urgency and empowerment; there must be a meaningful reward for timeliness and effectiveness (even if not immediately so).
Example: Call of Duty 2. Sitting still is not an option, and trying to fight the war alone is a suicide mission. Furthermore, the player's participation is not optional; there are no invincible allies that can clear the room while you hang back.
Failing this, the immortality or immediate mortality of allies or enemies that hinges upon whether the player is present makes the player useless as a hero; they are relegated to the role of mute witness.
Example: F.E.A.R. The Point Man has the amazing ability to be one room over or one second too late when anyone that can help him is in danger.
5. Make the character's abilities and options suit the world they inhabit
A player's armaments, protection, and surroundings need to make sense in terms of their location, power, and weaknesses. Done right, the player ha
And *still* nobody mentions this: (Score:3, Interesting)
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3. The game world is the real world There should almost never be just one way from one place to another; the player should never feel constrained in their options. Example: Halo 2. The open city environments allows Master Chief different ways to complete his objectives, adding replay value to the game by rewarding the player for doing nothing more than exploring their environment. Highly linear game play quickly becomes repetitive and predictable; using false paths to provide the illusion of free choice only serves to make players angry.
Personally, I feel he got this one completely wrong. Halo's levels were open and allowed you to reach and complete your objective in different ways. Halo 2 doesn't even come close; you get railroaded through a confined passage of enemies everywhere you go. Sure, the levels themselves were MASSIVE, but invisible barriers and instant kill zones stopped you from exploring anything.
The only exception was Metropolis [The city level] wherein you could get on top of buildings with clever jumping. But once yo
Maxims for creating an annoying opinion piece. (Score:5, Funny)
2. Say stupid and inflammatory things you know people will disagree with, like: "The story isn't more important than the game" (Don't bother having a plot) or "The player must always know the objective" (Don't even think of making something that has elements of adventure gaming)
3. Include useless flamebait at the end of the article like proclaiming MMOGs as bad, or announcing that one game company is superior to others.
Really (Score:5, Insightful)
The article was on 2 pages. Were we reading the same article? I don't consider that amount of content to be too little for 2 freaking pages.
Inflammatory? Nowhere in the article did the authors insinuate that games should not bother to have a plot, their assertion was that a good plot would still make for a boring game if the gameplay elements are not there - and I reckon the vast majority of gamers will agree with that.
And where in the world did the article claim that MMOGs were bad? Not to mention one of the authors lists "Guild Wars" amongst his favorite games - hardly an anti-MMORPG fanatic.
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Keep reading.... You were so close!
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He doesn't say directly that games should not have a plot, but he definately state
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I really don't get why the Slashdot groupthink is so against ad profit. The way I see it, if the article is chopped into so many fine pieces that it becomes a burden or a chore having to leaf through all those pages, then it's excessive. But if it's chopped comfortably into substantial pages that take a significant amount of time to read through and process, then they're free to make some ad impressions on me.
I am, after all, consuming their content. There's a difference between seeking profit and all-out
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If people don't read half your text, they won't load page 2 and see the new ads. Similarly, they could put ads all along the height of the content but display it on a single page. Even better, it would lower the workload of the server since you will only be serving "1 page load", won't have to load the website interface twice, etc.
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Page 1 hits = number of people who got to your article
Page 2 hits = Number of people who actually read the thing.
If you have a content writer who may have a lot of hits on page 1, but significantly fewer hits to subsequent pages then you know people don't want to finish reading what he wrote. If all you had was page 1 hits then you would lose this metric.
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Mod parent up (Score:2)
1. Split your limited content onto multiple pages to increase ad impressions
happening more often? Slate started doing it recently, even for a second page with one small paragraph.
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Re:Mod parent up (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mod parent up (Score:5, Funny)
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Nice! Especially if "funny" mods increased
... karma.
(... which they don't)
Nearly all right (Score:5, Interesting)
Examples: Red Faction, Quake 4, and too many others
Examples: RTCW, MoH:AA
Examples: HL2, Jedi Knight - Jedi Outcast, Prey*
* = Although the gravity & portal puzzles made a welcome change, they were used as a substitute for jumping puzzles.
