Incline TotalBiscuit: Have FPS gone backwards? (answer is yes)

[Drakron]

You forget the huge mod community that it entailed with Counterstrike, Team Fortress etc. By that time nobody gave a fuck about Quake 2 and Unreal anymore.

No, I havent but CS and TF were just using the engine, not the design behind HF1.

This would be like saying UE3 had a high impact on RPGs because so mant RPGs used UE3 engine, CS and TF just used the game engine but had entirely ideas on design and were more within the line of the FPS that had the greatest impact at that time, that is Unreal and Quake.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

When HL2 came out, it sold like 6 million units in the first month. When Quake 4 came it, it's like nobody gave a fuck.

Why do people still think Quake is important?

 

[Black_Willow]

When HL2 came out, it sold like 6 million units in the first month. When Quake 4 came it, it's like nobody gave a fuck.

Why do people still think Quake is important?

Like, wow man.
With that kind of arguments we'll soon get to "Modern Warfare 3 is the best FPS" and "Angry Birds = BEST GAEM EVUR".

 

[Drakron]

When HL2 came out, it sold like 6 million units in the first month. When Quake 4 came it, it's like nobody gave a fuck.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21319

Why do people still think Quake is important?

You tell me, I always put Unreal along with it because they marked the tread of that time.

 

[skacky]

Literally lol'd at Morgoth's statements about Quake. It's simple for me, both Thief 1 and Quake are my favorite games.

Quake is still extremely relevant today; it has sanic fast gameplay, extremely well designed SP maps, especially Episode 3 which was mainly designed by the amazing American McGee, a small yet compact and coherent bestiary that has a lot of synergy (ogres combined with fiends is always fun, or vores combined with hordes of knights is a really interesting setup). It still has a very active community that still releases amazing SP maps, they even made lots of mods that add new kickass monsters (Quoth for example). And of course, there's the multiplayer aspect of the game. It's true most weapons aren't used and the game mostly revolves around the GL/RL/LG in MP, the game is very barebones in MP but it has a very steep learning curve and you'll get your balls kicked many times before you can claim to be good at it.

 

[J_C]

Quake is important?

Quake rullezz!!!

Oh and for the record it is the fastest, most player skill based hardcore first person shooter of all time . Tribes series comes real close behind.

And UT99 is still a better game.

 

[thesoup]

When HL2 came out, it sold like 6 million units in the first month. When Quake 4 came it, it's like nobody gave a fuck.

Why do people still think Quake is important?

Just proves how HL2 is the lowest common denominator. Suck it down.

 

[Gurkog]

TFC was the best of them all. It had heart and soul that the others lacked. Quake and UT felt kind of sterile to me. The mechanics were functional, but lacked soul. Everything felt right in TFC, imo.

Btw, bunny hopping was and always will be retarded, imo. People don't need a speed boost to rationalize jumping around everywhere they go.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Also he is dead wrong, HL2 is a sequel to HL1 and both follow the exact same level design ...

On a basic superficial level, yes. On a deeper level HL1 level design was far superior. Those arguments will always degenerate into pointless trolling like this because nobody seems able to differentiate between the substance of content as opposed to its essence. It doesn't matter that HL2 followed the same formula when the original did everything better.

 

[felipepepe]

Also he is dead wrong, HL2 is a sequel to HL1 and both follow the exact same level design ...

On a basic superficial level, yes. On a deeper level HL1 level design was far superior. Those arguments will always degenerate into pointless trolling like this because nobody seems able to differentiate between the substance of content as opposed to its essence. It doesn't matter that HL2 followed the same formula when the original did everything better.

Not only that, but apart from the obvious technical advance, everything they added to the formula sucks: vehicle, unskipable dialogs/scenes, sidekick, pet robot, gravity gun...

 

[Drakron]

On a basic superficial level, yes. On a deeper level HL1 level design was far superior.

Thats ... arguable, HL2 had their gravity trick that was something they had but HF1 also had a gimmick that was platforming in the Xeno levels.
Personally I go with HL1 levels overall but the Citadel levels in HL2 were good, unlike Xeno that was something very much of its time, it does go to preferences as HL1 had a lot of puzzle design that was a lot less in HL2 because of the gravity weapon.

