Incline Celebrating the Death of the Braindead Cinematic Cover Shooter

[Belegarsson]

Quantum Break is actually playable (and somewhat fun) without using cover tbh.

 

[mondblut]

What's taking the place of linear popamoles, open world popamoles?

Open world games where you do the same 4 mission types over and over for 30 hours, plus collect random shit.

Oh yes, I'd love my Daggerfall back!

 

[RNGsus]

I watched a Dawn of War 2 vid by accident today while browsing for DoW 1 mods - I couldn't believe that game had a cover system. I knew the sequels were shit, but didn't know a popamole killed that series.

 

[Ash]

Was this kind of game even popular? Most of them had/have a focus on multiplayer.

T'was, yes. And Gears did indeed have some emphasis on multiplayer, which makes it slightly more forgivable than most of these games despite pioneering/popularising the style, but then you had shit like The Order 1886 and Kane and Lynch which were roughly 5 hour long campaigns of straight cinematics and cover shooting, and that was your lot.
You also had Spec Ops: the Line which made a statement about braindead cover shooters, while featuring braindead cover shooting itself, and therefore being self-defeatist and hypocritical if you give even half a shit about gameplay. Cucked modern pseudo-storytards wouldn't shut up about it and hailed it as Da Next Bioshook Infinaty, and as a result it was quite popular. As ELoG put it, "they charged you 60 bucks for a statement [and 6 hours of shit gameplay to slog though]". It did also have multiplayer but it had balancing or networking issues or some shit, or just, you know, was boring, and it didn't last long.

 

[Ezekiel]

Max Payne 3 was made by Cockstar, though, and it is indeed pure and utter shite.

Despite having too many cutscenes and a few other problems, Max Payne 3 should have been celebrated. Rockstar finally made a shooter that plays well, one of the last good run and gun action games, but most people didn't even notice and went on to buy 80 million copies of the much inferior playing, more boring GTA V. Now all we're gonna get from them is watered down open world games with grindy multiplayer. Even Remedy can't do it anymore. Quantum Break fucking sucked. It had mediocre gameplay with one of the most disruptive, tedious, uninteresting movie stories I've ever watched.

 

[Deathsquid]

Good thing that fad wasn't replaced by something equally terrible or worse.

Oh, right, wait a second, it's about multiplayer shooters with loot crates with shit short cinematic campaigns (if the devs splurged on singleplayer) now.

 

[Infinitron]

Oh, right, wait a second, it's about multiplayer shooters with loot crates

Still better tbh

 

[Deathsquid]

It's all shit.

Edit: What the fuck, why am I getting achievements? "Congratulations, you're one with the hivemind now"?

What next, forum lootcrates with avatars and elite animated signatures?

Fuck.

 

[Jaedar]

Oh, right, wait a second, it's about multiplayer shooters with loot crates

Still better tbh

In the sense that a single one lasts longer so there's less "names to remember to ignore" yes.

In the sense of giving me more games to play no.

I watched a Dawn of War 2 vid by accident today while browsing for DoW 1 mods - I couldn't believe that game had a cover system. I knew the sequels were shit, but didn't know a popamole killed that series.

Dow1 has cover too...

In fact, the only truly bad dow (the third) is the one that didn't have cover, but rather force shields.

Bad game fads come and go, the number of quality releases doesn't really seem to depend on it.

 

[RNGsus]

DoW had bunkers, craters, and fox holes, so yeah there's cover, but it was just a feature on the maps. It wasn't a cover-based system, and DoW 2 is no rts by any stretch. Just saying, there's an actual cover system built into an rts sequel about walking tanks who can shrug off most ordinance. I didn't know the popamole cancer had spread to rts, I thought DoW 2 sucked because there was no base building, management, or much in the way of battles.

 

[Ash]

Bad game fads come and go, the number of quality releases doesn't really seem to depend on it.

