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So, is the "classic" FPS design pretty much dead?

nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
By classic i mean the design old action FPS games had. That is two things: Lots of enemies to kill and a level to "solve". Think of these games:

Wolfenstein 3D
Doom 1-2
Hexen
Duke Nukem 3D
Quake 1

These games had two things to worry about. The enemies and the map itself. Even if the enemies didn't exist, you still had to solve the map by exploring, finding keys, etc, so it was like a second enemy by itself. Sometimes it even felt like some kind of a 3D puzzle with the traps, timed doors and elevators. So my question is.... where are these games now?

After Quake 1 i don't remember many FPS games with such an interesting, hard to solve, level design. And as far as complex, labyrinthine levels go, Quake 1 might as well be the most advanced to this day as it's the only one that is fully 3D.

Some action FPS games after Quake had some exploration, like Goldeneye and Perfect Dark but these were mostly plain levels where you just had to find the right spots to complete your quests. And i'm sure there are a few other FPS games i'm missing during the 5th gen period but not much after that.

Some other popular FPS games like Serious Sam and Painkiller tried to emulate the "hordes of enemies at once" mode of Doom, but they still have plain maps and level design. Serious Sam had huge open maps but still incredibly linear with minimal exploration.

The whole exploration aspect now only exists in FP RPGs like Skyrim, DeusX etc. And some FPSes with an open world structure like Crysis and FarCry and even those games don't really rely much on exploring since it's impossible to get lost with all the indicators and such. You either get this or a pure action corridor shooter like CoD, Half-Life (i wish), Halo, Killzone and such.

So, any Quake 1 style games (that were released afterwards) you might know and recommend?
 
Rise of the Triad 2013
Shadow Warrior 2013
Wolfenstein New Order / Old Blood

all these callbacks atleast are amazing and "refreshing" in an oldskool way :D

rottmap.jpg
 
Noisepurge said:
Rise of the Triad 2013
Shadow Warrior 2013
Wolfenstein New Order / Old Blood

all these callbacks atleast are amazing and "refreshing" in an oldskool way :D
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These, the Serious Sam HD trilogy, and the Painkiller series are all rather new. Not triple AAA like the New Order was, but they're all still good "classic" FPS games.

EDIT: I read more carefully and see that he mentions SS HD and Painkiller aren't for him. Still give Rise of the Triad a try.
 
Vincent Grayson said:
IIRC, Painkiller had some solid level design, along with the well-known fuckton of enemies.
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It had nice graphics for sure and maybe the maps were interesting but it was just arena after arena shooting with doors opening only if you kill all the enemies. Not much exploration after that too.


kewlmyc said:
These, the Serious Sam HD trilogy, and the Painkiller series are all rather new.
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And don't have the Quake 1-ish level design i'm looking for either.
 
Loved old level design like Descent with color coded keys and proper mapping and backtracking. I guess popularity of HL was the beginning of the end really.
 
SomTervo said:
Yeah, it sounds like it's the 'maze'/'labirynthe' level design you're looking for. Which is great, but I can't think of many recent examples.
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Exactly.

And i doubt Wolfenstein New Order has that, although i only saw some Youtube videos of it.

From the suggestions so far, Rise of the Triad looks the most promising. But isn't that only a remake?
 
nkarafo said:
Exactly.

And i doubt Wolfenstein New Order has that, although i only saw some Youtube videos of it.

From the suggestions so far, Rise of the Triad looks the most promising. But isn't that only a remake?
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I have the played wolfenstien the old blood and while it isn't exactly what you want it isn't super linear either.

It's more a middle ground.
 
Wrack on Steam is a good old school fps. Only single player.

If you want multiplayer you have to choice in this group: Reflex, Quake Live (the "modern" Q3A) and the upcoming new Unreal Tournament. (imo)
 
I don't think "linear" is the antithesis of the mazelike key-hunting the OP is talking about. You can still have deep, engaging environments that aren't about clear stages or moving to the next setpiece.

I'd also argue that at this point, the sort of Metroidvania aspects of those early shooters were the aberration, rather than the norm.
 
Nothing at all is approaching doom level. beastiary, or weapon balancing/design lately.

But there are a number of fast, jumpy, and shooty games out there: a number of which are pretty good for there own reasons.
 
If someone doesn't beat me to it, once I win the lottery I'm going to revive the classic raycaster FPS genre. There has not been anything like it in nearly 2 decades since 3D took over.
 
