OpEd--FPS Conventions that Need to Die
- November 02, 2005 20:28 PM PST
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Years after the introduction of id's original Wolfenstein, nagging anachronisms linger in the increasingly staid genre.
"All FPS games look the same," said an editor of a major Japanese publication, baffled at the North American obsession with first-person shooter games. "They always just show your arm and gun and have you blast stuff."While the fun factor of Halo 2 may be lost on some Japanese audiences, he had a point. Despite the increasingly cryptic lexical soup of new graphics effects (HDR, sub-surface scattering, anisotropic filtering), hyped physics engines and flailing rag dolls, the FPS fundamentals remain locked in a late-90s mentality. The reactionary design philosophy can be summed up in two words: exploding barrels. After all the years that have passed since the original shareware Doom, games still rely on contrived fireballs masquerading as "interactive environments."
Quake 4 in particular exemplifies this uncreative mindset. Using the Doom 3 engine as a visual crutch to wow consumers with ambient soft shadows, the game nevertheless thrust gamers into the same metallic rat maze as Doom 3. In addition, it committed unspoken gaming sins that prevented Raven's prodigal son from becoming a truly groundbreaking hit. Adding insult to injury, an unknown franchise by name of F.E.A.R. stole the mulitplayer spotlight, becoming the deathmatch game of choice for the year. Where did Quake 4 go wrong?
1) Weapons should never be weak. Sounds like a no-brainer, but it seems to be the hardest principle to follow for developers. Oddly enough, when the genre split into two sub-genres (real-world vs. fantasy), the opposite happened from what you'd expect. Why does Counter-Strike's AK-47 mow down opponents quicker than the pea shooter that is Quake 4's Hyperblaster? Sure the Dark Matter Gun sucks enemies into an inescapable vortex, but a few shots from an MP5 in a "realistic" shooter get the job done quicker. Or what about Quake 4's rocket launcher, which has the effective splash radius of a water balloon, compared with the devastating crunch of Return to Castle Wolfenstein's old Panzerfaust? Even Serious Sam II lacks a serious arsenal punch. O where art thou, Concussion Rifle?
2) Weapons should never become obsolete. Despite its fantastically high-tech weaponry, Quake 4 guns quickly get obsolete in the linear single-player trudge. Get the assault rifle and that puny pistol you start out with never gets touched again. Find a Hyperblaster and that assault rifle only becomes a backup weapon. In the end, you only have a handful of weapons worth using--making the nine-weapon selection superfluous. Devs, please make each weapon useful throughout the game--look at F.E.A.R. and its awesome weapons for reference. Or when I pick up an MP5, the gun better serve some purpose even after an M60 appears on the table--such as Far Cry.
3) It's an FPS, not a vehicular shooter. If I want to ride a mini-van with a mounted mini-gun, I'd play Twisted Metal. If I want to Takedown other cars, I'd play Burnout. Please don't subject gamers to hours of forced vehicular combat (if you haven't noticed, copying Halo 2 won't necessarily earn you millions). Half-Life 2, while an awesome game, bogged gamers down with one buggy-scene too many. Nothing's more anti-climactic than finishing a harrowing firefight and having to get into a stodgy raft with a gigantic propeller for an engine.
4) Environments should be interactive--no, really. This is a topic butchered to death by marketing departments, but let's face it: aside from Half-Life 2, environments have always been static in FPS games. You'd think that one of those millions of pipes in Doom 3 would be explosive, or shoot out scalding steam. Or shooting Borg--er, Strogg-embedded machinery in Quake 4 would disable some critical system that'd demolish half the complex. Yet, squirming half-torso bodies reflect explosive rounds without a scratch. But hey look, explosive barrels! And color-coded red for your convenience, too.
5) The protagonist is not a one-armed ghost. It's a minor issue, but one that peeves me nonetheless: why do you never have feet, legs ...or sometimes even a left arm in an FPS? There are only a couple exceptions to this--Halo 2 and Chronicles of Riddick come to mind--but for the overwhelming majority of games, all you see is the gun and your right arm. And please, I'm tired of that bizzare perspective where the alter ego's arm is stuck to his chin. When I look down, I should see my feet, my lower torso, not just a shadow of my ghostly form. Make the player's body a relevant part of the game. Something like blood temporarily reddening your vision when getting headshot, seeing your alter ego grasp your shoulder when injured, or seeing your legs hobble as you are critically injured. The main reason why "all shooters look the same" is that games have consistently failed to integrate the most central character--the alter egos themselves--into the game.
What franchise will be the new Half-Life of FPS games? Nothing big's on the horizon, but you can always hold out for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Duke Nukem Forever.
Stroggified? Matthew Kane in his true in-game form.