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Thou shalt keep the use of crates to a minimum.
-Eric
Where's the bullet point for "fun"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now look at Team Fortress Classic. No other online FPS is as fun and entertaining, for me anyway. And the game is almost 7 years old! TFC has no story, virtually no learning curve, no preset environment, and the graphics aren't that great. It just has balanced classes and some awesome maps (Dustbowl is one greatest FPS maps ever crafted). Red Team and Blue Team just kill each other amid a sea of gibs for no reason...and I love every second of it!
Games need to step back and realize that it's not all about production values and storytelling and graphics (though these things are important). It's about fun and entertainment, too.
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I'm surprised, I've talked to a lot of gamers who were so bored with Doom3 that they turned on God Mode and just went at it to see the end boss.
I did that with Quake4 too. The challenge just stops being fun, and it becomes boring.
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I'm surprised, I've talked to a lot of gamers who were so bored with Doom3 that they turned on God Mode and just went at it to see the end boss.
That was me. I got tired as hell of flipping between a flashlight to see in impossibly dark corners and a gun to kill whatever jumped out of the "monster closet" that passing over some point opened.
I love the first 2 in the Doom series and play Doomsday [doomsdayhq.com] all the time with the high-res packs but Doom3 was a boring waste.
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But Doom 3, after awhile, Godmode just goes on. The game was too damned long and repetitive. The atmosphere is about the only thing it has going for it -- the sound, the lighting, the direction, and the monsters jumping out of walls was pretty awesome, once.
But playing a second time through is only really fun to show people that we have games on Linux, too, and that's getting old -- Beryl is a bit more useful these days.
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One of the best things about "Gears of War" is no retarded jumping around.
Bunny hopping (Score:1)
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Actually, a lot of people would agree with you here. Doom 3 ratings on GameRankings [gamerankings.com] are decent at 88%, but more successf
One sick puppy. (Score:2)
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What a great idea! (Score:2)
What kind of idiot reads Playboy? (Score:2)
And the only value you might get out of Playboy is the old articles by HST.
I'd have to disagree here... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can agree with the writer at places, but one person's set of ideas for what an FPS should be will be completely different to that of others.
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Thing is, I never cared about collecting things. I don't even pick anything up when I play until I get at least to Nightmare difficulty, aside from
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You can have both. (Score:2)
Want hoards of people to kill? Play on Easy, and just grab a tank and let loose. Would be perfect if the cinematics were skippable (although I don't often skip them).
Unfortunately, I haven't played many games that do both well. Probably need to actually start buying some new games...
My biggest annoyance: (Score:2)
It doesn't only affect FPS games either: Neverwinter Nights 2 - even though it is more in a "stop and talk" genre was full of trying-to-be-cinematic-but-not-quite-there cutscenes. The kind that tweak the camera position every time a new sentence begins, and don't really add anything significant to the story.
These are the kinds of things I can't stand! If you are going to jolt me out of playing
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Some are worth buying the game for. (Score:2)
Halo 2: Return to Sender. Also, Helljumpers, and Johnson meeting the Arbiter.
Then there are the cinematics that aren't so amazing that they make me glad I bought the game, but are also fun and entertaining and nothing I'd ever skip, even when they are skippable:
Jak II and 3: Multiple, particularly Jak getting his voice in Jak II, and the end-of-the-series cinematic for Jak 3.
Doom 3: Your first Pinky. One of
Good topic, useless article (Score:5, Insightful)
And here's my favorite game design rule:
In every game there should be a five second goal, a 30 second goal, a 10 minute goal and a 5 hour goal (actual times may vary of course):
5 seconds - see what's behind next corner, shoot an enemy.
30 seconds - get to next floor/building, find key, make something explode, see nice scenery.
10 minutes - get new weapon, encounter new enemy, finish a level.
5 hours - finish the game.
