MoonsaultSlayer
Member
The game where you play as the first bullet shot and the adventures of its short life from its POV while challeging the question: do guns kill people?
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
All games should become first person shooters
- Thread starter DocSeuss
- Start date
This is one of the main reasons I love Mirror's Edge and wish some of its abilities showed up in other shooters.
I don't like it just for being a platformed, but for taking the typical FPS control experience and adding wall-runs, slide mechanics, roll landings, and an entire skill-based system based on combinations of those things. Just a few very simple additions completely changed the way you navigated the environment, especially if you dug really deep into the system and the level design.
The part of Mirror's Edge I think has the most unique potential is actually its hand-to-hand combat. It's not very developed in the game, but it's kind of based on a high and low attack system. I like how you had a unique attack if you pressed the melee button while sliding or while in mid-air. One thing first person shooters have struggled with is coming up with good melee or close-quarters combat systems. I think an approach similar to Mirror's Edge with attacks based on states and stances could be a nice start.
Yeah, no.
Hahaha! I can't wait to read through this thread. OP, I don't agree but I still think it's a great topic. I can see Creative GAF having some fun with this.
Net_Wrecker
Member
I get that. My position is that it shouldn't be a general "Oh that would be great in first person" because if you have to bend something to the point that it breaks, I think you're doing a disservice to the original idea. Just because something can be put into 1st person doesn't necessarily mean it should.
Let's look at Mirror's Edge. A freerunning/parkour game in 1st person. What does that title being first person really bring? The most immediate answer is the perspective provides a kind of grounded quality and exhilaration you can't get from a detached 3rd person view. That's great, but what else? Could Mirror's Edge not be a more complex, more fluid, more versatile platformer in third person? I already know the counterargument to that is "Well the exhilaration of 1st person platforming is what makes Mirror's Edge special and that's enough." It might very well be enough, but I think there's only so far you can push Mirror's Edge before the limitation of the perspective holds it back. It gets even trickier when you talk about VR with the motion sickness people would experience if the turning, rolling, and flipping gets any more extreme.
So that idea of "transplanting ideas into the shooter" is a tricky one. Every perspective- 1st, 3rd, 2D, isometric, aerial, etc.- has its distinct advantages and disadvantages. I'm not saying any one of them has seen its peak, but I do think think the theme of this thread is a bit more complex than "I WANT GTA IN 1ST PERSON." After looking beyond the ground level immersion which is mostly what people focus on, putting something in 1st person will significantly change that experience, and not always in a way that can make the most of the game's concept.
That's what I'm getting at really: Getting the most out of the game's concept. If I feel like it's being held back by the perspective, a criticism that's much easier to lob at 1st person, it begins to feel more like a novelty than something I can truly call great. Like "Yay, Street Fighter in first person." Why? Because it's different. Is it any better? Not really, in fact it might be worse.
TheRedSnifit
Member
I'm pretty sure the main sources of criticism for KF5 were direct results of the perspective. It could work, but it'd probably be worse.
ElectricKaibutsu
Member
OP's reasoning was better than I expected. I do like Metroid Prime quite a bit, but I also like the 2D games.
I used to play a ton of FPS games but I've gotten sick of them over the years. So I'll vote for less FPSs, not more.
I used to play a ton of FPS games but I've gotten sick of them over the years. So I'll vote for less FPSs, not more.
dancingphlower
Member
Dead Space 1 is a game that should have been in first person. Isaac was a non-character, so it would have worked really well. Though I suppose being able to see Isaac as he was getting killed in various gruesome ways was part of the charm. Fighting games like Marvel vs Capcom are much harder to do in first person, and I'd rather not see someone try. Same with action games like Devil May Cry.
Great timing, I borrowed an optical drive so I could install Swat 4 just yesterday.
What an absolutely amazing game, it still holds up today.
The best and most streamlined tactical order giving, randomization of levels on every play through, penalizing you for use of excessive force... It's just brilliant.
It even supports widescreen by simply modifying the .ini
Unfortunately it's not available anywhere in digital form, and it's going for $169 (!!!) on Amazon for the physical Swat 4 Gold.