Still its quite clear HF2 was on the same design mentality as HF1, just times have changed.

 

[Gurkog]

HL3 will make extensive use of the portal gun. just wait and see!

 

[Grunker]

my favourite totalbiscuit video is the one where he announces that he's taken a vow of silence and is going to live as a Buddhist hermit and I never need to hear his name again

While I agree with this in general, this video is actually pretty good.

I don't have any objection with what he says in the video. Codex being an edgy bitch as usual. Of course, this is my first TB video so maybe he is a dumbfuck in general, but here he nailed many important points.

Yeah I agree, it's typical TotalBiscuit and I know people are annoyed at him and his mannerisms, but honestly his opinion when it comes to this stuff are pretty spot-on. Can't get angry at him being more or less a spokesman for PC gamers and higher standards for games overall either. To be honest he's one of the few "journalists" out there who's more or less mainstream, yet is willing to just bash the hell out of big-budget games he thinks are bad.

I have nothing against TotalBuscuit per se, since he represents a group of gamers who would be completely uncritical if they didn't have people like him. But what you say simply isn't true:

1) He is making a running series on SONY games while being paid by SONY, and 99% of those impressions are overwhelmingly positive. When confronted with this, he made a video specifically to criticize the game, but if you have to do that, don't you kindda prove the point?

2) He is nowhere near as critical as a good reviewer should be, and he has a tendency to go on for 10 minutes about some irrelevant detail. He is not very good at distributing content in his videos.

3) Have you seen his previews where he plays the game with the developers? They can be likened to industry blowjobs - developer talks about the game, TotalBiscuit agrees with everything and tells developer how awesome what he is saying is.

TotalBiscuit is shit for the most part, but he is often more critical than mainstream journalists, which is why he can be suffered.

 

[toro]

Wow toro, you're the first person ever to be ignored by Morgoth-chan. You must've really hit a nerve with your HL2 bashing.

Probably. The hipster cannot take the heat. Nothing surprising about it.

Wow toro, you're the first person ever to be ignored by Morgoth-chan. You must've really hit a nerve with your HL2 bashing.

Well he did say Quake was a work of art.

Because is close to that status. Quake was a couple of year ahead of its time. Of course, the definition of art is subjective hence whatever the fuck I say can be correct or incorrect. Maybe both at the same time. But at least I don't have certainties like a seasoned moron.

Also he is dead wrong, HL2 is a sequel to HL1 and both follow the exact same level design ... "open" maps are rare in FPS were the "path" is the common, take the older Duke Nuken 3D were you follow a defined path and this is standard, map design like DeusEx or Thief that had multiple paths to the objective are rarer, in fact I am going to likely piss off a lot of people but Halo even had that in a few maps, it was gone on the following games but still a few Halo maps did give multiple paths to the same objective.

Corridor shooters are not new, they are as old as FPS themselves and always been the norm outside a few games were open maps were created for multiplayer, Half Life influence was minimum since the great success of that time was not Half Life, it was Unreal and Quake that lead the prevalence of "multiplayer FPS", it was Halo that was their successor because they had declined in popularity, not Half Life 2 that also had negligible impact as the tradition on FPS after Half Life 2 was the Halo model.

HL2 and HL1 don't follow the same exact level design. Try harder.

 

[toro]

HL had massive impact in the FPS genre. You forget the huge mod community that it entailed with Counterstrike, Team Fortress etc. By that time nobody gave a fuck about Quake 2 and Unreal anymore.

HL is a Quake mod

 

[toro]

Half Life 2 is the role-model of rail-road shooters.

Half-Life 1 is. It's the game we can thank for railroad shooters, even though most games that try or tried to emulate HL1 did a terrible job with it. The stuff you listed has fuck all to do with railroad shooters, just bad shooters in general.

True.

 

[buzz]

As a guy who has played Half Life 2 for several times, I can attest how close the game feels like CoD's daddy. You even have a couple of "RAMIREZ GET THE ROCKET LAUNCHER" moments . Or the grenades that go BEEP BEEP BEEP and flash brightly and don't detonate until you leave the area/throw it back at the enemy (as in, they take a lot to explode).
The fact that the game is loved even by the people who hate modern shooters says a lot about the audiences.

