Which game killed the shooter genre?

[Derringer]

What didn't?

If there was something then Dark Souls and Doom 2016 probably wouldn't have been the most relevant games of last decade, as pathetic as that sounds.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Half-Life due to scripted nonsense every invisible line point.

 

[anvi]

I think Crysis was quite the letdown. All that hype to play in little narrow maps. Arma2 made me think of FPSs in a different way. Same goes for the use of aircraft, my mind was blown when I called a chopper and it flew 20 real miles to pick me up, I get inside and tell it where to go on a hunt for an escaped convict in a jeep. It was janky and buggy as hell but having a whole country at your disposal and cars, tanks, choppers... It's hard to go back to some action FPS after seeing how big games could be. Especially shit like Battlefield/CoD that yells at you to fly back to the battle area because you flew in any direction for 3 seconds.

I felt the same about the STALKER games, the AI and the emergent aspect of it puts most games to shame. But that was janky and buggy too. As usual all the budget goes to the slick but shallow Crysis types and the "thing big" plucky indie games struggle.

 

[samuraigaiden]

FPS as a genre in itself is a harbinger of decline.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

Used to play a shitload of Halo:CE on PC as well as Quake III: Arena. A lot of the servers I played on starting dying in 2007.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Don't know about FPS in general but I know what the death of Quake FPSs was - the shitty rail design of Quake 4. Couldn't believe I was seeing this stuff in an FPS and gave up after 2 or 3 levels.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Quake 4

Before I played it I thought ‘I liked Quake 2, I liked Doom 3, and neither of those games were amazing so a decent sequel should be easy... you'd think...’ and then as soon it started I knew it was shit.

 

[commie]

Edgy faggots saying Quake 2. Pfft....

Call of Duty 2 killed the genre.

As a shooter, it's actually not bad and has some great set pieces, but it popularised the ultimate mechanic that would totally turn shooters into the 'popamole' variant we all love now: health regeneration.

Once you were essentially required to crouch behind cover every few steps to gain back health, then the whole nature of the shooter as a fast, freeflowing, frantic experience ended. This made it worse that corridors, non-interactive cut scenes etc(bad as those were, these didn't necessarily change the essence of the gaming experience itself).

Yes, you can argue that the 'shellshock, fall down, then get lifted up by a comrade while everything is blurry' trope that is in every shooter now is god awful and a crime started win MOH:AA but that's more fluff padding than changing the entire gameplay experience. After all, MOH: AA is actually a good shooter, with various styles of gameplay and variety.

 

[Lemming42]

CoD2 is definitely a strong contender for the game that killed shooters, if such a game exists.

- Recharging health - it's impossible to overstate how badly this mechanic fucked up the FPS genre
- Player mostly superfluous to the experience, you're basically just there to shoot a set number of enemies so that your allies can play out their scripts and unlock the next room for you to do the same thing again
- No enemy variety, just the same goons over and over, sometimes with different weapons if you're lucky
- Weak weapon variety for the player, with one (MP40) clearly being the best choice
- Boring real-world military setting (compare with the fantastical situations, weapons and settings of most 90s shooters)
- Absolutely no puzzles or platforming or any of the other things previous FPS games used to shake things up - you're just a camera with a gun attached, and you move through the linear levels shooting everyone in your way until your AI teammates tell you you're done
- This one isn't really CoD2's fault, but it's worth mentioning anyway: strong focus on multiplayer, with the single-player being sort of a bonus thing (this would obviously become far more pronounced in later games)

Mostly stuff that already existed, but CoD2 really pushed a lot of bad ideas together into one terrible package.

 

[Lyric Suite]

CoD is really the strongest contender. Literally popeamole gameplay that was perfect when the genre moved on consoles. Retarded normie dude bros thinking the cover mechanic made the game seem "realistic" (it's true that in real life you don't just stand in the open when getting shot but CoD ain't fucking Arma).

It wasn't just one thing it was this exact convergence between dumped down gameplay and design and the rise in popularity among a vast number of normies most of whom propably were playing shit like Madden before getting involved in CoD.

The move on consoles also killed the arena shooter.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Who killed the shooter genre? Consoles and gamepads.

 

[Joggerino]

The shooter genre is alive and well. You have battle royale, you have arcade shit like cod you got battlefield and so on and so on, far cry etc etc.

 

[anvi]

FPS is too broad a term too. I can't be bothered thinking of all the different varieties but off the top of my head you have all the Deus Ex, System Shock, type games sort of half action half rpg. They are different to the Quake 3, Fortnite, Duke3d, flying around with jetpacks and rocket launchers, action FPS. There are simulationy FPS like Arma3. And mainstream FPS like CoD/Battlefield. And then there are roguelike FPS which have spells and stuff instead of guns and are more about collecting items or whatever, but it's first person and you shoot stuff. Is that an fps? And now there are survival FPS. The world is very disorganised.

 

[anvi]

I thought of the nail in the coffin of doom for FPS! For me at least... It was 100% that cover based xbox shooter that everyone was playing and it was such boring shit I don't even want to try to remember it's name. That was such a bleak time in gaming. (It may have been 3rd person... I don't care.)

CoD2 is definitely a strong contender for the game that killed shooters, if such a game exists.

