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Decline Sell me a First-Person Shooter.

Tavar

Cipher
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RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In
Try Bulletstorm. It's pure fun with some cool ideas with only the two weapon limit and the dumb story as downsides.

In some ways, I thought the dumb story was an upside.
Yes, it straddles the fence between "so dumb it's good" and "so dumb it's terrible". The lady threatening to "kill your dick" certainly made me smile.
Anyway, I just realized I forgot one recommendation Blood. Get the Fresh Supply version from GoG and just have some fun. Using flare guns and dynamite on cultist is great fun for the whole family.
 

Ash

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Oct 16, 2015
Messages
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K, rated shit.

:troll:
I do believe I was the first to recommend AD in this thread.

The mod is top quality stuff, though I wish it didn't rob your arsenal constantly and was designed with standard game design principles like difficulty curve and such in mind. But that's OK. It works....for the most part.
 
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JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
The mod is top quality stuff, though I wish it didn't rob your arsenal constantly and was designed with standard game design principles like difficulty curve and such in mind. But that's OK. It works....for the most part.

I think the shotgun start design is because it's essentially a giant mapjam with different mappers contributing their own individually designed maps, rather than a small team making a campaign.

Works well enough for me as I'm used to playing Quake mapjams. Even the level selection method is the same.
 

Morenatsu.

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System Shock is not an adventure game, that's just inane to claim.
It's an FPS that's an adventure game. I mean, Azrael's Tear is essentially the exact same thing without combat (and in fact may even have less adventuring than System Shock), so how do you explain that? And from the other perspective, there aren't really any other FPSes that compare in that regard, even counting SS2 and Deus Ex. To me, the appeal of SS1 and Torment is very similar to that of adventure games, despite normally being considered to belong to different genres.

System Shock is every genre. Genrefluid? Non-genrary. Androgenrous. Cyborg attack helicopter, etc.
 

Morenatsu.

Liturgist
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I'm sorry, but I find most custom maps to be boring as shit. Would much prefer normally paced episodes or total conversions over this mediocre in-between of overly long maps filled with filler because big and complex construction = level design (nevermind that the actual navigation and encounters are always banalshitboring).
 
Joined
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Genuinely surprised to see so many recommendations for Far Cry 1. Don't get me wrong, a full third of that game is an absolute masterpiece, but another third of it is merely okay, and the rest of it is complete and total dogshit. It's impressively dissociative design.
 

schru

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luj1 said:

People who rate this "no" or "disagree" either don't know what they're missing or have bad taste.
I disagree because it does not really feel like old school shooters. I played through the entire map pack and one of those seasonal expansions, and while the maps were very impressive visually and in terms of the inventiveness of the architecture, I did not enjoy the gameplay. Arcane Dimensions replaces Quake's tight conjunction of enemy placement and level design (especially all the dynamic parts), which always maintained a very nice, fast-paced flow, with excessive enemy numbers, tedious arenas that don't fit well in Quake, and added and modified enemy variants which are meant to make things more difficult and complex, but just end up spoiling the excellent balance of the original game. Quake did not have very bullet-spongy enemies, most of the combat felt quite rapid and intense, but in AD this is replaced by awkward running in circles and battles of attrition due to the increased health of some of the new enemy types.

The elaborate level design seems very exciting at first, but much of the time the player is just nudged along specific paths, coiling round each other in a way that appears complicated, but which has more to do with presentation than gameplay. Those levels that do eventually open up several complex neighbouring segments tend to do so late, which might at most confuse the player a little when searching for a key or switch necessary to finish things off, but it never feels like the kind of interesting complexity of some base or a dungeon you can explore like in certain old first-person games that had such a thing.

And the projectile-based shot-gun is terrible.
 
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Vatnik Wumao
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The only good game in the franchise

I though FC2 was supposed to be decent too? It looks interesting on paper, anyway. I was planning on playing it soon.


FC2 is incredibly tedious because of a number of stupid design decisions. Respawning guard posts. Then the malaria mechanic which at first gives the impression of constant danger, then you realize that its linked to plot progression and used to pad the game out. The merc buddies are all interchangeable and forgettable.
 

flyingjohn

Arcane
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May 14, 2012
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2,945
Play fear.
If the first firefight with slowmo does nothing for you then i suggest giving up on fps and playing barbie mystery detective.
Or you could play the looter shooter borderlands.It is prestigious enough to be covered in a codex approved book about rpg's.

