The original Xbox generation has grown up to become the much maligned frat boys that constitute the lion's share of Halo's and COD's audience. People like TB are preaching to those who never liked that genre anyway and, as such, their opinion won't reach the people who are likely to buy these games and they won't change anything.

I find some irony between his discussion of the problems with modern games, along with praise of the creativity of old games, while on screen we're watching him play that level nearly the exact same way three times in a row: shurikens and sword on the first few bad guys, hitting the same secret spaces in pretty much the same order, first find the gold key and then the silver key, etc. How is that so different from rail shooter elements?

One could argue that the old-school limitation of health and ammo is as much of a constraint on gameplay as is linear level design: if you don't find those secrets and don't use the weapons and ammo in a certain way, then you're screwed. And once you have them memorized, as apparently he does in level one of Shadow Warrior, then it's a matter of repeating your steps in much the same way. It's the same thing - linearity - but it takes a different form.

If you want some real choice with FPS gameplay, then play a first-person RPG. Otherwise, enjoy the new FPS (or not) for what it is and what it does well. Frankly, I'm glad the marketplace has room for both the old and new styles.

I don't want my games to be Blockbuster movies i just want my games to be games.

Actually, thing change, because people change. As you said, the original Xbox generation are now in college, do you think they'll still be into broshooters when their out of education/working? Do you think the next generation is going to be the same? All numbers indicate that the young generation are more interested in social devices, and don't care much for video games, the average gamer at least here in Australia is 30, and it's about the same or older in the rest of the West.

The reason that the Xbox generation was able to sweep away the old PC generation around the turn of the millennium was precisely because PC gaming was much, much smaller back then. The publishers and Microsoft had a ready-made generation from the PS1/N64 and earlier days ready for the new console. Do you seriously believe that this coming generation of consoles has their own generation of millions upon millions of young people secretly hidden away and ready to propel the Xbox 1 and PS4 to enormous success?

The audience isn't there man, they are too busy with tablets, phones, socializing and don't care about games. They will have to sell the next-gen to the same people they sold the previous-gen to.

What is going to happen when/if the Xbox generation simply don't buy any of those type of games anymore? What happens when they grow out of the shallow linear simplistic shooter genre? Who is going to replace them?

DOOM! The entire shallow action genre is going to crumble.

That's probably because he was making a commentary at the same time. Also, in older shooters, you were discovering the best ways to beat the level by yourself, and your friends probably had other ideas about that.

In modern shooters you get this "Quick, find cover! Now, pick up that sniper rifle! Kill that man on the tower, quickly!" bullshit.

I thought we had that seperation.
Tactical FPS (or Tactical shooters in general if you prefer), which started with Counterstrike (I think. Did we have any other before CS?) back in 2K or so, and Twitch FPS.

In Twitch FPS, reloading your weapon is optional, movement is paramount and doesn't influence accuracy all that much (if at all) and the multiplayer tends to be a chaotic fragfest.
In Tactical FPS, position is everything, as well as sensible reloads. If you try to move and shoot, you will have trouble hitting the broad side of a barn, running out of bullets in the magazine does make you decide if you have time to reload or if you are better to switch to a different weapon, and multiplayer is more of a cat and mouse game than a chaotic fragfest.

In recent years, we didn't get that many Twitch FPS (not sure if we did get any at all), but complaining that a Twitch FPS doesn't play as a Tactical FPS is like complaining that Carmageddon doesn't race like Gran Turismo, or that NBA Jam plays different from NBA 2K13.

I'm sorry, but it sounds like you haven't played that many modern shooters.

I agree that casual gamers are making a move to tablets. It's what has afflicted Nintendo with the Wii U. I think that at least for the next generation the COD audience will remain with consoles though, mobiles just don't offer the same graphics and multiplayer experience, some point in the future it might, but what might happen then I cannot predict, if I did I'd be rich.

You're assuming that companies will revert back to the previous audience though and that's just not going to happen. They'll continue doing what they're doing now and that is supplying the demand. Before it was the maze-like FPS, now it's military shooters and in the future it will be something else.

You can hope for more FPS's like that though, in the form of lower budget niche-targeted games, which I hope it's a format the industry embraces in the future, but the AAA industry will always chase the mainstream audience, wherever it is.

So when I use the term "modern shooter", I include all sorts of games into it; the fact is that there is quiet range of FPS games.

Look at this list (you can sort by year): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_first-person_shooters

I've played many of the games listed from 2000-2013, so I can't take generalizations seriously. The predominant complaint here seems to be that the military shooters don't appeal to me, and as such they should not exist!

I can tell you that military shooters are not perfect in terms of gameplay, but they're certainly not any worse than older games.

Right - they're simply different compared to the old stuff. But geez, after a while didn't people complain about the key-hunt mechanic that used to be prevalent in those early games? But now suddenly it's a good thing, because it represents exploration. heh. Funny how we forget the gripes we used to have.

And really, nothing is stopping a developer from creating a new title that plays like the games of old. Nothing except the buying public, that is.

haha, yes, I remember that discussion. Doom was brought up as an example of bad game design, where all levels revolved around finding red key for red door, blue key for blue door, get green key, backtrack to green door :)

Gamers complained that all games became like this, and designers experiments with narrative-driven games, which led to these games.

Good news is that there is room for all genres :)

Couldn't agree more - well said!

Biscuit didn't disappoint me. "These games never got in the way of the action - NEVAAAA!" Well duuuh, compare Doom, Duke or Shadow Warrior to the first Call of Duty. Call of Duty was non-stop action, no mazes, no keycards, no puzzles, few cutscenes and no friggin' platforming, that's why even I as a hardcore gamer welcomed it at first. And people should be aware that many of the features that supposedly "casualized" the series and genre in general were in fact legitimate design choices. I also welcomed regeneration at first (and to this day I LOVE that they've replaced quicksaving with checkpoints). I love old shooters but many of them ARE boring, badly balanced, uninspired etc.. And as much as I love those old semi-open areas of the Build engine games, it was often a pain in the ass to navigate them, especially after all enemies were already gone. And as much as I love all those crazy weapons - many of them were just gimmicks and aside from being funny mostly useless (or you'd be only forced to use them because of limited ammo for the most efficient weapons). So as much as I agree in that the old games were more advanced in some ways - he's still talking largely out of his ass.

Why is that? First MOHAA has quicksaving, and it works like a charm.

I hate killing the same braindead enemies over and over again because I died two steps before autosave. By the way, MOHAA has autosaves as well, so it's not like COD "replaced" quicksaves with checkpoints, they just get rid of an option to save anywhere.