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Which game killed the shooter genre?

Israfael

Arcane
Joined
Sep 21, 2012
Messages
3,580
Yeah, Doom has vertical auto aim due to limitations of the engine, and still is a better shooter than Doom 2016, by lightyears, you fucking imbecile.
Of course, just circlestrafing around cybers, cacos and whatever is much better than the addled piano button mash and aerial maneuvers you have to do in eternal. Same goes for the S + M1 school of gameplay of Croteam and PCF (and unlike many people on 'dex, I actually liked Painkiller + addons / shadow warrior reboot and SS4)
 

S.torch

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 4, 2019
Messages
937
We can't tolerate that our prestigious fantasy thread get hijacked by shooter discussion.
Where is our favorite thread splitter when we need him the most? Infinitron
 
Shitposter
Joined
Nov 13, 2020
Messages
367
Location
Konoha - Village Hidden in the Herb
NOOOOOOOOOOO U CANT TALK ABOUT SHOOTERS IN MY ASSET FLIP DARK SOULS 4 ELDER RING THREAD!!!
k0IGUXxg.jpg
 

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
Wrong. Half Life 1 killed the FPS genre long before CoD 1 was even a thing.
Duke Nukem 3D was basically the first (or among the fist) set piece FPS and had the same gameplay idea as Half Life - move around visually impressive areas, while cool stuff happens on the screen. The enemy design and combat in general took a nosedive in comparison to Doom, the abundance of hit scanners was especially bad. It's a fun game, but if you want to find the roots of the modern shooter idiocy then Build Engine games are a good start.
 
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Adenocaulon

Educated
Joined
May 17, 2021
Messages
74
There are just different kind of shooters, the genre was not killed, just diversified.


One kind is the 90 style, with enemies in fixed positions, labyrinth level design, secrets and resource management. Two branches are the derived from id Tech 1-2 and Quake engine games, and others from Build Engine games that have more environmental interactivity and more ranged enemies. Now you see these types of games by indie developers.


Other kind is the more simplified and casual games derived from Halo, linear environments, two weapon limit, regenerative shield of health. These are more mainstream games that have sold a lot to console players.


Other kind is Half Life derived games, with environmental narrative and interactivity. They are somewhat related in some features to Build engine games, but with a much linear lever design and more advanced enemy AI instead of hitscan, so less essay & error is needed.


The other main category is the one of Serious Sam and Painkiller. More dodging enemies and projectiles, picking resources. They are related to Doom and Quake engine games in some features, but the enemies spawn in waves during the battle, and level design is more simple, less labyrinthic and with less puzzles. Recently, big, medium and small size developers have taken this model for single player shooters improving it with more and more mechanics.


I think that only the maze level design with puzzles and more switch-key hunting, and fixed enemy placement has been abandoned or simplified in more "pure" FPS, but if you like this part there are also more hybrid categories, like the called "immersive sims", shooters or not, that usually have this elements, and that I hope will still be created by major and minor developers.


I agree that big companies usually aim the more profitable Halo - Call of Duty type of game. For example Raven Software now only works with Call of Duty and without innovative titles. Recently that Microsoft acquired FPS developers we hope that they will not suffer the same fate working for Halo like Raven Software working for Call of Duty.

Or maybe the opposite, i wonder if it can compete with Call of Duty for their more casual audience. Or if the simpler and slower design of Halo can stand against recent and more innovative titles for FPS enjoyers.
 

octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,182
Location
Bjørgvin
For me personally it was Quake 4 and Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault. They were so scripted that it sucked the fun out it. I guess Call of Duty was the first shooter in this style, but I still enjoyed it somewhat, until defeated by the time limit on the POW rescue mission.
 
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Young_Hollow

Liturgist
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
1,104
Halo: brought in the primary / secondary weapon idea that most other shooters copied. Created a state where devs and players couldn't think beyond 2 guns.

Rainbow 6 Vegas: killed the thinking / tactical Rainbow 6 and Ghost Recon games for good.

Borderlands: don't know if this was the first looter-FPS but certainly made it mainstream. Introduced glorious features like player levels and gun levels and both of them being tied to loot levels and enemy levels which made shooters first person consoomer simulators. Legacy is carried on by Destiny, Ghost Recon and TMC's Division series.

Playerunknown's Battlegrounds: ARMA 3 mod that started the battle royale trend. Spawned Fortnite and is indirectly responsible for Apex Legends and Valorant. Made luck-based multiplayer shooters the most popular type of MP FPS. Is responsible for creating the genre of shooter where trash-collectors running around looking for weapons or running from their debt circle could be killed by 9-year-olds on their phones.
 

Tacgnol

Shitlord
Patron
Joined
Oct 12, 2010
Messages
1,871,734
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Grab the Codex by the pussy RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
I've made this argument countless times before, usually in Half-Life or Diablo 2 threads, but it's kind of silly to blame the originator for bad clones.

Really the issue is with unimaginative/unambitious publishers and devs that just want a "safe" hit and copy things badly. Blaming the original title for being successful is letting the companies making uninspired copies off the hook.
 

gurugeorge

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 3, 2019
Messages
7,432
Location
London, UK
Strap Yourselves In
I don't think the death of the "pure shooter" was caused by any particular gameplay changes, rather it's the increasing realism in graphics that killed it.

The sweet spot from Wolfenstein 3-d till the Build engine games, Quake and Half Life, were where the graphics were so primitive that level design was tightly focused. The exciting thing about the pure shooter is that moment where you're entering a new space and you're having to cope with enemies from all angles and think fast. With the primitive graphics the levels could be designed solely around that, and the environment in terms of its "realism" or its purported reality in a facsimile of a real-world setting was an afterthought, and largely cosmetic.

But as graphics and therefore environments became more realistic, then you started to have constraints from the realism, which meant that levels couldn't be designed solely around gameplay. Also, the more realistic the graphics, the more confusing to the eye, which without the advantage of binocular 3-d vision, finds it hard to spot salient things on a flat plane - whereas with the older graphics, objects were simpler and easier to discern quickly.

There was also a certain mystery and charm about the levels in those old games, precisely because of the relative incomprehensibility of the architecture. Part of one's mind was always wondering "what is this place for?" And one would conjure something in one's head (rather like a slight return of the thing with even older graphics, where one's mind fills things in that might be more interesting and personal than anything the developer would come up with). This was particularly true of the more "magic" oriented shooters like Heretic and Hexen.

It was really just a trade-off in the long run - I'm a graphics whore myself, and I like the move to realism. But one has to acknowledge that something was lost, and this is probably what it was wrt pure shooters.
 

Silverfish

Arbiter
Joined
Dec 4, 2019
Messages
3,062
Haze, simply by being the game that shuttered Free Radical. Shooters have noticeably fallen off without their influence.
 

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