Like TotalBiscuit and several other people themselves said in here, shooters were already a stupid genre. People only like to fondly remember Doom as if that's the only thing that counts as a shooter. Well, there was Virtua Cop/House of the dead type of games where you just shot stuff on screen (and no, it's not much of a different genre from Doom as Doom is different from Rainbox Six). Even the Doom-type or the Half Life type or the Serious Sam type of shooters weren't as brilliant as people make them.

I'm sorry, but I refuse to accept discussions about the "decline" from retards. I mean look at that fucker go, he still hasn't finished Seppuku Station in 15 minutes on the "I have no fear" (normal) difficulty . Trust me, it takes under 10 minutes if you're a newbie to shooters, talking or no talking (even though I have the impression that he does the commentaries afterwards), speedrunners can finish it in a minute or two. His comments are also dumb.

Like being impressed that OH I'VE BEEN ATTACKED IN 3 SECONDS, nevermind that the so-called attack is something only a mentally challenged person would be unable to deal with. He showed in the fucking video, you slash once at him and he's dead (or you slash twice if you don't play on pussywhipped difficulty and get two ninjas to attack you).
Or his comments health and survival. Nigga there is ammo and medkits scattered virtually everywhere on the floor, what are you talking about!
Oooh, the ceiling fan is deadly .

Man, praising single-player campaigns in shooters for its "survival" difficulty and so on is silly. Not only are the elements of survival, maze-like levels and resource management done better in other genres (survival horrors, dungeon crawlers like Infinitron just mentioned), they don't necessarily fit within the genre either. The entire keycards/skulls/keys was just a dumb halt into the real meat of the game, basically Romero dangling his dong in front of you and making you his bitch.
You guys are deluding yourself. I remember when I saw this trailer with my friends - all of us were in awe on the flimsiest of things, like using a canon, squishing bugs or riding bikes/donkey.
I've played all the Modern Warfare games and Black Ops and it's not as much story as people make you believe. It's more about replicating cool action/stealth sequences from Hollywood blockbusters than it is about story. The only big story moments you ever get is when you get shot in the face or you do evil shit (torturing a guy by placing glass in his mouth then punching him, killing civilians at the airport) or seeing stuff blow up . It's still "badass", only it's a child of modern badass with people saying "Tango Down" rather than corny Army of Darkness references. The fucking series ends with the main character (a dude with a big mustache and a fisher hat) sitting and having a smoke, that's how "serious" it is.

Not that the older games weren't more fun, they were. People do have a point like how many weapons feel same-y or that there's ZERO enemy variety, or there are no more fun secrets and easter eggs. Even regen health doesn't really help (see, Doom-like games were never really that hard unless you played on highest difficulty setting or you weren't accustomed to the controls, getting hit in there was not only harder to do, but didn't also bug you as fast as it does in modern shooters where sitting in the line of fire 5 seconds can mean your death).

It's like with the GTA-type of games. People don't care for stories or complex RPG-like systems or realistic police wanted levels, they want to blow stuff up and have fun doing various ridiculous shit. Those that do these things correctly lready transcend the "shooter" archetype anyway (Deus Ex,SWAT 4,System Shock etc.)

 

[Excidium]

I'm sorry, but I refuse to accept discussions about the "decline" from retards. I mean look at that fucker go, he still hasn't finished Seppuku Station in 15 minutes on the "I have no fear" (normal) difficulty . Trust me, it takes under 10 minutes if you're a newbie to shooters, talking or no talking (even though I have the impression that he does the commentaries afterwards), speedrunners can finish it in a minute or two. His comments are also dumb.

Not to mention he's playing with mouse-look. Who the fuck plays build engine games with mouse look? P. hilarious to see him drone about the decline of FPS while promoting the repackaged version of Shadow Warrior, proudly brought to you by the same people who are raping it with a modern reimagination.

