Going back to broad strokes genres, this week’s topic concerns the FPS (First Person Shooter), a staple of the overall gaming scene.
A First Person Shooter is the type of game where you play from a first person perspective (big shocker) and focuses around shooting (bigger shocker there), whether that’s other players or NPC enemies. It’s nice for a genre to be so plainly self-descriptive! FPS games also involve the navigation of a 3D environment, and often times incorporate standard concepts that are ubiquitous at this point like ammo management and loadouts of different weapons. This genre was heavily shaped by Doom (the original, released in early 90s), to the point where before the name FPS fully took hold, one term often used was “Doom clones”. Nowadays there are many subgenres and styles paired with the FPS - class-based shooters, “boomer shooters”, milsim and/or tactical shooters, twitch shooters, and others.
Here are some questions and subtopics that I encourage people to discuss:
- What are some of your favorite subgenres or styles of FPS, and your favorite games from them?
- Do you enjoy secondary concepts often associated with FPS games like ammo management and loadout adjustment?
- What genres do you like to see crossed over with an FPS?
- Do you prefer multiplayer or singleplayer FPS games? For multiplayer, Co-op or PvP?
- What are some of your favorite weapons from FPS titles? What’s been memorable?
Also feel free to bring up anything you like related to the topic! If you have suggestions for future discussion topics, leave them in the suggestion thread.
Additional Resources
- List of first-person shooters from Wikipedia
- First-Person Shooter tag on Steam
I’m loving the FPS renaissance we’ve been seeing lately. The Boomer Shooter… boom, low poly gameplay-centric entries like BattleBit Remastered, rhythm games like Metal Hellsinger, and the latest incarnations of DooM and games seeking to mimic it are all welcome additions to the current gaming landscape. Also love experimentation happening by even established and larger developers - Gearbox’s efforts with the Tiny Tina RPGish games come to mind; though I wish they’d do a better job of addressing bugs in those games. I’d love to see more FPS-RPGs come around.
Hell - I’d love to see a ton of crossovers. It’s been a while since we had a truly great FPS platformer. RIP Mirror’s Edge.
Warhammer Boltgun was a day one purchase for me and now we’re in the age of handhelds like the Steam deck, I can get my fix anywhere.
I’m on a flight to Spain next week and a good part of that flight will be spent purging heretics.
I will purge them for the Imperium!
Titanfall 2 scratched that itch for me. I love that type of movement in games.
If I had to pick a favorite FPS… It’d have to be the combination of the Bungie developed Halo games. The story may not always knock it out of the park, but even upon Halo CE’s release the art design, world building, and slower paced mechanical leaning was unique and unparalleled in its execution.
I’ll always be able to go back and play those games. The mix of ballistic and sci Fi weaponry kept things interesting and options varied. The high time to kill for both the player and enemies made experimentation easier and more rewarding. The enemy AI that never seemed to settle on trying the same strategy twice was the cherry on top that made discussing Halo’s “combat sandbox” a household topic in the mouths of video game enthusiasts.
Of all the games that claim a difficulty level that the game was designed for, Halo’s Heroic mode will always truly feel like what Halo was meant for. Challenging, but loose enough that you could mix up your loadout and approach, and make up the imperfections of your plan on the backend through execution. Absolutely an experience where I can say it is fun to lose, because there’s always another cleverly intriguing idea for you to try and solve the combat puzzle with.
And a final shout-out to Bungie for creating some of the only games where it really feels like you’re right at home with a controller in hand. Many shooters can feel pretty good with a controller, but only Halo’s deliberate pace and seamless bullet magnetism make the walls melt away between the imprecision of joystick aiming and my mechanical intent.
And the online community these games bred is its own whole set of five paragraphs I won’t type now. Hats off to Halo.
I always struggled with FPS games as they made me a bit nauseous and I would get lost easily. Typically I preferred 3rd person such as Gears of War, Uncharted, Witcher, etc. although I do have gob tons of hours in Destiny 2 and Skyrim so obviously managed to make it work.
