First Person Shooter Thread

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Post anything related to first person shooter games.

Post your favorite games,
The worst games you've played,
Whether or not you're good at them, etc.

The Marathon trilogy. I am an old veteran of those games. Plus their was a follow-up called Rubicon. I love the storyline. Never get tired of it.

I also played Descent II and Doom II. Then there was Hexen.

Those were old computer games.

I also played Star Wars Battlefront and its sequel, although the sequel is consider more of a third-person shooter game.

This is by far my favorite genre of video games. I generally prefer the modern story based corridor shooters. I actually think my fascination with nazis started by playing Wolfenstein 3d When I was around 6 years old.

Lately my go-to FPS is Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. It has an element of unpredictability that adds a lot of replay value. The player might be killed in one hit, or it might take six. Also the sound effects are tremendous; a small fight, say ten vs ten with two tanks, feels like the battle of Stalingrad.
However the random element does not always work in favor of the game, as I have experienced some truly hilarious AI fails, both enemy and allied.

Doom, Doom 2, Hexen, Wolfenstein.... any of those older ones from that wonderful era.

Nowadays? Bleh. I love the "run and gun" style of the older games, dashing out with a chaingun or rocket launcher and dodging like 50 fireballs while fighting whatever. I *dont* like the "hide and snipe" style of modern ones, which I find fantastically boring. It doesnt feel like an actual fight, it feels like Whack-A-Mole, except that everyone is a mole trying to hit everyone else.

Also: Story stuff. Hate it in modern games. All of it. Doom had it right: MONSTERS IN FACILITIES, enter the gates of Hell and shoot at them in mazes to stop them! and that was all it needed. None of these long-winded talky bits or flashy scenes. Just solid gameplay and design. That didnt make me have to wait. Hexen was the same, it could be summed up with "Korax here is a jerk, and he's doing bad things, go and clobber him with a variety of rather odd weapons and gizmos, also here's a million puzzles in your way". Much better stories, those.

I actually find those older fps games boring. I can still play them, I just get bored a lot faster. Also I hate getting stuck wandering around after I killed everything looking for a key or passage I missed. I used to spend hours wandering around doom levels just looking for things.

One of the main things I like about modern shooters is iron sights and head shots. With games like Metro and the new Wolfenstein I like using a silenced pistol to take out most enemies with a single headshot. Even when there's lot of enemies running around I still like using the pistol. I hate wasting ammo, even when there is plenty laying around.

Very different tastes, then, sounds like. I cant stand headshot mechanics myself. INSTANT BOREDOM. It's like, oh, good, an enemy that didnt fight back.... so challenging. Ugh. That's a huge part of why I dont like "hide & snipe", because there's no real fight most of the time. Point, shoot, dead, win, onward... feh. I'm usually tired of it after about 2 minutes. It's also why I dont play multiplayer shooters (first or third person).... with the one and only exception of Splatoon, since it lacks that mechanic. You can still one-shot opponents with "sniper" guns in that, but there's no true hiding in it, as those guns ALWAYS project a visible beam in front of them and they need time to charge. No "hit button to win", as I sometimes call it.

Though, I dont waste ammo myself either even in older games. I know alot of people tend to when playing Doom and all those but if you're playing on higher difficulties as I do, you need to CONSERVE your ammo, because you're going to need it. Aiming is important! Particularly in something like Hexen VS Doom as Hexen is MUCH harder in alot of ways (and one of those ways is ammo limits).

Though it also sounds like we have VERY different playing styles; "silenced pistol" to me sounds like you do alot of stealth stuff, whereas me.... yeah, I'm the opposite of stealth. My first instinct in, well, basically any game is to just charge directly at whatever seems to maybe possibly be a threat. Doesnt matter what it is, I'm going to run at it. Thusly I've never understood the appeal of stealth. It makes me have to wait.

Of course there WERE stealth-focused games even way back when, but that's a whole other topic (that I dont know much about, mostly I only am aware of the "Thief" series).

I actually don't like stealth games a lot of the time because if you're seen in those games it's almost a guaranteed game over. I like the shooting part and I don't care all that much if I'm spotted. And I don't like the waiting either.

It actually tends to be the more modern games where ammo conservation doesn't really matter. You can usually find more on just about every enemy you kill not to mention all that I laying around. It's more of an artificial constraint on my part. It bother me when I use more than I should because I feel like I can do better. The challenge for me is to see how fast and efficiently I can clear an area. Oh and I try to minimize all friendly npc casualties.

Even though I prefer newer shooters I will always have a place for Doom and Wolfenstein. I've been playing those games for as long as I can remember and all of the textures, sounds and music always give me that pleasant nostalgic feeling.

