The First Person Shooter: Slow Evolution or Painful Degeneration

A look at the modern first person shooter and how it has changed in recent years, Has this been for better or worse?

[Cajun Chicken]

I'm honestly slowly going into the camp that regenerative health is the worst thing to happen to FPS games. As much as I like Halo, it's not for every game. I'm especially getting sickened of it in Call of Duty. This is why games like Bioshock do things so right.

I prefer an old fashioned game with medipacks and various armour suits and shards. In fact, I've been having a blast on Quake 2 on the 360 bonus disc of Quake 4 the past few days. I also love Serious Sam which bought back all of that gameplay before it slowly dissipated in the first place.

Maps are less complicated these days and I don't think I've played a major FPS in the past few years that have 'secrets' except obviously the games such as Serious Sam, Painkiller and the rather recent Hard Reset.

It's true about level design too. I've been lost longer in the old labyrinth like maps in the Doom games than most levels in modern FPS series. This is usually because of the repetitive textures, lighting and overall design of rooms and corridors which people would say, the game looks a bit samey or bland these days. Then there's the case of not knowing where elevators or teleport pads have quite taken you. This doesn't happen in many games anymore and that's kind of a shame.

Oddly enough in recent years, I've got this actual kind of thrill of 'being lost' in games such as Dead Space and if you have the right nodes, there are secrets to be found such as schematics, credits, ammo and health packs. Obviously Dead Space is a third person shooter, but I find it follows classic FPS sensibilities more than most modern FPS with objective based missions, and claustrophobic corridors, the occasional open space. Bring on Doom 4.

[Ken22]

*Maps are less complicated these days and I don't think I've played a major FPS in the past few years that have 'secrets' except obviously the games such as Serious Sam, Painkiller and the rather recent Hard Reset.

Exactly.

[deletingthis34675334]

Pretty much this. Shooters nowadays hold your hand through their toughest parts. Checkpoints and regenerative health make the game feel cheap and tacked on. I used to like shooters, but nowadays that has ruined. Even worse when we are currently looking at an over saturated market.

[Ducky]

Regenerating Health has taken out most of the intensity in both FPS and TPS games.

In the past, every firefight mattered because your (virtual) life was on the line. There was a certain sense of achievement when you could take down a room full of baddies while inflicting minimal damage to yourself... and even the smallest encounter could screw you if you took too much damage.
(Yahtzee had a pretty good article about health regen)

With regenerating health, simple combat becomes routine & boring because it carries no serious implications. So now the only thing a shooter can do is wow you with audio/visuals... which is what has happened for the most part.

Still, there are a few games that have oldshcool health systems. Recent examples are Resistance3, and MaxPayne3, along with the already mentioned Bioshock.
Not sure if FarCry3 will have it or not.

[h311rais3r]

Health regen needs a reason. For a game like halo with soldiers in a powered suit design to biometrically keep them alive that repairs their wounds with medical nano machines and various gels it makes sense. In modern shooters it does not. At all.

[humbleopinion]

If you think FPS maps are less complex these days, you are clearly playing the wrong games.
Once the Nostalgia wears off, you come to realize that Doom games were just series of corridors with keys locking doors forcing you to backtrack through the same level 3 or 4 times, and the only reason you got lost was mostly because of very primitive/infant design trends (3D was just starting back then).

Sure, some shooters today are linear with set pieces and scripted events - the CODs and the Half Lifes and whatnot. But on the other hand you get crysis and farcry and ODST and Bioshock and STALKER and Borderlands - all with open world or semi-open world maps and plenty of secrets to find. I don't recall any 90's FPS with maps on this scale or level of complexity (except for Decent perhaps, which was more of a closed maze flight game). If these are the games you like - there are plenty of them around.

[Cajun Chicken]

Nah, sorry. Still think the old ones were better.

[humbleopinion]

That's because you're still playing the wrong games.

[DestinyHeroDoomlord]

I don't blame cod, I blame all the copycats. The well of fps is running dry and before we blink fps will have died out. We can only blame ourselves.

[MysticStrummer]

Slow evolution... because, judging by sales, gamers don't want shooters to evolve.