Brief article. What makes a good shooter is constantly under review. Gamespot makes some arguments for how modern games can learn from Doom.

Article Link

Thoughts? I do recall some of my favourite games in the day being Blood and Shadow Warrior. I wasn't so much a Quake or Doom type, though I did play them.

One design feature I do like in games like these is the health pack rather than regenerating health. I've heard the arguments that even with regenerating health you have to find cover to regenerate behind, but generally that will always be there. Health packs deplete in the level as you use them, and they can make levels harder as more get used up.

There is also the fact that in general game design, when you come across an area littered with heaps of health and ammo you know you are about to meet a behemoth of a boss. Christmas is never free in an old school FPS!


Edit - Fixed URL

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/three-lessons-today-s-shooters-can-learn-from-doom/1100-6419617/

To hell with regenerating health. I really don't like it. I think the first Far Cry did it right, non-regenerating health but with the regen air/sprint bar. Color me old-school because I started with Wolf-3D and Doom, but I don't like where things have gone. That and the major emphasis on multiplayer, but that's another topic.

I guess I haven't changed with the times but cutscenes bore me, all the warfare type games aren't my thing, and I don't like multi... not that Doom is my ideal, it's a bit simple now, but I agree with a lot of the points in the article. Good old fantasy / sci-fi FPS... man seeing those monsters in the article brought back some memories!

Edit... I'm not against all modern games, though I tend to lag ~ 5 years behind. Far Cry, BioShock (haven't played Infinite)... I just don't like a lot of features of the new stuff. On the other hand, destructible environments! So I guess I'm just a bit picky...

That's an interesting article you found.
I can see where they're coming from, but mostly for a Doom-like.
A lot of it is really hard to apply to these brown realism shooters we have these days.
Level design however is number one for every shooter IMO.

Cheers, fixed the link in my post now!

(pstt... you replied to wrong post...)

My thoughts?

I do not mind a corridor shooter, as long as it is fun. However, I dislike most modern "war" shooters - it is just boring. I agree that it boils down whether you want to focus on gameplay or story, neither is better or worse than the other. Level design is king, but there is also a danger of creating too much backtracking.

Also - play Tower of Guns!

That's not all tho, regen health generally discourages run and gun gameplay, turning player into glass canon. Furthermore, and this is not an issue of regenerative health per se, just indicative of it - Healthpacks and generally resource management leads to more complex level design. You need obvious places to put that stuff, you need semi-secrets, actual secrets, that kind of stuff. And another bad design decision that regenerative health allows for is to make un-dodgeable enemies. With regenerating health, designers don't have to care about player skill as much, because they know that player will be able to escape any situation at just about any point - which also means that they don't have to worry about designing enemies in such a way that you can predict and get around their attacks. That being said, a game can be well-designed even with regenerating health, if it is used well. Like in the new Shadow Warrior! Yay! (the way they did it there is really quite clever.) Oh yeah, definitely, play Tower of Guns.

Level design is also something that too often seems to be forgotten about.

For some reason this put me in the mood for STALKER

Part of good level design is either limiting backtracking, or making it not a chore.
And no, that does not mean spawning enemies developers!
I get it's an easy way to add something to backtracking, but it's so predictable and boring to have these enemies waiting in an area you cleared five minutes earlier.
I remember one dev saying something once that I thought was kind of an interesting mindset, which was "Just moving your character should be fun by itself".
Now that doesn't 100% apply to FPS, but I think the underlying philosophy of it applies to every genre.

Have you played the Lost Alpha? If not, do so immediately - it's free and you will be very surprised, I promise.

Oh it absolutely does, you'll find that the FPS games considered to be best in the industry have a good skill involved in even moving around. I'm not talking about pressing WSAD of course, I mean stuff like bunny hopping, rocket jumping, or unique elements implemented directly into the movement system like parkour stuff from Titanfall or jetpack/skiing in Tribes.

Just started playing in earnest, and yes, it is fun! It has been a long time since I have been so interested in trying to find all the secrets in an area and do real exploring in an FPS.

Not yet, but I will definitely keep it in mind for the 2nd of my mega post apocalyptic gaming binges that I have planned :)
(the 1st is Fallout 1,2,3,NV) I think I'll play Lost Alpha instead of the misery mod

One thing the article mentions is the fact you only have to aim horizontally not vertically and you often have a wider hit box to target anyway. Considering how some people disagree with console game's aim helping mechanisms I'm surprised more people haven't disagreed on that point.

As someone who isn't good at twitch shooting, I'm all for it.