Seriously,fear ticks all the boxes.
It is not frantic but also not slow enough to be considered tactical.
The pacing is quite good. Plenty of quiet moments with combat appearing just when you need it.
The best audio/visual feedback in any fps.Little details everywhere.
Add a pretty good ai to the mix and you have a great fps.
The only negative thing is bland level design,but that wasn't a requirement anyway.

Kool aid video:
 

Sarathiour

Cipher
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Jun 7, 2020
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Far cry2 is interesting in a sense that is a clear milestone of ubisoft decline. It was perhaps the first big FPS to try the now infamous "open-world" approach, and consoltard mechanics leaking in the franchise : mallet hunting, collectible and com tower for extra missions. You can choose between red and blue for which faction you will go first, which has absolutely no effect whatsoever, because you will be forced to work for both sides, and you will be shoot on sight regardless. There is 2 choices in the whole game, and you will only get a different event for each.
I think the game did two good things : depicted random african country as an absolute shithole and fire propagation (no idea if it's realist or not, i never worked with an african warlord for the countrol of malaria twon IRL) can be used sometimes as a spicy two-edged tactics.

I checked the list of finished game, some obvious call like FEAR and Half-life were already on it.

Anyways, here is a few that were not listed by anyone so far in this thread:
-Dark Messiah of M&M, nice twist from the classic FPS approach
-Serious Sam first and second encounter, quite fun and quality level design, even if the huge number of trap and surprise attack will piss of number of people.
-Republic commando is a short pseudo-tactical game set into the SW franchise, it can be worth the ride if you enjoy the setting.
-Try SWAT 4 if you want the real deal regarding tactical fps.
 
Joined
Mar 18, 2009
Messages
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Kool aid video:


And the action looks even better with slow mo post process effects disabled. Fucking F.E.A.R 2 not only had much uglier slow mo effects it also wouldn't let me disable them, on top of everything else that made it shit.
 

Silverfish

Arbiter
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Dec 4, 2019
Messages
3,066
Battlefield 1.

- WW1 isn't as oversaturated as WW2 or Modern day / Islamistan.
- Campaign is 4 or 5 fairly short, unrelated stories that can be played in any order.
- "Story" has the depth of a Michael Bay movie, but isn't nearly as overwrought as most WW2 "muh greatest generation, saviors of all time and space" nonsense.
- Level design is surprisingly open in a couple of the campaigns. The Swiss Alps levels are a particular standout. It ain't Deus Ex or anything, but it's not just gray hallways for 10 hours either.
 

schru

Arcane
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Feb 27, 2015
Messages
1,131
Zombra said:
My ideal shooter will be often stressful but rarely frantic, with a confident, measured pace, plenty of quiet moments, and excellent audio/visual feedback from the combat, like solid booms from the guns and the satisfying ping of an ejected clip. You know what I'm talking about.

...

Edit: additional notes:
In general, I don't have the patience to explore and work with mods. If the game isn't good vanilla it will have a significantly reduced chance I will want to play it.

Also I am not especially looking for an "old school" shooter experience, games do not get bonus points for being old. Between a good new game and a good old game, I would probably rather try something newer first.
Given the conditions you set, I suppose old school shooters don't often involve very diversified pacing, the way more tightly-scripted shooters later on did, but I would still recommend giving them a serious try because, contrary to the appearances, the way they flow is very good and doesn't get tiresome. That being said, here's a list of what I've played and liked; the selection is not nostalgia-driven as I got into all those older titles only in the last several years. I've included only the titles which I did not see on your list.

I'll place an asterisk before strong recommendations.


* Doom (Ultimate Doom) – I really feel that this is the best FPS ever: satisfying weapons, excellent flow and rhythm to the combat, good level design, great music; I think the new release by Bethesda includes SC-55 MIDI recordings, which removes the need for other source ports;

Doom II – adds a few new elements, but it's more like an expansion than an entirely new game; it mainly focuses on more tricky level design;

John Romero's ‘Tech Gone Bad’ and ‘Phobos Mission Control’ maps released in 2016 are very good, and then his more recent stand-alone episode for Doom called Sigil (use the software renderer in the source port when playing these, otherwise the lighting will look completely wrong);
Star Wars: Dark Forces – good atmosphere, faithful to the old films, very nice level design, and the combat is reasonably satisfying, if rather simplistic; SC VA can supply adequate rendition of the MIDI music;