 

[VonVentrue]

When HL2 came out, it sold like 6 million units in the first month. When Quake 4 came it, it's like nobody gave a fuck.
Why do people still think Quake is important?

Blissfully ignoring the fact Q4 is a Quake game in name only (and a terrible sequel to Q2 in every possible way, no less) pretty much invalidates the point you're trying to make...

 

[Melan]

Half Life 2 is the role-model of rail-road shooters. Why?
<snip>

Correct. It's not just the linear level design, but mostly the directed experience, which is precisely engineered to set the pace, direct your movement/vision and nudge you into predetermined patterns of action. It is all there in HL2, but gets particularly heinous in the HL episodes, where the "cinematic experience" is so tightly controlled it feels like the game is whacking off playing itself, and any sense of exploration is totally missing. I suffered through EP1 but quit somewhere into EP2.

My holy trinity of shooters consists of

1. DooM: Still the original experience. It is immensely satisfying to send an imp flying backwards with a shotgun to the face, or firing a rocket into a group of enemies and blasting them to kibble. Visceral. Plus: Brutal DooM, which is how parent groups and the media always imagined the game.
2. Duke 3D: Dumbass hero and juvenile humour aside, it has amazing level design, destructible terrain, tons of environmental interaction, fun weaponry and fast-paced gameplay. The enemies are kinda meh, but the fan community makes up for it with tons of great SP/MP levels.
3. Unreal: Flawed and moving towards too much linearity, but it is a remarkably cohesive setting (floating islands, immense towers and crashed spaceships included); stylish graphics, and music from the best of the demoscene. It also had a sense of scale which you don't see too much anymore, and a story that didn't get into the way. UT99 got it right as a varied arena shooter, and what was amazing in 1999 is that it had great bot support for people who didn't have a home Net connection yet. Also, tons of user-made levels and even some worthwhile single-player campaigns (Operation: Na Pali!).

That doesn't include kinda-sorta FPS games like Thief and the System Shock series, which are their own thing.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

As long as the hivemind only has shit taste in shooters and not in RPGs....oh wait.

 

[Jaedar]

This discussion about which of hl1 and hl2 is the best is so pointless.

Everyone knows opposing force is the best.

 

[Coriolanus]

No Quake?

Incredible level design; maze-like, but you never feel lost because of how varied the levels are - and there are always nooks and crannies to explore for secrets. It's not on-rails in any way as you can often do different parts of the level in any order. To add to that:

1) Cool monster design; few monster types, but they all serve their purpose.

2) Great, unique atmosphere - the world is alien and gothic, but you are a killing-machine that just doesn't give a damn. If you like pretty graphics, load up Darkplaces - it still looks gorgeous.

2) Fun to speedrun for a veteran, but also quite challenging on hard/nightmare even when played normally - in a good way, challenging your skill and reflexes as any good FPS should with a very fast-paced gameplay style. Did I mention the secrets that you'll break your neck to find?

I vastly prefer Q1 to Doom, Unreal and such.

I never understood the fuss about Half-Life 1. On-rails shooter with a nice early game (what is happening?!), boring mid-game (corridors, corridors, marines), OK late-game (tentacle rape! big aliens!) and awful late-game. It went on for far too long. Half-Life 2 is just your generic on-rails shooter, part of the decline. I did play it once, but couldn't ever re-play - it aged horribly. I remember liking Ravenholm for the novelty factor, but loading up that level again I saw it for what it was - just another corridor-y place with half-assed traps.

 

[Tehdagah]

(...)
Man, praising single-player campaigns in shooters for its "survival" difficulty and so on is silly. Not only are the elements of survival, maze-like levels and resource management done better in other genres (survival horrors, dungeon crawlers like Infinitron just mentioned), they don't necessarily fit within the genre either. The entire keycards/skulls/keys was just a dumb halt into the real meat of the game, basically Romero dangling his dong in front of you and making you his bitch.
(...)

This is the most retarded comparison I've ever seen and is basically like saying "survival horrors and dungeon crawlers shouldn't have action/shooting mechanics because these things are better in other genres"

 

[TripJack]

As long as the hivemind only has shit taste in shooters and not in RPGs....oh wait.

stop projecting bro