As the title says, everything should make the transition to first person. Ideally, as a first-person shooter, but I'm not really picky. But, considering the awfully serious* nature of this suggestion, I should probably prove my point, and I will do so by listing every game I can think of that became a first person shooter, and point out that nearly always, they are absolutely awesome games that everyone should play and are also frequently better than their predecessors. The world is better off for having them.
SWAT 4 Everyone always forgets Police Quest. You know the game they really remember? SWAT 4. Because that stuff was tight. While old-school fans were all dead due to a chronic case of boredom-brought-on-by-2D adventure games, SWAT 4 fans were actually playing one of the coolest tactical games of all time. Oh, and it was made by Irrational, and its still pretty cool to like Irrational. Seriously, SWAT 4s amazing. Everyone should play it.
Fallout: New Vegas Say what you will about Fallout 3, but dont forget it ended up doing pretty well both critically, commercially, and in my own personal opinion, so you just know its great. Also, more importantly, the original Fallout devs made one of the best games theyve ever made, Fallout: New Vegas, in first person. And yknow what? Both games are actually pretty cool because theyre in first person. Instead of watching the world from above, you get to be down and dirty with it, exploring every nook and cranny, really partaking in the world thats on display. Even if you think Fallout was better, presumably because youre from the olden times, its a challenge to deny that New Vegas isnt a great game.
Ultima Underworld I think some of the best games ever made come from Looking Glass. Stuff like Thief and System Shock went on to influence so many of the games out there today, from Every Stealth Game Thats Any Good (and some bad ones too) to Bioshock to Portal to Dead Space to a bunch of other totally great stuff. And it all comes back to Ultima Underworld. Sure, people probably complained that Underworld wasnt anything like IV, but grognards are dumb and no one should listen to them. Underworld was amazing and it kicked off some of the greatest video games ever made, which proceeded to inspire even more of the greatest games ever made. Without Ultima Underworld, wed be missing like 87% of all great video games.
Shadowrun I havent played this, but everyone I know who has says its pretty amazing. Yeah. I get it. Its not a turn-based RPG. Well, Ultima Underworld wasnt a top-down RPG, SWAT 4 wasnt an adventure game, and Fallout: New Vegas wasnt an isometric RPG, and they were all awesome. And yknow what? To the best of my knowledge, Shadowrun wasnt just a great game, it was so good that the pros used it. Too bad about the Games for Windows LIVE thingit could have had a great life on PC.
Syndicate This would be a controversial choice for people who havent played it. The guns feel solid, the first-person camera is amazing, and the flamethrower is possibly the only good flamethrower that has ever existed in a video game. Yeah, the story feels all Richard Morgany at first (which is awesome! Being evil for a game is fun!), and then has a plot twist thats so stupid Uncharted fans would proclaim it as great writing, but thats the games only real downside, other than a kinda ehnh health system. The shotgun feels solid, the enemies are enjoyable, psychic ping pong is one of the coolest things ever, and, most importantly of all, Syndicate has the best co-op Ive ever played. While Syndicate may be the weakest game on this list, its still a fun, solid game that more people should play with me.
Also some of the crew went on to join the Wolfenstein team.
Metroid Prime The best Metroid games were all first-person shooters. As soon as someone tried to stick it in another genre, BLAM, we got one of the worst Nintendo games ever. As first-person games, they were some of the best.
Also, there's Duke Nukem 3D, a game widely considered a classic. Kinda like most of the other games in this list, actually. It was awesome, and Hollywood Holocaust is frequently on "best levels of all time" lists. I don't really know what else to say about it. It's Duke Nukem 3D. There's a reason people spent eleven years being hyped for its sequel.
Alright, enough joking around; time to get real: some of you dont like first-person shooters, and thats perfectly fine. Some people would rather we live in a world where first-person shooters dont exist, to the point where theyll blatantly misrepresent the facts and act like shooters are oversaturated or the most common genre or all games get turned into first-person shooters. Thats not fine. But most of you are more reasonableyou like an IP for certain reasons, and a genre transition can result in some of those reasons feeling trampled. I completely sympathize; one of my favorite IPs this year was turned into a MOBA, and Im heartbroken.
I made this thread cause, after hearing everything gets turned into shooters for the nth time, I jokingly said I wish, and then, after a while, started thinking about what that might actually mean. So I figured Id take a hyperbolic stab at the argument. Remember: hyperbole's a rhetorical device meant to create a strong impression.
I mean to create a strong impression--to get people thinking about how the transition to shooters isn't as bad as people often claim it is, and, more importantly, to help people realize that these changes arent that common, and when they are, they tend to yield pretty good games as well. Id rather see people giving good games a chance than dismissing them because of some pretty dumb arguments, yknow? The goal here is more love.
Obviously I dont really take this position. If everything were first person shooters, we'd have no city builders, and that would be a bad thing, because city builders are some of my favorite games.
I guess you could say Im tired of people crapping all over my second-favorite genre. First-person shooters are pretty cool and a great deal of them are honestly quite fun. If you dont enjoy them, thats fine, but I hope Ive made you aware that claims of any sort of overabundance of shooter transformations are, well, blatant and false exaggeration.
I think it might be fun if we talked about what games might actually make for unique first-person experiences. Like, say, XCOM. Theres a lot of stuff in XCOM that would make for a great, interesting shooter experience. For that matter, if you could translate a first-person shooter into another genre, what would you do?
