Totally agree, I just think it plays a part. Whether it's a large or small part depends on the individual. But yeah, a well designed game is a well designed game, regardless.

Man, I tell you... I was doing a bit of research to find a shooter similar to Painkiller or Serious Sam, and I found... Super Kinky.
I won´t link it here. You can google it. But naturally that raises a question: Dear Gog, when exactly can we get it here?

*a quick google later* Weeeeeell... okay then.

"That was very entertaining."

Are there really any good FPSs anymore?

Last FPS games I saw that looked good were Portal 2, ARMA, and Mirror's Edge. (The first two have DRM, IIRC)

On a small tangent here, is there some sort of official date or measure as to what games are modern/classic/vintage?

no, especially as "classic" can have many different definitions, some of them have nothing to do with being old (i.e. "typical of its kind" or "of highest quality of its kind", which is why you have for example classical music composed today)

I am continuing to dig DOOM very much. The levels get bigger, but still well designed. The secrets are fun to hunt for. The new types of enemies are introduced at a good pace. I'm not a great reflex player; I am playing on Hurt Me Plenty (Normal) difficulty, and I find it a little challenging. I can easily see bumping up to the next tier if I get a little better.

I remember playing about a third of the Wolfenstein New Order game a while back. I liked it. Lots of cut scenes, but in between were some great levels with good variety - one in a sprawling residential house, one in the water near the shore jumping from little island of wreckage to the next, one outside high up with ledges to fall from, one in the tight corridors of a castle... That kind of level variety really adds to my enjoyment. Plus there was good variety in enemies - the giant mechanical dogs were pretty great!

I really love FPS games and I have been playing them from Wolfenstein 3D. In my opinion, FPS evolve and in a quite good way. On the other hand, modern FPS abandoned many great ideas. Lets talk about some series.

Medal of Honor: game that started WWII shooters. But first two games is not quite good-looking right now. First one doesn't even have iron sights view - it was released when this aiming game technique was used only in hunting simulators. Airborne had quite interesting paradrop mechanics where you chose where to land. And last two games - 2010 and Warfighter - was excellent in my opinion. Last two was made with help of US Tier 1 SpecOps soldiers (and they got problems after that because they told too much and it was implemented in games). There was many interesting things. For example, you could take enemy's weapon, but only with a 2-3 mags of ammo. Soldiers almost never throw their issued weapon, so you coudn'r replace it for a all time. Or aiming arc for throwing hand grenade. Also, story was quite good. Only problem with 2010 I remember is HORRIBLE first level. Overall, I really like all this series.

Vietcong: first game with addon First Alpha is the best Vietnam war game ever. Characters is good, story is excellent and game have some interesting game mechanics. For example, artillery strike call or column movement. And game have all interesting things like traps and tunnel raiding. Soundtrack is excellent! If you haven't tried this game - try to play it! When I started playing for the first time I played through the night and then was next day I was in a "Daywalker zombie" mode. XD Second game is bad, so nothing interesting in it.

Bioshock Infinite: I didn't really liked the first two Bioshocks, but this one is very, very, VERY beautiful and have quite good ideas. But it has Elisabeth - one of the most developed NPC which accompany our hero in game. She helps to fight, find items, interacts with environment and many other interesting things. Also, there was such character before - Alyx Vance in HL2 Episodes, but in Bioshock this is totally new level of character development.

Far Cry: FPS sandboxes from Ubisoft. And this is the games that abandoned corridors. :) Far Cry 2 is somewhat repetitive and even boring, but 3rd and 4th is great games: shooting, hunting, climbing, flying, crafting, driving, swimming, burning drug fields.. Also, characters are good in 3rd and story is non-linear in 4th. Note that there is interesting health system - PC have some health slots that regenerate. If a full slot is empty - you need to heal with medkit (full restore of all health) or manually removing bullets and fragments from character's body (longer and restores 1-2 slots). Oh, and this games have skills and leveling with experience points!

Call of Duty: was an excellent series with its pinnacle Black Ops 2 - non-linear story, multiple endings, good gameplay and many other interesting things. But after BO2 series started to decline.

Battlefield: well, I really liked campaign from the 3rd part and 4th was good too. Especially 3rd which tried to be very realistic, but fun on the same time. Bad Company 2 was nice, but sometimes camera jumped first-person - third-persond changes too many times on one level.

Brothers in Arms: the one of the beast WWII games ever. The game where you not only shoot, but also command a squad of paratroopers (and each of them have a personality too!). You can tell them where to go, shoot, assault. And you need to do that because this is only way of winning on difficulty higher that easy. Very interesting and unusual game mechanics for FPS game. BiA was first game that offered this new type of experience. Also, two first games was very historically accurate. Last one tried to be more cinematic, and was worst that first two.

Also, need to mention Quake 4 - very atmospheric future combat on alien planet. Doom 3 was also very atmospheric. Bulletstorm had nice graphics and quite fun gameplay. Many ways to kill enemies and sometimes good jokes. Clive Barker's Jericho had very interesting mechanics of "possessing" other team-members and commanding your team. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 1 & 2 - excellent "feeling" of movement player's character, "felling" of weapons and many details like sparkles in NVG if you "hit the ground" under enemy fire. Dying Light have good visuals and excellent parkour system.

So, in general, games are getting better - they add vehicles, mounted weapons, comrades (everyone remembers that in old FPS you almost always was alone - Wolf3D, Doom, Duke, Corridor 7, Eradicator, Unreal and many other games) who help you. Takedowns is also nice addition. Even health regeneration is good because if you made some mistakes - you need to start level again from the start like it was in some old FPS. And this is not fun. But it is sad that modern FPS games abandoned some ideas like commanding a full squad.

P.S. About medkits/regen topic. Regen, in my opinion is better. And to make it more realistic some developers say that enemy is just shooting close to the character and ole last bullet is actually hit and kill PC. And when you in cover - enemy just looses his aim and need to start over. But best system is mixed one from Far Cry 3 and 4 which is very flexible, but not that easy like pure health regeneration.

For all, who would like to play their Doom a bit more Painkiller- like, check out Doom Slayer Chronicles. It even has the Painkiller music.

That's because fps became dumbed down as gaming went mainstream post 2000. The big dumbing down came with PC fps games moving to consoles which really started with Halo.

My save slot in DOOM just showed up as Corrupt, Cannot Be Loaded.

Damn. Back to square one.

That sounds about right.

I remember the CLASSICS:

Descent
Duke3d
Half-Life
Rainbow Six
Unreal Tournament

Of course things today continue to go downhill. The graphics too: Example: Ghost Recon, IMO, was better at outdoor atmosphere than Crysis II and the like. Oh, and retardedly overdone blood effects today look strawberry jelly.

You're just a youngin! :P