Yeaah sorry, that's not the case. Third person shooters were generally-speaking fun and worthwhile in the 90s and rather diverse in style, even though FPS was and always has been the better style. 2000s, there was a bit of shit as to be expected, but the TPS was still going on relatively well...up until Gears of War/X360 decline of gaming as a whole era. Since then, near-EVERYTHING is a shitty cover shooter, meaning slow-paced and realism-based, plays very similarly to one another, and your options are to either get mediocrity or shit because nobody even attempts to do much with the style. I don't expect this to change, this is just a celebration of the death of the very worst form of cover shooter. So, this was what I was getting to: Singleplayer TPS, much like FPS, is near-universally shit now. This isn't just a fad but a staple, and furthermore it absolutely does influence the number of quality releases, especially in the respective genre. Hence why I like approximately 30 third person shooters pre-Gears (1995-2007) and about 4 post (2007-2018). 1995 being approximately when the free camera, behind view control of a humanoid in 3D space became a thing. What was the first, Fade to Black? Wasn't very good but it was a very early attempt, those rarely are.

 

[Ezekiel]

Yeaah sorry, that's not the case. Third person shooters were generally-speaking fun and worthwhile in the 90s and rather diverse in style, even though FPS was and always has been the better style.

If you say so. I would never make a first person shooter if I had the money to do third person.

 

[Ash]

Gameplay differences between the perspectives

First person shooter:

-no camera humping around corners/over cover, allowing you to observe the enemy from complete safety. I think doing this is more bad for gameplay than good. Definitely with competitive shooting or stealth games. It's not too bad in singleplayer though.
-More visceral gunplay, the weapon animating in detail, effects, gore, enemies reactions etc all right in your face.
-Better interactivity. Because the camera is close up without the character's ass in the way, you can make interactivity with the environment more involved, as well as hide shit in the level design more thoroughly.

*minor bonus development cost thing: you don't have to animate the player character
*additional note regarding the games made over the years: while there's been plenty good, very competent TPS (mostly old games on console), hail to the king that is FPS with Doom, build engine games, Quake etc
*Note 3: better immersion potential. Not that relevant to high octane FPS tho.

Third person shooter:

-Better spacial awareness around the backside of the character
-better platforming gameplay accessibility (though imo FP does this just fine anyways).
-??? did I miss something?

*TPS note: you get to see your character, and see how he or she interacts with NPCs better, maybe relate to them on a deeper level as a character...again not that relevant to TPS unless heavy storyfaggotry though.

While I love me some good TPS I'd probably never dev one if I had the money. I'd use third person for things like hack and slash style gameplay but not shooting.

 

[Deathsquid]

Bad game fads come and go, the number of quality releases doesn't really seem to depend on it.

Yeaah sorry, that's not the case. Third person shooters were generally-speaking fun and worthwhile in the 90s and rather diverse in style, even though FPS was and always has been the better style. 2000s, there was a bit of shit as to be expected, but the TPS was still going on relatively well...up until Gears of War/X360 decline of gaming as a whole era. Since then, near-EVERYTHING is a shitty cover shooter, meaning slow-paced and realism-based, plays very similarly to one another, and your options are to either get mediocrity or shit because nobody even attempts to do much with the style. I don't expect this to change, this is just a celebration of the death of the very worst form of cover shooter. So, this was what I was getting to: Singleplayer TPS, much like FPS, is near-universally shit now. This isn't just a fad but a staple, and furthermore it absolutely does influence the number of quality releases, especially in the respective genre. Hence why I like approximately 30 third person shooters pre-Gears (1995-2007) and about 4 post (2007-2018). 1995 being approximately when the free camera, behind view control of a humanoid in 3D space became a thing. What was the first, Fade to Black? Wasn't very good but it was a very early attempt, those rarely are.

Well, you have to realize the reason behind the cover shooter popularity - and the reason it's dying out now (I guess), and that's basically the console controller and the console FOV. I guess now the controllers are generally much better and more responsive (and aim assist is also a lot better), so the console players are getting a fair bit more in terms of fast-paced action games, whether they're FPS or TPS. So, that removes the need of hiding behind chest-high walls.

So it's not REALLY that the audience was sick of it really, they'd have still eaten it up and asked for more, but the devs are a bit less limited with their choices when developing stuff for consoles.

Pretty sure a decade or two from now it'll make the same kind of resurgence as pixellated "retro" indies and all that other stuff.