What an absolutely amazing game, it still holds up today.
The best and most streamlined tactical order giving, randomization of levels on every play through, penalizing you for use of excessive force... It's just brilliant.
It even supports widescreen by simply modifying the .ini
Unfortunately it's not available anywhere in digital form, and it's going for $169 (!!!) on Amazon for the physical Swat 4 Gold.
The Xtortionist
Member
DocSeuss, you just made my fucking day.
Shadowrun is absolutely one of the greatest team-based shooters ever made. It can hang with the best of them and has some radical ideas that are implemented dangerously well Yes, Shadowrun's teleport might just be the best first-person movement mechanic of all time.
*salutes*
I hate shooters. I think shooters are the most unfun and overrated genre out there. However, I also think they totally have a place in this industry and fans who love them. I am not arrogant enough to think my tastes are above yours, even if we completely disagree.
I just don't find it interesting to spew hate against a genre I never cared for. I would rather spend my time discussing games/genres I do love with those who love them with me
So, even though I dislike shooters on a personal level, I still hate dismissing the genre because if that.
I just don't find it interesting to spew hate against a genre I never cared for. I would rather spend my time discussing games/genres I do love with those who love them with me
So, even though I dislike shooters on a personal level, I still hate dismissing the genre because if that.
At that point it's just System Shock 3 (which I guess would be better). Really you could describe the entirety of Dead Space 1 by calling it "System Shock 2 meets Resident Evil 4."
Being first person allows the game to do a lot of cheats to get the feel it has and makes things a lot easier for the developers; which is really clear when you go in third person and see how the animations are there. It also sidesteps camera issues and makes the sensation of speed much easier to convey while still being possible to control; that's important beyond a visual gimmick when momentum is a central mechanic of the game. Since Mirror's Edge is one of the deepest 3D platformers outside of Mario (which doesn't have reality getting in the way) I find the idea it would be better in third person purely theoretical. I do think ME can work in third person with some tweaks (and I hope someone tries), but I don't think it would really bring much to the game mechanically.
kinaesthete
Member
Just throwing it out there that I love the shit out of your writing on shooters Doc, and I really hope your upcoming piece is about the game I think it's about...
My two favorite action game subgenres are the FPS and Kamiyalikes, and I often think about how to merge the two into one glorious hybrid masterpiece. I'd guess the reason a good one hasn't been done yet is that they focus on completely different design paradigms that seem greatly at odds. In a gold standard FPS (for me, Doom 2 and Halo: CE) the player character has an extremely simple ability set, essentially limited to moving, shooting, and melee. In addition, that ability set is heavily influenced and metered by the level design, because your primary ability is shooting and you need a replenishing supply of weapons and ammo to do that. Also, interesting fights can exist in shooters primarily because of level design. A player's path through a good shooter battle is more about observing the space around them and using that space to find good angles of attack, retreat to that cover area you saw earlier, funnel enemies into a group where you can take them all out with a grenade, using active proprioception to remember what threats still exist outside of the FOV, etc... I'd say the guns themselves are way less important than space control, they're just tools used to get the job done.
In contrast, in the archetypical character action game (DMC, Bayonetta) level design is basically irrelevant and is just used as the stage where fights take place. Battle arenas are usually BETTER when they're featureless and flat, too much extra geometry just gets in the way and rarely has any tactical value. Your abilities aren't typically limited by a level designer, you have all your currently purchased moves all the time and special attacks are limited by a meter managed by combat events, not a level designer's pickup placement. And those abilities are complex as hell compared to an FPS. In Bayonetta, your most powerful attacks happen at the end of a long combo string, and once the player is familiar with some of those strings they can start deliberately using them in smart ways. Ex: Bayonetta is fighting a group of two melee scrub angels and one of those trumpet assholes in the background. Bayo is comboing the shit out of the melee dudes with a wide sweeping arc attack, stunlocking them so they can't return the favor (offense is the best defense), then mid combo the trumpet dude fires his projectile, requiring Bayonetta to Dodge into Witch Time, use dodge offset to continue the combo then hit the projectile back at trumpet dude, and finishing him off with a Wicked Weave (powerful ranged attack at the end of a combo). The key thing in that scenario is that the player is primarily managing enemies using Bayonetta's myriad abilities, which are metered by time (combo and animation length) rather than space/level design.