Fuchsdh said:
I'd also argue that at this point, the sort of Metroidvania aspects of those early shooters were the aberration, rather than the norm.
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What do you mean? Pretty much all early shooters had this labyrinthine level design. Action FPS level design got simplified after Quake1.
 
Somnid said:
If someone doesn't beat me to it, once I win the lottery I'm going to revive the classic raycaster FPS genre. There has not been anything like it in nearly 2 decades since 3D took over.
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What bugs me is that Quake1 was fully 3D and took this kind of level design a step further. Then.... it died. And we got Quake 2 with it's more linear "follow the straight path" approach.
 
ThreePiMatt said:
The Shadow Warrior reboot, while good, I seem to recall being fairly linear.
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Very linear, though some of the secrets were fun to get.
Bolivar687 said:
Isn't Strafe doing this or is it just about the aesthetic?
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Stife is mainly about the similar aesthetic and perhaps some of the movement and weapon design. It being a rogue-like means it cannot try and go for the "classic" fps level and monster encounter design.
 
Yea Shadow Warrior was great but did have some linearity, though you could explore and backtrack to find secrets and whatnot. IIRC Hard Reset was extremely linear.

Shadow Warrior 2 is going to have more openness and nonlinearity in the maps (from what the previews showed). The first game was still a hell of a lot of fun to play, and the second looks to be even better.
 
I think Doom 4 is about to Mario Maker it up with it's snap-together, user generated map making. After awhile, I bet some mind blowing, labyrinthine layouts will rise to the top.

Other than that, I think the closest thing we still have in spirit going forward is random generation using a central, grand-hall hub as a baseline, then fitting rotating L's, +'s, and J's etc from there. I wish I could find some of the promising gifs I'd seen not too long ago.
 
Yes, thankfully.

As a puzzle solving mechanic it was never really good and blocked of the actual fun of fps's which was to shoot baddies.

I think you need to look at games like portal and the talos principal for your fps puzzle needs.
 
CSGO is the only FPS that's gonna matter in the future I think. I don't dig concurrent single player FPS games at all, however I did enjoy Hard Reset a lot. Shadow Warrior was good too but I got stuck very early.
 
Serious Sam, Painkiller etc are more Quake 3 like arena games at heart. Few shooters these days go for the labyrinthine levels that require backtracking after acquiring item A that needs to be used at place B.

I think Alien:Isolation is the only one that comes close as it often had you returning to the same areas and finding a different route but even if it had lots of routes simply to help you hide from the alien, it isn't the same. Plus it's certainly no shooter.

I wouldn't be surprised if Quake 1's level design was also partly due to GPU limitations, thus labyrinths so you don't have a lot of stuff on screen at once.
 
The keys in Doom were annoying as hell. The puzzles in something like Hexen even more so. Combing every inch of a map looking for an arbitrarily placed hidden key does not a fun puzzle make. It's no coincidence that modern games have tried to copy the action of Doom, but few have tried to copy the level design wholesale.
 
People describing things like Hard Reset, Shadow Warrior 2013, Serious Sam and Painkiller as "classic-style" gets my goat so it does. They are nothing like the Doom/Build games.

Tertullian said:
The keys in Doom were annoying as hell. The puzzles in something like Hexen even more so. Combing every inch of a map looking for an arbitrarily placed hidden key does not a fun puzzle make. It's no coincidence that modern games have tried to copy the action of Doom, but few have tried to copy the level design wholesale.
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You don't so much comb every inch of the map as look at your automap and go "hmm, I haven't been there yet" and then go there.

Do people just not known about placing markers in Doom 1/2 or something?
 
What do we think the chance are of Doom 4 having that kind of level design? I don't feel like we've seen enough to get a real feel for the level layouts.
 
Pudge said:
Ziggeraut is another good example of using old school FPS design in a decidedly modern way. Well worth a look if you're looking for something like Doom
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Ziggurat is a "roguelike" FPS with large enemy arenas like Serious Sam, it is in no way like Doom.

It is good though, don't get me wrong.

Vincent Grayson said:
What do we think the chance are of Doom 4 having that kind of level design? I don't feel like we've seen enough to get a real feel for the level layouts.
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0.
 
Lord British said:
Ziggurat is a "roguelike" FPS with large enemy arenas like Serious Sam, it is in no way like Doom.
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I mean, if you want to get really specific about it, sure. Doom had enemy arenas too though, and Serious Sam is one way of progressing from Doom. It's still fast paced combat that is in stark contrast to the majority of precision based FPS out there, and that's probably as close as we're going to get to Build engine stuff in 2015.
 