 

[Ash]

...no it isn't. 3D shooters existed for more than a decade on consoles just fine before the decline era hit and snail pace braindead cover shooters became the norm. And as I explained here way back, PC shooters back in the early to mid 90s were played with the keyboard only, using directional or num keys to aim. That is a vastly inferior method of play than what a PS2 controller was capable of, let alone modern pads, objectively. Yet that didn't mean devs had to make absolute garbo games...just 'cause. You're falsely attributing to controllers you what should be attributing to devs selling out and making piss easy retardo games for the mass market/people who don't like games, as well as the misguided ever increasing desire for realism (also tied to the desire and rise of realistic graphics). You can even see this originating on PC with the military and WW2 shooter boom of the early 2000s, where things slow down quite a bit and game mechanics and level design placed emphasis on realism as opposed to skillful abstract gameplay. This only escalated where PC graphics and realism whoring was at its absolute peak in the mid 2000s, and the FPS was already dead before cover garbage had even been popularised on the console market (by a sellout PC dev unfamiliar with the console market no less -- EPIC Mega decline).

this is what a console shooter used to look like, pre-decline. Turok is a 90s classic almost rivalling the PC greats. I'd advise you to expand your FPS knowledge, as you're missing out.

 

[Deathsquid]

...no it isn't. 3D shooters existed for more than a decade on consoles just fine before the decline era hit and snail pace braindead cover shooters became the norm. And as I explained here way back, PC shooters back in the early to mid 90s were played with the keyboard only, using directional or num keys to aim. That is a vastly inferior method of play than what a PS2 controller was capable of, let alone modern pads, objectively. Yet that didn't mean devs had to make absolute garbo games...just 'cause. You're falsely attributing to controllers you what should be attributing to devs selling out and making piss easy retardo games for the mass market/people who don't like games, as well as the ever increasing desire for realism (also tied to the desire and rise of realistic graphics).

Um, well, yes, but seriously, what the fuck did you expect? For gaming to remain a bastion of the hardcore nerd? The market goddamned boomed after the games and their controls were dumbed and slowed the fuck down. Of course those companies would sell out and make it as dumb as possible. And yeah, the audience is really different.

Also, good thing you bring up early to mid 90ies shooters as they kinda ran with vertical aim assists for a very long time, a great example being Doom, where you just need to point at that demon at the higher ground and the Marine takes aim vertically on his own. All the "modern" consoles needed to iron out the kinks with the aim assists for a pretty long time by the looks of it. From what I've seen aim assists these days are pretty good and subtle and make the player think that the player is actually good, while half of the work is actually done by the game itself. Eh, yay?

You can even see this originating on PC with the military and WW2 shooter boom of the early 2000s, where things slow down quite a bit and game mechanics and level design placed emphasis on realism as opposed to skillful abstract gameplay. This only escalated where PC graphics and realism whoring was at its absolute peak in the mid 2000s, and the FPS was already dead before cover garbage had even been popularised on the console market (by a sellout PC dev unfamiliar with the console market no less -- EPIC Mega decline).

Military/WW2 games popularized a completely different kind of a shooter mechanic, the hitscan damage model, which brings its own can of worms. It also became very popular because it promoted deceptively quick gameplay, required little effort on creative weapon design, and, well, also ended up being a major reason behind cover mechanics since you needed some way to protect yourself from the hitscan now that you couldn't dodge the projectiles. And of course these games were generally brought in by the behemoths of the gaming market, so of COURSE everyone wanted to emulate their success, thus just adding more and more shitty design decisions and perpetuating it ad nauseam.

It's a bit of a perfect storm of shitty, really. Mind you, I don't disagree with the core of your message, I'm just saying that "historically" it makes sense, as unfortunate as it may be.

 

[Ezekiel]

Gameplay differences between the perspectives

First person shooter:

-no camera humping around corners/over cover, allowing you to observe the enemy from complete safety. I think doing this is more bad for gameplay than good. Definitely with competitive shooting or stealth games. It's not too bad in singleplayer though.

Everyone in the multiplayer has that advantage, though. It doesn't make the game unfair.

-More visceral gunplay, the weapon animating in detail, effects, gore, enemies reactions etc all right in your face.

