I think the only point on which I agreed was The Silent Cartographer, I actually felt kinda jipped that the best level in the game I already played to death in the demo.
The CoD4 level they chose I found was an inconvenient overly linear break from the action. Same thing with the Omaha Beach level in MoH: Allied Assault, now the Bocage was great, but not the beach landing. I thought Liberty Island from Dues Ex was okay.

So much of that level was also just chance and quick loads. Even the company game FAQs for that level tell you to pound the QS and QL keys.

The reason I wrote that is precisely because I did play Metroid Prime. I have been jumping on platforms so many times, only to miss the last jump, fall all the way down and have to jump back up all the way. I hate that stuff.

When playing a game you have no sense of balance, velocity or spatial presence like you do in real life. It's not a big deal when your visual sense is overloaded by letting you see around your character, but in first person you can only use your eyes, you don't feel anything and you don't even have feet.

I know that platforming is in the game because the previous games had it as well, but those were 2D sidescrollers.

Apparently I'm not the only person who thinks so, the first result in googling "first person platforming" is a rant on the topic
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/extra-punctuation/9796-First-Person-Platforming

Medal of Honor: Frontline blows this theory. The first mission was the Normandy beach invasion (it was clearly aping Saving Private Ryan). It was...not good.

This does allow me to segue nicely into my on-topic post, though: the "Arnhem Knights" mission in the same game. I doubt it's aged all that well, but I remember being rather impressed with it about a dozen years ago. Very atmospheric war-torn cityscape.

Of course it would be that darn article. I genuinely like Yahtzee and respect his opinions, but I feel he can be a bit... odd about certain subjects such as this. I mean, he also thinks that driving games in first person view don't work for basically the same reasons as first person platforming, which I really think is complete horseshit.

In general, while I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of first person platforming, I'd say that it really varies from game to game. Recently, I've been re-playing Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior Classic, Shogo and Unreal, all of which have platforming that works pretty well and actually add some variety to the gameplay. Sure, you'll fall into bottomless pits every once in a while, but that's what those sections are for; they're obstacles. Complaining about that would be like complaining that the enemies can kill you.

However, then you have games like the new Rise of the Triad, which is just absolutely wretched in that regard. You constantly overshoot your jumps, slip off of tiny platforms or get obstructed by badly placed scenery decoration mid-jump. It's absolutely awful, compounded by the fact that there's at least one level that forces you to do several "challenges" consisting of nothing but that. The difference to the other games is simply a matter of design and physics, which are simply not particularly well thought out in Rise of the Triad. It's not noticable during the regular "running & shooting" gameplay, because that doesn't require the same degree of precision as platforming. That problem appears in Half-Life as well, where the jumping sections are simply not entertaining at all.

So, I honestly don't think it's really all that much related to the perspective, because that exact thing also applies to bad 2D platformers and it's what separates those from good 2D platformers.

Than Yatzhee sucks because I manage to beat Metroid Prime a lot of times over the years without any complaints I never had a problem with platforming in Metroid Prime even when I played the game for the first time.

Probably because I grew up more with 3D gaming than 2D.

Besides first person platforming is not as tough as Isometric Platforming. (Ultima 8 and Super Mario RPG)

Opinions and theories do NOT fight in the same dojo. Perhaps you're competing in the wrong sport.

The fact that he constantly criticises Mirror's Edge--one of the smoothest and most intuitive platforming games I've ever played--for its platforming still baffles me.

I think he's a brilliant humorist but as a critic... well... He'll just randomly come up with arbitrary "rules" and critique games based on them (for instance, "Red Faction: Guerilla sucks because it's not a stealth game." Yes, he literally wrote those words). And he's so negative about everything that every title he reviews ends up sounding pretty much the same. I actually came away from his Walking Dead: Survival Instinct video thinking that the game sounded interesting and maybe worth a look, since he actually said more positive things about it than usual.
On topic. Pretty much every single level in Dark Forces 2 is incredible. And you can't go wrong with the first episode of Blood, the first levels of Shadow Warrior and Duke Nukem 3d, and pretty much anything from Doom 1 or 2.

Not a single mention of Descent? I am deeply disappointed!

It was my first thought when I saw this topic. It's practically the symbol of non-linear map design. While it's a Sandy Peterson map, and it's trendy to look down on his work, I absolutely love this map. You spawn in a hub surrounded by 8 doors and you can open most of them. Each of the rooms contains weapons and powerups, but also a lot of monsters who will roam everywhere. Choose wisely. There are numerous ways to complete the level, you can methodically clear room after room, or create a great monster skirmish setting them all free simultaneously.

Hooray! I can't believe anybody would even know what I was talking about.

To placate a future pilot, yes, Descent was awesome in the ability to move everywhere (without rules) in 3D world. However, I think that "Ziggurat Vertigo", the hidden level on Quake (if you dove into the pool) was one of the best FPS levels ever. It too had low-gravity.