morhlis: If anyone wants to know why older FPS games seem more fun than the newer ones you simply have to understand the culture in which the two were created.
Older FPS games were created by people who were really into what they were doing. It wasn't just a day job, it was their life. They loved what they were doing and were having an utter blast putting their games together. Like others have already said, there was so much love put into level design, and just as much brain power put into ideas on how to stretch the source code to its fullest potential. The groups that made these games were small in comparison to modern development teams. They made the game and released it because they were proud of it and loved to play it. You feel that love when you play these games.
Now most games, just not fps games, are built on the corporate model. Everything is focus grouped and play-tested so that it appeals to most people. On game mechanics this isn't a bad idea. But when content is compromised in order to sell to a few more folks it makes everything more and more bland. Id, 3D Realms, Interplay, Monolith, these companies were making games that the small group of devs really enjoyed. I'm not sure the same can be said for the consumer products of the 21st century.
Cook: Maybe developers should take on a simple "you're a badass with big guns and need to kill bad guys" scenario and focus on creating fun gameplay? But then we'd probably complain that modern FPSs are boring and doesn't have a descent story ;)
One thing about that. Older FPS games relied on the settings to tell the stories. The levels were a progression toward a goal. At the end of each episode there might be some little movie or something. But the idea was to use your own imagination in tandem with what the game is presenting. If you play Blood you will see that there is indeed a story. But the feel of the game was really more important that the actual story. The player makes up the odds and ends in their mind as they go and thus makes the game their own. In other words, the lack of specifics can let the player fall deeper into the game. The more an FPS tries to tell you the story, like with massive cutscenes, the more you realize you are playing something contrived. You fail to fully fall into the world the developers are trying to create.
Sorry this is my thesis, lol.
This is pretty close to my thoughts on what happened to the genre. When the FPS genre came about, the game development scene was nothing more than a group of people whom weren't so much concerned with making a crap ton of money, but instead just wanted to make an insanely fun game that they themselves would love to play. Like many indie developers today, game development was considered a labor of love, and thus alot more care and personality was put into the creation of the first generation of FPS's. However, now that publishers have become a much larger and more influential part of the game industry by buying up and having more control over what many game developers make (along with developers themselves growing larger as a means to make larger scaled titles), the focus has shifted away from making more enjoyable games as a whole and more towards making a sustainable profit in the most efficient way possible. It's an unavoidable truth as it's simply the nature of the industry and how it's developed into what it is today.
But sadly, it ultimately leaves us with mostly FPS games now that really lack that sense of personality to them which I always enjoyed about DOOM 1/2, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood, and Wolfenstien 3D. The creative level design and humor (both subtle and not-so-subtle) stood out just as much as the frantic action-fueled gameplay, and it just showed that the creators really enjoyed making these types of experiences as much as we enjoyed playing through them. Now, granted, this kind of care is not completely void in this generation of FPS games as all of Valve's games for instance show alot of the same personality in them too. But when compared to the overall total number of FPS's out now and currently being developed, that amount of attention is only shown in a fraction of what it used to be. This is why I still keep coming back to play the classics to this day.