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That is really good advice. I don’t seem to have as much problems with newer games so refresh rates probably did help. I will have to pay attention next time I play an FPS to change the FOV.
What defined Ego shooters for me wasn’t doom but unreal tournament. Played a lot of it when I was younger. I liked to just mentally check out and play this game on high speed which put me in flow-mode. There wasn’t too much strategy to it. Just know the map, run around and kill stuff with fast reflexes. I was really good at it. Beat all my friends on LAN-parties.
There was ammo but no reloading and that was absolutely fine. Made for some amazing mmmonster-Kills to not have to reload.
My favorite weapon was the flak-Canon with it’s shotgun-style primary attack that suited my jump-around-and-be-on-the-move-constantly Playstyle. The secondary attack was like a grenade and very handy for AOE or when people were following you.
Nowadays I don’t really want to play egoshooters anymore after having worked 8 hours+ on the computer. Stresses me out. Especially multiplayer where I would have to train to be able to keep up.
As I am quite inconsistent at aiming well and reacting to stuff quickly, I like shooters that don’t put a lot of emphasis on it and/or offer viable alternatives for the days I’m not in the groove. Overwatch and Gunfire Reborn both fall into this category for me, despite being different subgenres (competitive multiplayer and roguelite with coop options respectively).
Also, I enjoy puzzle games in all forms, so that includes first person puzzles like Portal games, The Talos Principle or The Turing Test
I hope to see a Timesplitters remake one day, I have so much nostalgia for it! Timesplitters Rewind is an awesome project, but I don’t think it will ever be finished.
What I wish would come back is really good COOP PVE. I ran a hugely popular ut2004 Invasion server that we wrote a custom mutator for (Sudvasion). I had a T1 line to my house that just ran the servers. We had a solid dedicated group of people from all over the world playing that 24/7. Was the pinnacle of gaming for me. 18 years later I still chat with some of the community via steam disc etc.
Don’t remember if I played on your server, but UT2K4 was the definitive FPS, hell, the definitive multiplayer game as far as I’m concerned. Cutting-edge graphics paired with gorgeous esthetics, ultra-refined gameplay with a mile-high skill ceiling, a million game modes and a billion mods, strong community and developer support. If it’s good, it’s probably true of UT2K4.
If you were an invasion nut then you likely did. We had alot of good tweaks for invasion and it was HARD. 100th wave was only done once and took 6 hours to make it heh.
And i agree. 2k4 was good in so many ways. Ive been searching for something like it and it doesnt exist.
Have you tried GTFO? It’s more of a stealth game than a straight up shooter, but it did scratch that itch for me and my friends.
Also, Gunfire Reborn is pretty good at going “one more run” due to its roguelite nature, and it has a pretty well functioning coop mode
Gunfire is quite fun. Gtfo just didnt do it for me. Was fun but i tired of it quick.
16player pve coop is my dream again. The new starship trooper is acratching the ut invasion itch a good bit right now
Holy shit T1 man those were the days
Hah yea 800 mo and took 6mo to install as they had to run cable as there was no support for “residential” t1. And things moved fast. 3-4 years later i was a beta tester for verizon fios 1gig
I’m going to go on a nostalgic trip below.
IMHO, Powerslave/Exhumed was one of the best first person shooters on the 5th generation consoles and the Powerslave engine (Slavedriver) enabled the Saturn to run an amazing port of both Duke Nukem 3d and Quake.
I remember being ecstatic that a game I could only play on a friends PC when I visited back in the day (Duke3d) was not only playable on my Saturn, it was a fantastic port too. DeathTank Zwei was a lovely hidden bonus game included on the D3D port.
Likewise, Quake was an impossible port, bought to a console that traditionally struggled with substandard 3d games vs the psx.
I remember seeing a psx owning buddy play a superb port of Doom on his psx, only for me to be burned by the absolute 💩port that Rage software put out on the Saturn. Even the 32x cartridge version of Doom was batter.
Console shooters have come on in leaps and bounds each generation but Exhumed on the Saturn was a real highlight for me in my younger years.