As long as the goals and rewards are enticing enough, it's all fine.
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CS:S -- both hardcore and softcore players -- playing maybe 1 to 3 hours a day
point duly noted.
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I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
The gunships always felt kind of contrived though, and taking them down was nothing like the immense satisfaction you got from blasting the chopper that had been harrassing you through a good chunk of HL1. Or maybe I'm just jaded.
FPS's in general though are getting really quite old. In virtually all of them, you zip around on perfectly flat surfaces at cheetah speeds shooting with perfect accuracy due to your glass-smooth and unfaltering run, with your main interface to the world being your always-visible gun. Games like Gears of War may not be advancing cliched concepts much, but are at least shaking up the stale control mechanics somewhat. Normally I rail against "console-ification" of games, but I can only welcome these developments.
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Yes, you are. Maybe I'm just too young to remember, but it seems to me that the HL1 chopper wasn't as obviously or as persistently harassing. Just a flyby every now and then, dropping a few troops, maybe.
In HL2, the chopper chases you for quite awhile, and you're frequently havin
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Nope, it's in a desert area first, and you're running between shallow caves and trying to guess where it is by ear (which is definitely not easy to do with a chopper). The dam is later, and that's when it starts dropping off troops when it's not shooting at you. And then there's the cliffs, the rocket launcher, and payback. Mmm yeah. Never knew you could shoot it down beforehand though, and I kinda figured the script would jus
The Best FPS was made 10 years ago. Case Closed (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason is simple, the action is fast and well-balanced. I'll talk a bit about both points:
1. Action - playing quake in either of these two mods is like being in a fucking kung fu movie. That's the way it feels. You get in people's faces. You dodge, you rocket jump, you move fast.
When I play Halo or Half Life or (god help us) CS, I feel like the goal of the game is to hide and creep. If you turn a corner and find yourself with a bad guy, you hold down the trigger and spray and pray.
The feeling in quake is just so much better, in part due to the running speed, and in part due to the ability to rocket jump off of walls. I played UT for a while and it was better, but I still felt like I was stuck in molasses.
2. Balance - in quake 3, the weapons are better balanced than any other game I've ever seen. A rocket hit does exactly as much damage as a railgun, which does exactly as much damage as a shotgun (up close) or a nade. What that means is, the guy with the railgun doesn't necessarily own - not if you out smart him. Get in close and your shotgun is more powerful. This also means that switching weapons is a useful tactic.
What I see in other games is that some weapons are clearly better than others. That simply isn't true in quake (unless you are a complete newb). It also means that nobody can camp you in quake (unless you are a complete newb). Case in point. Everyone remembers the map q3ctf4. Play that map (in threewave mode) and let someone get on the railgun platform and start camping. I guarantee you I can kill him. All I have to do is dodge his one round, then jump on the bounce pad. I'll be up on the railgun platform before he can reload and I'll have a shotgun, so now I'll have the advantage.
Take a look at this video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=439291559
Note the speed of the game. It's just crazy. They aren't making games like that anymore. Modern FPSs are slow and boring. Even Quake 4 sucked.
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If you kicked ass on public servers you probably were close to pro-level. I never played Q3 at the pro-level but everytime a "pro" would come onto a pub server I'd end up going neck in neck with him. A friend of a friend of mine who went by the nick "Undertow" was supp
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If you kicked ass on public servers you probably were close to pro-level. I never played Q3 at the pro-level but everytime a "pro" would come onto a pub server I'd end up going neck in neck with him. A friend of a friend of mine who went by the nick "Undertow" was supposedly pro-level and I didn't have any problem keeping up with him.
Sigh, I think every person that has play a multiplayer FPS has a story like this. He probably wasn't trying that hard. Either that or he was a "pro" in the sense that he won 15 bucks once at a local tournament. If either of you or Undertow tried to play anyone like Fatal1ty during his prime Q3A days, you would be hard pressed to get a frag on him.