Pudge said:
I mean, if you want to get really specific about it, sure. Doom had enemy arenas too though, and Serious Sam is one way of progressing from Doom. It's still fast paced combat that is in stark contrast to the majority of precision based FPS out there, and that's probably as close as we're going to get to Build engine stuff in 2015.
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Not that I want to argue the toss (who has the time?) but Doom only really has the one example of a Serious Sam style "doors locked until you kill everyone" arena, and that would be Doom 2's "Dead Simple". Bosses excepted, obviously. Unless I'm misremembering, which is very possible.
 
New Order treats weapons and enemies in a very classic-style way but the level design is much more linear. It's not like COD at all and has secrets to find as well as some open-ended rooms. It's really more like an early 2000's game in terms of overall feel.

Like some people in this thread, I haven't seen a single modern FPS that feels like the games of the mid 90's in terms of level design. The old games were all about exploring the levels and finding their secrets, not just killing a bunch of enemies. I tried a demo of Shadow Warrior 2013 and it feels completely different from Shadow Warrior 1997. It's really its own game. Shadow Warrior 2 looks more interesting though. Haven't tried the other modern games.

Off the top of my head, Demon's Souls might the modern game that feels closest to those old-style levels. It just isn't an FPS.
 
Not to hijack the thread, but are there any modern examples of Doom-like multiplayer where the weapons lay on the map and part of the battle is finding and getting to your preferred weapons?
 
Tower of Guns was pretty cool. Mostly about killing enemies and staying alive, I guess more of a 3D bullet hell game but it reminded me of the games of old. It definitely is more linear but at least the gameplay goes back to the old days.
 
Ugh, I understand the nostalgia, but there's a lot of rose tinted spectacles for it. I mean, exploring was cool, but hitting some switch that might drop a hidden wall on the other side of the map while the map was totally empty of enemies. I'm so glad we moved past that.

I generally got so sick of it by the halfway point of those games, and in fact the media often complained about it too.

That said, I think there's a place for good mystery, navigation and puzzle solving in games, but I don't thing those old FPS did it especially well at all.

I'll have to try Wolfenstien to see if they've improved the formula. I think the dreadnaught in Destiny also captures that feel without the obnoxiousness of the original system.
 
electricpirate said:
Ugh, I understand the nostalgia, but there's a lot of rose tinted spectacles for it. I mean, exploring was cool, but hitting some switch that might drop a hidden wall on the other side of the map while the map was totally empty of enemies. I'm so glad we moved past that.
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Happens in Hexen as a mainline thing, maybe in some optional secrets in other games?

This is why you leave map markers at suspicious points!
 
I can't really think of modern examples with the kind of level design you're talking about.

Your only option might be to play whatever 90s shooters you missed back in the day. Ever played Dark Forces? Blood?
 
Lupin the Third said:
Not to hijack the thread, but are there any modern examples of Doom-like multiplayer where the weapons lay on the map and part of the battle is finding and getting to your preferred weapons?
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Halo 5 arena MP is the biggest one I can think of.

Back to OT, I wonder if those design changes were due to resource constraints vs game length. A lot of people would take a while to fully traverse the rooms in order to find keys and solve puzzles their first time. This would increase the time it took to beat the game the first time, but in subsequent playthroughs they could just go from point A to point B from memory, making the "discovery" feel timesome after a while. So it's possible developers decided resources would be better spent on environments that would be more fully utilized on any given playthrough. This could lead to more linear design, since the time to traverse a relatively straight path would primarily depend on enemy difficulty.

Another thing to take into consideration would be graphical resources. As textures became more detailed, the amount of time needed to fill a similar area would steadily increase, possibly to the point where average gaming PCs of the day couldn't handle it. So in order to save time while still increasing visual fidelity, levels again became more linear.
 
I can't remember the last time I "solved" a level in a FPS... it was probably a Doom or Quake game. So that aspect of it has been dead for a very very long time... sadly.
 
electricpirate said:
That said, I think there's a place for good mystery, navigation and puzzle solving in games, but I don't thing those old FPS did it especially well at all.
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Realms of the Haunting was perhaps one of the grandest and ambitious adventure games ever, combining adventure puzzles, exploration, fps and FMV.

Too bad it was released at a time when those type of games were not that common. While Bioshock was certainly more digestible. Instead of adding books and texts, you just had to rewind audio tapes.
 
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