*
if this is putting you off, just a heads up, its hyperbole, and I do my best to be level-headed about it after the game summaries
SWAT 4 Everyone always forgets Police Quest. You know the game they really remember? SWAT 4. Because that stuff was tight. While old-school fans were all dead due to a chronic case of boredom-brought-on-by-2D adventure games, SWAT 4 fans were actually playing one of the coolest tactical games of all time. Oh, and it was made by Irrational, and its still pretty cool to like Irrational. Seriously, SWAT 4s amazing. Everyone should play it.
Fallout: New Vegas Say what you will about Fallout 3, but dont forget it ended up doing pretty well both critically, commercially, and in my own personal opinion, so you just know its great. Also, more importantly, the original Fallout devs made one of the best games theyve ever made, Fallout: New Vegas, in first person. And yknow what? Both games are actually pretty cool because theyre in first person. Instead of watching the world from above, you get to be down and dirty with it, exploring every nook and cranny, really partaking in the world thats on display. Even if you think Fallout was better, presumably because youre from the olden times, its a challenge to deny that New Vegas isnt a great game.
Ultima Underworld I think some of the best games ever made come from Looking Glass. Stuff like Thief and System Shock went on to influence so many of the games out there today, from Every Stealth Game Thats Any Good (and some bad ones too) to Bioshock to Portal to Dead Space to a bunch of other totally great stuff. And it all comes back to Ultima Underworld. Sure, people probably complained that Underworld wasnt anything like IV, but grognards are dumb and no one should listen to them. Underworld was amazing and it kicked off some of the greatest video games ever made, which proceeded to inspire even more of the greatest games ever made. Without Ultima Underworld, wed be missing like 87% of all great video games.
Shadowrun I havent played this, but everyone I know who has says its pretty amazing. Yeah. I get it. Its not a turn-based RPG. Well, Ultima Underworld wasnt a top-down RPG, SWAT 4 wasnt an adventure game, and Fallout: New Vegas wasnt an isometric RPG, and they were all awesome. And yknow what? To the best of my knowledge, Shadowrun wasnt just a great game, it was so good that the pros used it. Too bad about the Games for Windows LIVE thingit could have had a great life on PC.
Syndicate This would be a controversial choice for people who havent played it. The guns feel solid, the first-person camera is amazing, and the flamethrower is possibly the only good flamethrower that has ever existed in a video game. Yeah, the story feels all Richard Morgany at first (which is awesome! Being evil for a game is fun!), and then has a plot twist thats so stupid Uncharted fans would proclaim it as great writing, but thats the games only real downside, other than a kinda ehnh health system. The shotgun feels solid, the enemies are enjoyable, psychic ping pong is one of the coolest things ever, and, most importantly of all, Syndicate has the best co-op Ive ever played. While Syndicate may be the weakest game on this list, its still a fun, solid game that more people should play with me.
Also some of the crew went on to join the Wolfenstein team.
Ive been hyperbolic, but Im not being hyperbolic about Syndicates co-op, even if it is pretty buggy
Metroid Prime The best Metroid games were all first-person shooters. As soon as someone tried to stick it in another genre, BLAM, we got one of the worst Nintendo games ever. As first-person games, they were some of the best.
Also, there's Duke Nukem 3D, a game widely considered a classic. Kinda like most of the other games in this list, actually. It was awesome, and Hollywood Holocaust is frequently on "best levels of all time" lists. I don't really know what else to say about it. It's Duke Nukem 3D. There's a reason people spent eleven years being hyped for its sequel.
Alright, enough joking around; time to get real: some of you dont like first-person shooters, and thats perfectly fine. Some people would rather we live in a world where first-person shooters dont exist, to the point where theyll blatantly misrepresent the facts and act like shooters are oversaturated or the most common genre or all games get turned into first-person shooters. Thats not fine. But most of you are more reasonableyou like an IP for certain reasons, and a genre transition can result in some of those reasons feeling trampled. I completely sympathize; one of my favorite IPs this year was turned into a MOBA, and Im heartbroken.
I made this thread cause, after hearing everything gets turned into shooters for the nth time, I jokingly said I wish, and then, after a while, started thinking about what that might actually mean. So I figured Id take a hyperbolic stab at the argument. Remember: hyperbole's a rhetorical device meant to create a strong impression.
I mean to create a strong impression--to get people thinking about how the transition to shooters isn't as bad as people often claim it is, and, more importantly, to help people realize that these changes arent that common, and when they are, they tend to yield pretty good games as well. Id rather see people giving good games a chance than dismissing them because of some pretty dumb arguments, yknow? The goal here is more love.
Obviously I dont really take this position. If everything were first person shooters, we'd have no city builders, and that would be a bad thing, because city builders are some of my favorite games.
I guess you could say Im tired of people crapping all over my second-favorite genre. First-person shooters are pretty cool and a great deal of them are honestly quite fun. If you dont enjoy them, thats fine, but I hope Ive made you aware that claims of any sort of overabundance of shooter transformations are, well, blatant and false exaggeration.
I think it might be fun if we talked about what games might actually make for unique first-person experiences. Like, say, XCOM. Theres a lot of stuff in XCOM that would make for a great, interesting shooter experience. For that matter, if you could translate a first-person shooter into another genre, what would you do?
*
tongue planted firmly in cheek