I was one of those CS pros where I made a few bucks here and there, but we never go too far at the CPL. I rarely tried hard in pubs, but 95% of the time would
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Q2 has a better pace that results in games with a more strategic feel, especially with a small number of players.
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In any case, this was more about single player than multi-player...and Q3s single player was terrible.
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I've been bitching up a storm on the Unreal engine forums, about how EVERY game made with Unreal feels like crap compared to Quake
Molasses? Amen brutha (Score:1)
You might like Lugaru. (Score:2)
Personally, I like most FPSes, and I care more about whether it's fun to play, has a decent plot, etc, than simply raw running speed. UT04 seems a nice balance between Quake3-like insane brawls and actual patience and skill with things like sniping (there are actually headshots, a concept no Quake seems to care about).
Also, did you actually play through Quake 4? I seem to remember that after your Stroggification, you can
Kane will kill him for that (Score:1)
Didn't read the article.. (Score:1)
Pet hates (Score:5, Interesting)
Enemies who shrug off massive damage
It's (borderline) bearable in something like Doom. Who knows how a demon from Hell would react to a shotgun blast to the face? But in a game like Black, which is supposedly 'realistic', it pisses me off. If you take 10 M-16 bullets to the head at a range of four feet, you are dead, and I don't care if you happen to be wearing body armour.
Super-accurate snipers
Black again (though it's not the only example). If you can see some much as a single pixel of a bad guy, not only can they see you, but they can instantly snipe you while you're still bringing up your rifle. Fuck off.
Boss battles
Yes, I know bosses are now an unavoidable part of gaming, however much one despises them. But there's a tendency in FPS games to go for the R-Type approach - namely that some tiny and obscure weak point has to be hit repeatedly with pinpoint accuracy before the boss suffers any kind of damage, then another, then another... Come on! (Even worse are the kind where some weak point has to be hit repeatedly within a time limit, and any error resets everything.) At the very least, offer a brute force alternative - let players just hit them with everything they have. Players who find the weak point can be all smug that they saved some ammo. Everyone else can go 'Well, killed that fucking annoying obstacle. Now I can get on with the game.'
All these things have made me give up on games that I'd enjoyed up to a certain point, simply because the annoyance and frustration factor outweighed the fun. If I'm not enjoying a game, I'll stop playing it. And I sure as hell won't buy the sequel.
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my top tips in no particular order (Score:1, Interesting)
F.E.A.R. wow loads of shiney, then lots of running through empty rooms till you hit the next 'tripwire'. Oh and complete jap film ripoff.
#2 invincible, infinate ammo teammates are boring
HL2 - Ep1. lets try and move her into position so she does most of the firing
#3 running around in the dark with a torch is only fun for about 30 seconds
Doom 3 - HL2 Ep1
#4 Episodic content with no 'wow' moments or different gameplay is a ripoff
compare HL2 Ep1 with HL2. In
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Otherwise agree with most of your points. I like how Halo makes you worry about ammo, but also prevents you building up an arsenal -- you can only carry two weapons. I like how Halo and Halo 2 don't have loading screens.
Invincible teammates... First, I'm fairly sure I've seen my Alyx die in HL2: Ep1. But also, it depends how you play it. You can pull back a bit and let Alyx take care of everything... and you can turn GodMode on.
Or rather... (Score:2)
no (Score:5, Interesting)
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How about a FPS with no fecking guns in it, just once?
I read this statement and almost immediatly thought "How lame would that be?" But after a second thought, I realized that is exactly what Portal [wikipedia.org] will be: an FPS without guns. I am still very excited about Portal, but I didn't even place it in the same category as an FPS, more of an FPP (First Person Puzzler.) I think you're on to something. Innovation is a wonderful thing, and at its core, it is essentially about genre bending. HL1 was great because it brought intresting twists the the FPS genre.
Personal
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How about a FPS with no fecking guns in it, just once?
How about URU, where your not armed. Or the thief series, where your weapons (bow, sword, club) barely work on people who've seen you. Or maybe one of the elder scrolls games, like Oblivion or Morrowind where you've got swords, bows and spells, but you keep them shieved for most of the game. These games don't simply not exist just because you havn't played them and want to bitch about first person games.