- Recharging health - it's impossible to overstate how badly this mechanic fucked up the FPS genre
- Player mostly superfluous to the experience, you're basically just there to shoot a set number of enemies so that your allies can play out their scripts and unlock the next room for you to do the same thing again
- No enemy variety, just the same goons over and over, sometimes with different weapons if you're lucky
- Weak weapon variety for the player, with one (MP40) clearly being the best choice
- Boring real-world military setting (compare with the fantastical situations, weapons and settings of most 90s shooters)
- Absolutely no puzzles or platforming or any of the other things previous FPS games used to shake things up - you're just a camera with a gun attached, and you move through the linear levels shooting everyone in your way until your AI teammates tell you you're done
- This one isn't really CoD2's fault, but it's worth mentioning anyway: strong focus on multiplayer, with the single-player being sort of a bonus thing (this would obviously become far more pronounced in later games)

Mostly stuff that already existed, but CoD2 really pushed a lot of bad ideas together into one terrible package.

The Rainbow Six games span the full decline of FPS too. The first game you died from a single bullet wound and the hostages often got shot and you failed. Fast forward to Rainbow Six Vegas and it was a full blown console game with regenerating health and GO! GO! GO! style.

 

[Fedora Master]

The move on consoles also killed the arena shooter.

Let's not forget, one of the biggest MP killers: Matchmaking/No dedicated servers because of muh consoles.

 

[passerby]

CoD2 is definitely a strong contender for the game that killed shooters, if such a game exists.

- Recharging health - it's impossible to overstate how badly this mechanic fucked up the FPS genre
- Player mostly superfluous to the experience, you're basically just there to shoot a set number of enemies so that your allies can play out their scripts and unlock the next room for you to do the same thing again
- No enemy variety, just the same goons over and over, sometimes with different weapons if you're lucky
- Weak weapon variety for the player, with one (MP40) clearly being the best choice
- Boring real-world military setting (compare with the fantastical situations, weapons and settings of most 90s shooters)
- Absolutely no puzzles or platforming or any of the other things previous FPS games used to shake things up - you're just a camera with a gun attached, and you move through the linear levels shooting everyone in your way until your AI teammates tell you you're done
- This one isn't really CoD2's fault, but it's worth mentioning anyway: strong focus on multiplayer, with the single-player being sort of a bonus thing (this would obviously become far more pronounced in later games)

Mostly stuff that already existed, but CoD2 really pushed a lot of bad ideas together into one terrible package.

[...] you're basically just there to shoot a set number of enemies [...]

If only it was true, you've failed to mention the shittiest aspect of CoD 2 singleplayer - infinite respawn points that you have to step into to block.
It removed any possibility of being tactical in your gameplay, forget about having a medium distance shotout.
You just have to push forward, shoot enemies in the face point blank and on higher difficulties manage the rate at which you bravely take bullets on the chest, so the regen can keep up.

But yes, CoD 2 is the one that first combined most of shity aspect of the modern shooters into a formula that most of industry is copying since its release.

 

[Ezekiel]

Who killed the shooter genre? Consoles and gamepads.

A lot of shooting games in the first and second generations of console 3D gaming had auto-aim. Not aim assist, but lock-on auto-aim. Others had fixed cameras which didn't require so much use of the right stick.* So apparently the developers knew controllers were horrible for aiming. Even though the developers later changed their minds and went with manual aiming (usually with aim assist), the controller designers never adapted. So now like 70 percent of console AAA games have you fumbling excessively with the right stick, for things it was probably never intended for.

*I know people think the camera of MGS3 Subsistence is so much better than in the original release from a year earlier, but that original release actually had some good angles. I do use the fully controllable camera too, but it's not my main choice.

 

[Goldschmidt]

What are good pure shooters then? Cite, say, a handful ones.

Easily F.E.A.R. lol. The true sequel of Half-Life.

 

[Ezekiel]

What are good pure shooters then? Cite, say, a handful ones.

Easily F.E.A.R. lol. The true sequel of Half-Life.

F.E.A.R. is stupid easy because of the abundant slow motion. Of course I could handicap myself by not using it, but the game doesn't have enough else going for it.

 

[Morenatsu.]

What are good pure shooters then? Cite, say, a handful ones.

Easily F.E.A.R. lol. The true sequel of Half-Life.

F.E.A.R. is stupid easy because of the abundant slow motion. Of course I could handicap myself by not using it, but the game doesn't have enough else going for it.

Don't forget the tower of medkits you carry with you at all times.

And the repetitive spooooky scripted sequences that are more boring than anything in Half-Life 2.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

9/11 caused a huge surge of boring army shooters to come marching out.

 

[Goldschmidt]

What are good pure shooters then? Cite, say, a handful ones.

Easily F.E.A.R. lol. The true sequel of Half-Life.

F.E.A.R. is stupid easy because of the abundant slow motion. Of course I could handicap myself by not using it, but the game doesn't have enough else going for it.

Probably didn't play on masochistic difficulty level.

 

[Ezekiel]

What are good pure shooters then? Cite, say, a handful ones.

Easily F.E.A.R. lol. The true sequel of Half-Life.

F.E.A.R. is stupid easy because of the abundant slow motion. Of course I could handicap myself by not using it, but the game doesn't have enough else going for it.

Probably didn't play on masochistic difficulty level.

According to my journal of sorts, my last two playthroughs were on Extreme.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Extreme faggotry probably lul

 

[Multidirectional]

F.E.A.R. is stupid easy because of the abundant slow motion. Of course I could handicap myself by not using it, but the game doesn't have enough else going for it.

Difficulty feels right to me on highest setting, even after multiple runs. But maybe I'm just terrible at shooters.

Easily F.E.A.R. lol. The true sequel of Half-Life.

F.E.A.R. >>> Half Life