I'd like to take a look at what I call the "lineage" of FPS games, and speculate on where the next breakthrough might be.
First off we've got WolfenDoom. Those games are easy to quantify. No independent movement of the crosshair would be it's most easily defined feature.
Next up the Quake/UE style. Fast movement. Arena style maps in multiplayer. Floaty jumps. Variety of hitscan and projectile weapons. This spawned a TON of clones and was daddy for years. I would say that Halo brought this style to console by slowing the gameplay down and taking some verticality out of the maps. With great success btw. It's not a knock at all. Team Fortress 2 would be the other "last survivor" from this genre.
Next up is controversial, but I don't think one can make a case for anything other than Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. Made by 2015 Studio aka Infinity Ward aka West and Zampella aka W and Z aka Respawn aka Ason Unique... wait a second. Scratch the last one. Respawn is the current form.
This model of FPS would best be defined by iron sights. Love em, hate em, indifferent, we don't care. Very few FPS games can come out today without them. I'll take them 99% of the time unless it's just painfully clear that the game shouldn't have them (which atm I'm having a hard time figuring out what scenario would benefit from a lack of stable aim at the expense of FOV, since it's a lot like shooting a real gun).
and set pieces. This was the grand daddy of "walk past this invisible line and watch an awesome building in the distance explode into bits". We can trace a ton of games back to these roots. Battlefield. Current Medal of Honor. Killzone. Resistance. etc. etc.
There are some outliers that I cannot place. Battlefield Bad Company 2 had fully destructible maps. I can't think of any other modern FPS that offers this (you suck so bad at life EA). I'd lean toward the MOH:AA family tree, but the map size and destruction kinda spin it off. If DICE had ran with the idea of destructible environments I think they'd have the next ring in the family tree. Shame they abandoned it. Counter Strike is a game I don't know much about. I suck terribly at it so I don't play it much, but I'm leaning towards crediting it to the arena lineage. Sure there's no jumping and I think all the weapons are hitscan, but the pace and emphasis on hip fire lead me to pin it there. OG Rainbow 6 and Ghost Recon games were just too real for the world. We didn't deserve them, so they have no category other than "we use to have nice things".
What do you guys think? It seems like Titanfall is blending MOH:AA with the movement of an arena shooter, which is a really cool prospect since for a long time everyone thought it was impossible to make fast precise movements on a controller. I didn't get to play the beta, but from what I've read and watched on YT it seems like they are pulling it off.
What will be the next advancement in the FPS gameplay pantheon? Am I missing on that's already here?
First off we've got WolfenDoom. Those games are easy to quantify. No independent movement of the crosshair would be it's most easily defined feature.
Next up the Quake/UE style. Fast movement. Arena style maps in multiplayer. Floaty jumps. Variety of hitscan and projectile weapons. This spawned a TON of clones and was daddy for years. I would say that Halo brought this style to console by slowing the gameplay down and taking some verticality out of the maps. With great success btw. It's not a knock at all. Team Fortress 2 would be the other "last survivor" from this genre.
Next up is controversial, but I don't think one can make a case for anything other than Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. Made by 2015 Studio aka Infinity Ward aka West and Zampella aka W and Z aka Respawn aka Ason Unique... wait a second. Scratch the last one. Respawn is the current form.
This model of FPS would best be defined by iron sights. Love em, hate em, indifferent, we don't care. Very few FPS games can come out today without them. I'll take them 99% of the time unless it's just painfully clear that the game shouldn't have them (which atm I'm having a hard time figuring out what scenario would benefit from a lack of stable aim at the expense of FOV, since it's a lot like shooting a real gun).
and set pieces. This was the grand daddy of "walk past this invisible line and watch an awesome building in the distance explode into bits". We can trace a ton of games back to these roots. Battlefield. Current Medal of Honor. Killzone. Resistance. etc. etc.
There are some outliers that I cannot place. Battlefield Bad Company 2 had fully destructible maps. I can't think of any other modern FPS that offers this (you suck so bad at life EA). I'd lean toward the MOH:AA family tree, but the map size and destruction kinda spin it off. If DICE had ran with the idea of destructible environments I think they'd have the next ring in the family tree. Shame they abandoned it. Counter Strike is a game I don't know much about. I suck terribly at it so I don't play it much, but I'm leaning towards crediting it to the arena lineage. Sure there's no jumping and I think all the weapons are hitscan, but the pace and emphasis on hip fire lead me to pin it there. OG Rainbow 6 and Ghost Recon games were just too real for the world. We didn't deserve them, so they have no category other than "we use to have nice things".
What do you guys think? It seems like Titanfall is blending MOH:AA with the movement of an arena shooter, which is a really cool prospect since for a long time everyone thought it was impossible to make fast precise movements on a controller. I didn't get to play the beta, but from what I've read and watched on YT it seems like they are pulling it off.
What will be the next advancement in the FPS gameplay pantheon? Am I missing on that's already here?