The industry is suffering a crippling dearth of innovation and risk-taking, and suggesting that everything has to match up to some prescribed formula as described could not be more damaging for the industry.
My guess is that you havn't read through these "formula" either, if you had, you would know they are
What about Thief? (Score:1)
I still feel that Thief is one of the best games I ever played. Maybe because it was so original and different!
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In any case, the reason why innovative games are not as common is because they are not popular. Everyone bought Zelda while no one bought Okami. You want innovation? Then start buying the games t
Long, unskippable cutscenes (Score:2, Insightful)
The Ten Commandments of FPS Gaming: (Score:1, Insightful)
9: Thou shalt not force the player to watch long-ass cutscenes. F.E.A.R. did this really well. The few cut scenes were short and sweet, and it went one step further by having an "Interactive Cut scene" in the form of the hallucination sequences.
8: Thou shalt not have more than 3 minutes between huge-ass firefights. Any smaller number of gunfights can take place between, but you need a bunch of guys to shoot or it
Not suited for every gamer (Score:3, Insightful)
First off was the idea that you need to always be under pressure. I acknowledge that some people think this makes a game fun. I remember playing a number of multiplayer mods for Quake where you'd get insta-gibbed if you stood still for too long. Yet I don't like this sort of frantic, don't pay attention to what you're doing and don't plan or think, just move around a lot concept. I like to be able to take a slow, methodical approach to the game. If I think there might be enemies nearby then I'm more likely to hold down the walk key... slink around slowly to keep my noise down and my aim steady and spend my time checking out every corner. I'm just about the only person I know who walked most of the time when I played Sonic the Hedgehog for fear of missing something or running into an enemy accidentally.
Related to this is the idea that you always need multiple ways to get somewhere. While I greatly applaud not having a single forced path and giving the player a degree of freedom I find that when misapplied it can be even more crippling. Give me two or three paths to a destination and I'm likely to go a little bit down one path, checking it out, then stop, turn around, and go back to check out the other path. After I'm done with any fights I'll probably wander back around and be certain I checked out everything along both paths. Not only to avoid having missed any powerups or weapons or such, but because I'll feel a bit cheated if I don't. While I like multiple playthroughs of a game (though I'll gladly play a linear game many, many times, just the same as I'll gladly watch a movie or read a book a good dozen or so times) I want to experience everything I possibly can the first time through. If not, I feel like I'm missing out on something. I want to see all the possible content and not miss a thing. The difference comes when you go beyond just two or three possible paths and begin to make it really open: e.g. Grand Theft Auto or other "sandbox" style games. At that point there isn't really a path except the one you make and I don't worry that I missed something by taking the left path over the right. Sure I'll worry a bit that maybe there was a better way. Maybe I could have snuck around in some other manner, but I'm generally ok in believing that I saw what there was and made my own choices.
Finally, the idea that you need to be thrown right into the action buts against my generally laid-back, methodical method of play. I want to slow down in the beginning. Learn about the world and the characters. Get a chance to test out my weapons a bit. Figure out the lay of the land and get a feel for my new persona. Throwing the player right into the thick of things makes me anxious and ill-prepared. It's an unpleasant feeling that makes me cringe and curl up inside. Then again, I'm the sort who always, always reads the entire manual from cover-to-cover before I even load up a game. Not reading the manual is unthinkable. How else do you know how to play it? How do you know what's going on? There's no room for "just learn as you go and fiddle around with things". Maybe, to a degree, in an adventure game where the rule is to explore (although you should still be taught the basic commands and how the parser/control scheme works and have the stage set for you if it isn't done entirely in-game), but that's a special case.
Ultimately this is only "how to make a better FPS for a specific type of fan". Some of the design ideas are solid, but these are far from the maxims they intend to be.
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-Eric
Just one maxim: I shouldn't care about story (Score:2)
my list (Score:2, Interesting)