Yeah, with a zoomed in field of view that gives you poor spacial awareness and a big gun in the lower right that cuts off more of your view. I know the character near the middle of the screen also cuts off your view, but it's honestly not as bad as those two factors combined. I get a good enough view of all that stuff you mentioned in third person, but I also get to see how MY character reacts and animates. I get to see them dance, roll, slide and throw themselves through the hellfire of bullets and debris, use their whole body as they melee enemies, and get thrown around by explosions.

-Better interactivity. Because the camera is close up without the character's ass in the way, you can make interactivity with the environment more involved, as well as hide shit in the level design more thoroughly.

Not sure what kind of environmental interaction you're talking about. I don't want to be forced to interact with little things in the environment so much that I'm gonna get bored not killing anyone. The new Prey bored me. I definitely would want my shooter to be a purer kind of action game, like the Max Payne series. But, there's some decent environmental interactivity in the older Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell games.

*minor bonus development cost thing: you don't have to animate the player character

Like I said, I would never make a first person shooter IF I HAD THE MONEY to do third person.

*additional note regarding the games made over the years: while there's been plenty good, very competent TPS (mostly old games on console), hail to the king that is FPS with Doom, build engine games, Quake etc
*Note 3: better immersion potential. Not that relevant to high octane FPS tho.

I find third person potentially more immersive. Holding the gun always up in your arms, unable to move your head/eyes without making a full body turn, isn't very believable to me. And, at least in third person, you have a visual of the body that you can't feel in first person view.

Some of my favorite games are in first person. I don't hate the perspective. I just wouldn't want to make a game like that.

 

[Ash]

Aim assist on consoles is often the same as PC: entirely optional. The exception is for competitive multiplayer, where it's typically (but not always) forced on. I don't agree with that convention but the pad is no mouse and it's done so any old player can jump in and play and feel like they're awsum, so whatever. Generally it's best to not bother with competitive multiplayer on consoles. Well, not modern shooters period.

Military/WW2 games popularized a completely different kind of a shooter mechanic, the hitscan damage model, which brings its own can of worms. It also became very popular because it promoted deceptively quick gameplay, required little effort on creative weapon design, and, well, also ended up being a major reason behind cover mechanics since you needed some way to protect yourself from the hitscan now that you couldn't dodge the projectiles. And of course these games were generally brought in by the behemoths of the gaming market, so of COURSE everyone wanted to emulate their success, thus just adding more and more shitty design decisions and perpetuating it ad nauseam.

The military shooter boom was such decline, singleplayer-wise.

 

[Deathsquid]

The military shooter boom was such decline, singleplayer-wise.

Multiplayer-wise too, really, and attributed to pretty much putting the arena shooter into a coma for over a decade. Well, that, and some certain company choosing to make cinematic cover shooter bro-op EPIC GAMES instead of continuing to work on their arena FPS. Assholes.

 

[DemonKing]

I kind of like retarded third-person cover based cinematic games - they're perfect for consoles in that you can sit back and chill on the couch while you play.

PC Master Race is still best for FPS, CRPGs and RTS games, of course.

 

[Ash]

It doesn't make the game unfair.

In competitive multiplayer, nope. But it does encourage watching your enemy, hiding, waiting until they get in an engagement or turn their back, then whacking that mole while they're distracted, then hiding again. Dirty shit like that. But it is ultimately a small difference in shooters. Matters a lot more in stealth games though.

Not sure what kind of environmental interaction you're talking about. I don't want to be forced to interact with little things in the environment so much that I'm gonna get bored not killing anyone. The new Prey bored me. I definitely would want my shooter to be a purer kind of action game, like the Max Payne series. But, there's some decent environmental interactivity in the older Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell games.

See: Duke Nukem 3D. No third person behind view game has emulated even that level of interactivity, where you could crouch down and stick your finger in a tiny plug socket hidden behind some other object in the corner of the room. Well, bethesda games have optional third person, but nobody with sense uses it because it makes interactivity very awkward and it's easy to overlook small objects.

 

[Roguey]

You can interact with more things in Hitman than Duke 3D.

 

[Ash]

All sizable, obvious objects where interact prompts appear on the screen merely when you walk in their vicinity.

Go play New Vegas in third person from start to finish. You won't last/will notice the disadvantages.

I kind of like retarded third-person cover based cinematic games - they're perfect for consoles in that you can sit back and chill on the couch while you play.