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II – the combat stays fairly simple, with the addition of light sabre duels, and the level design continues to be very expansive and offer fun exploration; there is a problem with the way music tracks are played on modern systems, even in the GOG and Steam releases, so this needs to be looked into before playing;

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith – more of the above, with a somewhat questionable finale;
* Quake – Id's second masterpiece: great flow, combat, monsters, weapons, level design, music, and atmosphere;

Quake II – enjoyable enough for what it is, despite being quite unlike the first instalment and the combat being too easy; Id's touch is still evident in the overall quality;
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter – a simple shooter originally made for Nintendo 64; its main point of interest is the steady running pace the player is encouraged to maintain throughout; warning: Night Dive's more recent release has reduced level complexity;

* Shadow Warrior (1997) – a de facto successor to Duke Nukem 3D, since it's based on the same engine and made by the same people; enjoyable but trickier combat, nice atmosphere, and again an enjoyable sense of humour;

Shadow Warrior: Wanton Destruction – a fun expansion pack with nice levels;​

* Blood – also made on Duke's engine and following a similar formula with enjoyable twists; nice style and again a memorable protagonist; developed by Monolith which went on to make F.E.A.R.; Blood: Fresh Supply by Night Dive does not change the contents of the game;

* Unreal – it starts out rather slow and unimpressive in terms of combat, but the enemies become more challenging later and the arsenal the player is given includes some all-time classics like the flak cannon; the level design is quite impressive and the visuals look excellent to this day, just remember that there's a certain setting that must be disabled, which I wrote about in response to Lady Error;

Unreal Tournament 2004 – the single-player campaign is not as good as in the first one, but it's still enjoyable enough (except for some modes) to check it out;
* Sin – another one of the greats, with more emphasis on set pieces in a manner not too different from Half-Life; the characters and progression through very diverse locations adds a lot to the sense of it being like a comic book or a silly action film;

Half-Life: Uplink – an extra chapter for the first game released as a demo or a bonus with some cards; well worth playing;

Kingpin: Life of Crime – a very uneven game, as it loses most of its positive qualities after the first hub, but the way it starts is interesting enough to warrant a mention;

Medal of Honor (1999) – a console shooter, but the audio-visual aspects and even the way the weapons handle feel surprisingly good even today; good atmosphere;

Medal of Honor: Underground – similar to the above, though somehow a little less enjoyable;
* Serious Sam: The First Encounter – a seriously enjoyable series; the first game starts out a little unassumingly; it's better to play the non-HD version first because some of the special engine features that involved gravity manipulation were not included in the new engine, so areas that relied on those were cut or simplified; it also seems like the original version is a bit more challenging;

* Serious Sam: The Second Encounter – same formula as above, but the level design and encounters tend to involve some serious twists; again the non-HD version is seriously superior, among other reasons because certain seriously impressive effects did not make it into the final level (and I played the original version after the HD one);

Serious Sam 2 – though it was seriously casualized to adapt it to the console market, it's still somehow enjoyable for what it is;

Serious Sam HD, the first and second Encounters are different enough visually to warrant playing them separately at some later date;

* Serious Sam 3: BFE – the level and encounter design are uneven, but it can be fairly challenging and includes some serious battles;
Postal 2 – the game design in this is kind of amateur and it can get downright stupid, but the game undeniable has a rather special personality of its own; it has rather creative weapons; in the new version it's better to select the base game's campaign separate from the expansion as otherwise all the new weapons are available from the beginning, throwing off the balance too much;

Postal 2: Apocalypse Weekend – the production quality gets worse, but somehow it manages to entertain;

Postal 2: Paradise Lost – a bit better, worth it if one enjoyed the base game;
Call of Duty – before it became one of the great heralds of decline, it was simply an enjoyable, atmospheric cinematic shooter; worth playing once;

Call of Duty: United Offensive – more of the above;

Call of Duty 2 – it was turned into a rather dumb single-player death match with bots masquerading as Second World War, but it was still kind of enjoyable;
* Painkiller – a very straightforward ‘hordes of monsters come at you and you blast them away’ game, but it's exceedingly good at it; it's the real origin (or else the first case) of what passes for the contemporary idea of ‘old school shooters’; play the original, not the Hell & Damnation remake which cuts out a lot of content and takes other liberties with the game; the latter might warrant playing separately later for the changes in the visuals and perhaps some new levels?