And Misery, have you played Painkiller? I'm curious on what you think of it as it's more of that run and gun style.

I've played about 25 FPS games (and completed them all!).

First experiences were Gloom and Alien Breed 3D on a little-known console called the CD32 in 1995. The most 'recent' games I've played are the 'Episode' expansions to Half Life 2 on the PS3.

I'm equally a fan of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy stuff (eg Doom, Hexen, Halo, etc) and the 'realistic' warfare games like MoH and Call of Duty. Puzzles are okay in moderation, but it's annoying when they're too prevalent and hold up the action too much (the opening couple of levels of Half Life 2, Episode One being a good example).

I tend to play these games on the higher difficulty settings for the challenge, and one of my bugbears is the number of people who like to claim that games with 30 or so levels like Doom or Unreal take 8-10 hours to complete (30-60 hours more likely). The most stupendous example of this sort of thing is exemplified by the 'Par' times given at the end of the original Doom levels - 1 minute 30 seconds, what on earth is that about????!?

I also like the option to save within a level, which seems to be the norm these days. I remember having to restart some of the tougher levels in Medal of Honor Frontline at least 20 times, as this option wasn't available in some games of that era.

I'd like more FPS titles that require you to keep moving and keep shooting during boss fights rather than the overuse of hide and cover then shoot.

Being a child of the 1980s I'm a massive fan of the old classics (Wolfenstein, Doom, Heretic, Descent, Blake Stone, etc). I can tolerate modern FPS games though I tend to dislike the military FPS like Call of Duty. All in all I feel level design has gotten lazy in a lot of modern FPS. In older games there was plenty to explore and discover, it wasn't just about blowing things' heads off. In most modern games it's move from one checkpoint to the next and then move onto the next level.

FPS games I enjoy? Hmmm.

Doom, Doom 2, Heretic, Hexen
Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood
Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3 Arena, Quake 4
Doom 3, Prey
Wolfenstein 2009, Wolfenstein: The New Order
Rage
Bulletstorm
Serious Sam The First and Second Encounter
F.E.A.R., F.E.A.R. 2
Deus Ex (admittedly debatable whether it's an FPS)
Shadow Warrior 2013 (admittedly I spend a lot more time using the sword than shooting)

That's what I can think of off the top of my head right now.

EDIT: Somehow I forgot Halo, lol. Halo: CE is pretty neat. Don't know about the others, haven't played them.

I can beat Ultimate Doom on Ultra-Violence in about six hours, and I'm just taking my time. Watch speed runs and you'll see just how crazy fast some people can get through those levels.

I am a major Battlefield fan, and I can't recall how many hours I've spent sniping other snipers on Gulf of Oman in Battlefield 2.

Other games I like are:

- Metro 2033/Metro: Last Light
- Alien Versus Predator (The later games just got worse and worse, though)
- Duke Nukem 3D (played a lot of this in High School)
- Rise of the Triad
- Heretic/Hexen
- Dishonored
- Unreal Tournament
- The Half-Life games
- Far Cry 1 & 3 (Far Cry 2 is boring, Far Cry 4 is - with the exception of the villain - completely unoriginal)
- Wolfenstein (all of them)
- Dark Forces
- Counter-Strike

FPS games I found underwhelming:

- The Bioshock games (too much emphasis on graphics, not enough on game-play)
- Any FPS game optimized for consoles (Battlefield: Bad Company, Call of Duty, Halo etc.)
- The Doom games (Never got the hype about these. Wolfenstein = more original. Duke Nukem 3D = more fun)

I'm a bit conflicted about Borderlands. It has a lot of really cool features, but the game is clearly focused on Co-Op gameplay, which I tend to dislike.

I don't like most modern shooters, but I do love being able to sneak and stealth around, like in the Thief games, just the challenge of trying to get away with everything without being spotted. Love trying to snipe or backstab in games like STALKER (which isn't very easy, especially unpatched), or backstab in RtCW, or trying to get the Silent Assassin ratings in the Hitman games (except for the first Hitman which was basically a murder sim).

I can see how it might be possible to complete even a large, tough level of Doom in a few minutes, if one has played it a few times and familiarised oneself with its layout, location of enemies, etc. But I suspect that most players, however capable, will spend at least an hour or so on their first attempt at such a level just looking for keys, switches, and pickups, and generally trying to find their way around. Then one has to formulate strategies for dealing with the tougher enemies, which in my experience often takes several attempts.

I've watched various 'speedruns' on YouTube, and while they're undoubtedly pretty impressive from a technical point of view or as party pieces, I fail to see the point of them beyond that.