You can do that with games that aren't retarded and shit too. Or just plug your PC or laptop into your TV via HDMI and play something like Doom, even with a controller for extra chill factor.

 

[Cross]

...no it isn't. 3D shooters existed for more than a decade on consoles just fine

They existed, but they didn't become a dominant genre on consoles until they adopted a 2-weapon limit, slower movement speed, some form of regenerating health, iron sights and all the staples of the modern FPS. You don't really think that's just a coincidence?

You can even see this originating on PC with the military and WW2 shooter boom of the early 2000s

Which games are you referring to?

Medal of Honor, arguably the precursor to the cinematic WW2 FPS, launched on the PS1 in the late 90's. It was developed by Dreamworks, a studio founded by Steven Spielberg.

Call of Duty first launched on the PC. Aaccording to Wikipedia, its developer Infinity Ward was formed by people who had worked on the Medal of Honor series. So while it may have technically started out as a PC FPS, it was always a console FPS in spirit.

Though this argument makes very little sense. The sales of console games utterly dwarf the sales of PC games, so much so that until recently many console developers didn't even bother to port their FPS games to PC, so how could PC games be trendsetters for consoles?

 

[Ash]

"Anyway, this argument makes very little sense. Console games completely dwarf the sales of PC games, so much so that until recently many developers didn't even bother to port their FPS games to PC, so how could PC games be trendsetters for consoles?"

You're thinking modern. Back in the 90s and early-mid 2000s PC dominated the shooting scene, and absolutely was the trend setter. Or did you forget Doom, Doom 3, Half Life, Half Life 2, Crysis etc? Console shooters used to follow PC design trends for the most part, and went through the same transitions. Most 90s console FPS are glorious doom/duke/quake clones, for instance.
The consoles only became dominant over the shooter in the mid-late 2000s, as PC developers abandoned the PC market en masse and started making shitty shooters on the consoles, throwing shit at the wall until it stuck (Halo, Gears, Pariah, Invisible War, military shooter x y and z etc).
You mentioned Medal of Honor, for instance...that sold 200,000 copies. Not very many. Quake sold 1.8 million. Half Life 2 sold 6.5 million+ on PC not including steam sales. The most influential console shooter at the time was Halo (decline), and a lot of that it owed to being bundled with the xbox on release and marketed the absolute crap out of...by Microsoft. Bungie? Mac devs. Epic games? Windows devs. Infinity Ward? windows devs. Shooter decline was an inside job and some tards don't even see the betrayal. the PC had the power, but the devs gave it away when they abandoned it. They didn't have to make ultra-banal shit boring shooters when they did it, though. That's what annoys me more than the abandonment.

Gears of War is a third-person shooter game, with its core concepts being derived from Resident Evil 4's "over the shoulder" perspective, Kill Switch's cover system, and Bionic Commando's swinging action akin to moving between points of cover.

What are you trying to prove? Killswitch wasn't a popular game. It was a pile of crap that was ignored. even the critics had some standards back then and didn't take to it to any notable degree (aggregate score: 78.34%. Not very notable). It was also released 2005 or so. As I said, The FPS in terms of old school quality was already very much dead by then. TPS was still doing ok, then it all changed when Gears became a hit, shortly after every TPS essentially became it and it was a trend the PC did not set, but rather sellout PC devs aggressively trying to make bank initiated (which console devs followed or were just as guilty of).

They existed, but they didn't become a dominant genre on consoles until they adopted a 2-weapon limit, slower movement speed, some form of regenerating health, iron sights and all the staples of the modern FPS. You don't really think that's just a coincidence?

Sigh. What dumb shit are you trying to argue that it is proof of?

It's not a coincidence, no: that shit caters to the mass market. You do realise it does the exact same on PC too? it is dominating, no shortage of PC tards eating it all up. Selling more than Duke Nukem and Quake ever did. Shit modern games get no shortage of sales on steam. They're all over the charts, silly. Ya know why? Mouse and keyboard simply HAS to have regenerating health etc hurr durr. /s :roll of the eyes:

anyhow, not interested in arguing with people that don't know their gaming history yet again, or have everything to say about the corner of a market they don't know much about!