F.E.A.R. is one of my favorite series! That's another game I wish GOG could get. Please vote for it!

Console military shooters with auto aim and hallway level design have all but killed the genre. Thankfully we got Wolfenstein and Shadow Warrior reboots to show a glimmer of hope. I hope PC shooters are on the rebound and we get away from Dudebro Murica shootout, 2.0.

In maps-design they have absolutely gone backwards, I mean just compare a map in Quake with multiple levels, heaps of different passages, doors and secret areas, to your average level in a modern FPS.

I agree with what he says, FPS today do lack the need to explore for survival and are very linear. And why DO all FPS have regenerating health? why did we go away from health packs? Is it b/c people got lazy with level design or developers pandering to more casual gamers? I dunno.

I still think my favorite FPS is Doom. You know why I liked it? Looking for all the hidden things. So much fun. Also that there was no hand-holding. "Aliens from hell are destroying everything. Ok, off with you". And do you remember running around trying to find keys to get to the next room? I do, because at times they were so well hidden it took forever to find them.

There are some modern FPS I do enjoy. Borderlands. No regenerating health (shield, yes, or if you have a modifier to regen health), you can do things as you want. Though ammo is uber plentiful. There are also lots of secret fun things to find. But still, it lacks that heart-pounding, "OMG I"M GONNA DIE" feel b/c the world gives you more than you need to survive.

Right now, I am playing destiny. I am enjoying this game b/c there is no hand-holding. You land in game and are just shoved off. There is no explanation of anything, so that when you do find stuff or figure something out, it's very satisfying. Hell, they don't even give you a map. I was kinda surprised by this, given it is an MMO. Further, loot drops are few and far between. I actually thought something was wrong with the game at one point b/c NO loot was dropping. ever. I guess that shows how much I've been coddled in other FPS. at one point I was lvl 15 still using a lvl 10 gun. Ammo is also hard to get in the beginning so you learn to ration what good stuff you have. Health does regenerate though and that kinda bites. My k/d is 150 on heroics. That shouldn't be. I should die a lot, not live 'cause I hid behind a block for 30s.

I guess we have to wait until a game that is like the old school FPS comes out and does well and shows the AAAs that this form of game play is still wanted. Kinda like how the indie game thing with pixels and stuff just went crazy.

edit: and you know what game I hated b/c of how linear it was? Half-life 2. I tried playing it a few months ago and got fed up with dying only b/c I wasn't jumping through the hoops they wanted me to.

Anyone ever play Descent 1 or 2? Now there's level design. It used all three dimensions. None of that running through a single hallway like so many first person shooters. Precisely the reason why I hated Halo 1 when I played it for the first time early this year.

I played 5 or 6 hours of the Shadow Warrior reboot, and thought it was pretty good until the combat started to feel like a complete mess. Tons of bullet spongey enemies in tiny arenas with no real way to avoid taking screen-jarring damage.

Maybe I'm just missing something, but I honestly much prefer the Rise of the Triad reboot.

I really wish GOG could get the latest Wolfenstein. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was another good one too!

No, I think the fault lies with gamers on that one. Don't you remember how much people used to complain about backtracking? I think for a lot of people, the introduction of rebounding health and more focused level design seemed like welcome streamlining.

It's kind of the same thing that happened with survival horror. People complained about the original Resident Evil formula, celebrated Resident Evil 4, then started complaining that there aren't any real survival horror games anymore. I think it's hard to know whether a change is actually for the better until you've actually gotten to live with the change.

I know I really liked rebounding health when I was younger, because I thought it solved some of the problems associated with health packs (most notably, being screwed over in a fight because you didn't have enough health coming into it).

Fortunately I don't cause I really just played games back in the day and rarely read up on them or reviews. I used my brother and friends for game suggestions. Plus, the internetz was in it's infancy when I started playing FPS. I haven't played Doom 1 in a long time. Maybe I should boot it up and see if I am annoyed. I mean cause rose-tinted glasses are a bitch. But you may be right about the gamers being at fault; I really don't know, that's why I asked the question. Maybe it is a weird, small, masochistic niche that pines for the old days. I mean, I remember being mad when I'd have to backtrack in a game to look for a key or something I missed, but it didn't ruin the game for me. And then when I did find it I was super proud of myself. Again though, if I were to play the game now, I may think differently. Although, will I be annoyed b/c it was bad game design or that I've been coddled with more linear games?

you design games, so you would know better than me ;)

And I won't lie, regenerating health has made FPS much less stress inducing for me.

No.

There's just more types of games that have a first person perspective and involve shooting. There was a glut at one particular point in time that all followed pretty much exactly the same damn checklist and it just happened to be your cup of tea.

Now they're serving a lot of another type of beverage that some other shitheals like but I don't... fucking genre is going backward?

No.

Still nice shooters being released here and there, and I'm glad they're not yearly releases or all aping one another.

Bulletstorm
Serious Sam
Hard Reset
Blood Dragon
Borderlands series
Shadow Warrior
Singularity?
Metro series?
Deus Ex HR

No. The real problem is no one has made a N.O.L.F game in far too long and its time to cut our own throats if it doesn't happen sharpish.

Sorry to contradict you, but "in my opinion" the major culprit was not COD4, it was HALF-LIFE, before that game the FPS have no story and scripts were used only to activate traps or open specific doors, all maps had secret places to find.

HL was the first FPS to stop the player and "force" it to see it's story, it was so linear and no secrets on the map. I do not mean HL is bad game, it's one of my beloved games but that does not take away the guilt.

Story started pretty early on. Dark Forces was released in 1995 and had a story and cutscenes. Jedi Knight (1997) followed it with NPC interaction within the game. Terminator: Future Shock (1995) also had a story told through cutscenes.

Perhaps HL took it to the next level, but it's clear that story based FPS was a natural thing for developers to do.

Aim assist is just not right. On top of that I have seen people dis a game and give it poor ratings if it doesn't have aim assist. Skyrim for the PS3 can be hard as hell sometimes because it doesn't have aim assist. Can you imagine how boring Doom would be with aim assist?

No thank you. I don't even like it on games that I am no good at as without the assist it challenges you to find another way to get the job done.

Well... Doom would be a pretty poor example as that one does, in fact, have aim assist :-P
The sword and proper weapon upgrades :-P But yes, enemies do tend to be bullet spongy, unless you get really efficient when dealing with them and find the right combination of tools. And even then, some of the greater demons are a pain. Still - find the right tool for the job and they'll go down relatively fast. It's Heroic difficulty where things get insane...

Jumping puzzles killed the new RotT for me - shooting was great, but it did get repetitive. And the new Wolfenstein... Aaaah, the new Wolfestein.

but half life was in no way dumbed down nor was it short
you still had to find your way around the map on your own

call of duty 4 and its sequels just shunted you from one scripted set piece to another