Painkiller: Battle Out of Hell – a pretty good expansion pack;​

* The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay – a rather unique hybrid shooter, first-person fisticuff, and stealth game with a main character who has a very well realized presence in the game; much better than the film it was supposed to accompany (although Pitch Black that came prior to both was enjoyable); avoid the remake that comes with the expansion Assault on Dark Athena, it simplifies some sections in a bad way and perhaps also cuts some content (but I can't recall the details), but on the other hand, it has some visual improvements;

Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 – it's a shooter designed for Xbox, so it's rather static, but as it was mentioned, it does have an unusual squad-commanding feature and the weapons do feel rather good;

Afraid of Monsters: Director's Cut – a nice horror modification for Half-Life with rather interesting weapons handling;

F.E.A.R.: Extraction Point – I didn't see it on your list, it's worth playing;

* S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (it seems that the original Ukrainian and Russian release possibly didn't have a subtitle—could any one confirm?) – it had a troubled development and the uneven approach to area and quest design bears this out, but it's a very unique and memorable game; the early weapons feel rather weak due to idiotic progression system, but the better ones later on are very enjoyable to use;

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky – largely a rehash of content from the base game with some more poorly executed ideas, but it's worth it, should you find the first one enjoyable;

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat – it realizes the original vision somewhat better, but the visuals, music, and atmosphere suffered due to the departure of some of the original team members;
Wolfenstein (2009) – one of those games one would expect to be a case of ‘design by a committee’, but it's unexpectedly enjoyable;

Metro 2033 – atmospheric, beautiful visuals, very good-feeling weapons; the game design is rather linear, at times restrictively scripted, and it unnecessarily tries to go for a cinematic style, but those things don't detract from its positive qualities too much; the Redux version is questionable: the stealth was rather poorly implemented before, but in the remake it's laughably easy; some graphical changes weren't for the better either, despite the technically superior version of the engine;

Metro: Last Light – the cinematic, scripted tendencies get worse in some parts and the plot is rather silly, but it's still an enjoyable shooter;
Cry of Fear – from the author of Afraid of Monsters, again a modification for Half-Life, this time quite elaborate and very serious about giving the standard FPS gameplay a ‘survival horror’ feeling;

* Dusk – very enjoyable, gets better in the second episode;

Ion Maiden – a retro shooter made using Duke 3D's engine; despite some criticisms, I'd say it gets fairly good later on; I think the main problem with the game is that the team was so in love with the idea of the visually-impressive cyberpunk city that they sacrificed the gameplay early on; the later chapters have level design that feels better with the game's enemies and encounter design.
 

schru

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I forgot to add:

the original DOS version of Quake has darker gamma than WinQuake, so the former is preferable; otherwise, when setting up music, contrary to what is asserted in popular Steam guides and such, it seems certain that Quake's CD music tracks did not use pre-emphasis, so tracks processed with a de-emphasis filter should not be used;

when replaying Quake, there's the interesting option of playing GLQuake, which has hardware-accelerated effects and presents an alternative look, with Bobby Prince's Doom Music album, which was arranged to be used as an alternative sound track for the game; the first track is to be ignored since it corresponds to the game's data track;

generally, when dealing with games that had music on the CD, there's no need to resort to source ports (which often introduce minor arbitrary changes), as the program _inmm resolves the problem.
 

schru

Arcane
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Feb 27, 2015
Messages
1,131
the original DOS version of Quake has darker gamma than WinQuake
Since when? It looks the same to me. Are you sure you weren't just using the wrong settings in DOSBox?

Also cdaudioproxy is better than _inmm, especially as the latter can't even be used with GLQuake.
Is this a trick question because I wrote ‘gamma’ instead of ‘brightness’? At the lowest setting, the DOS version looks darker whether I use a renderer like surface or direct3d:

DOS Quake:

Qh10thE.jpg


WinQuake:

BStpUZJ.jpg

It's true about _inmm not working with GLQuake. I wanted to mention that it doesn't work with all games, but for a moment I wasn't sure whether I had the problem with GLQuake or a certain Quake II engine game.

Edit: it works with version 0.98 alpha.
 
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Curratum

Guest
Why would anyone play Quake on anything that's not a modern-day sourceport though? Like, why? Can you think of a single reason?
 

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