So how would a designer reconcile these different modes of expression? A conclusion I came to was that simply taking mechanics directly from Kamiyalikes would be kind of a dead end. In my head, a good first person (shooter) character action game would use a complex ability set, governed in some way by level design, primarily as a means of controlling space in interesting ways. I believe it can be done with guns or other flavors of shooty weapons, they would be some weird guns that fire in rhythmic combos or something though, something to approximate the feel of a good XYXXXY style mash flow of a character action game. These guns, instead of just being different flavors of damage hoses, would affect enemies and the surrounding space in a variety of interesting ways that could be chained together with your other guns, plus the already expressive free movement afforded by the FPS, and baby you got a stew goin'. Imagine Bulletstorm with 5 other tools like the whip, imagine Bioshock Infinite where the vigors weren't all identical and boring, imagine Shadow Warrior 2014 where the guns are even half as fun to use as the sword is...
Someone earlier gagged at the idea of a first person shooter Smash Bros, bad news for them since I'm currently working on a game (not versus though) where that's one of the main conceits, along with a ton of the ideas mentioned above. Interesting thread mostly, might have had more valuable contributions if it wasn't for the trollish premise though...
My two favorite action game subgenres are the FPS and Kamiyalikes, and I often think about how to merge the two into one glorious hybrid masterpiece. I'd guess the reason a good one hasn't been done yet is that they focus on completely different design paradigms that seem greatly at odds. In a gold standard FPS (for me, Doom 2 and Halo: CE) the player character has an extremely simple ability set, essentially limited to moving, shooting, and melee. In addition, that ability set is heavily influenced and metered by the level design, because your primary ability is shooting and you need a replenishing supply of weapons and ammo to do that. Also, interesting fights can exist in shooters primarily because of level design. A player's path through a good shooter battle is more about observing the space around them and using that space to find good angles of attack, retreat to that cover area you saw earlier, funnel enemies into a group where you can take them all out with a grenade, using active proprioception to remember what threats still exist outside of the FOV, etc... I'd say the guns themselves are way less important than space control, they're just tools used to get the job done.
In contrast, in the archetypical character action game (DMC, Bayonetta) level design is basically irrelevant and is just used as the stage where fights take place. Battle arenas are usually BETTER when they're featureless and flat, too much extra geometry just gets in the way and rarely has any tactical value. Your abilities aren't typically limited by a level designer, you have all your currently purchased moves all the time and special attacks are limited by a meter managed by combat events, not a level designer's pickup placement. And those abilities are complex as hell compared to an FPS. In Bayonetta, your most powerful attacks happen at the end of a long combo string, and once the player is familiar with some of those strings they can start deliberately using them in smart ways. Ex: Bayonetta is fighting a group of two melee scrub angels and one of those trumpet assholes in the background. Bayo is comboing the shit out of the melee dudes with a wide sweeping arc attack, stunlocking them so they can't return the favor (offense is the best defense), then mid combo the trumpet dude fires his projectile, requiring Bayonetta to Dodge into Witch Time, use dodge offset to continue the combo then hit the projectile back at trumpet dude, and finishing him off with a Wicked Weave (powerful ranged attack at the end of a combo). The key thing in that scenario is that the player is primarily managing enemies using Bayonetta's myriad abilities, which are metered by time (combo and animation length) rather than space/level design.
So how would a designer reconcile these different modes of expression? A conclusion I came to was that simply taking mechanics directly from Kamiyalikes would be kind of a dead end. In my head, a good first person (shooter) character action game would use a complex ability set, governed in some way by level design, primarily as a means of controlling space in interesting ways. I believe it can be done with guns or other flavors of shooty weapons, they would be some weird guns that fire in rhythmic combos or something though, something to approximate the feel of a good XYXXXY style mash flow of a character action game. These guns, instead of just being different flavors of damage hoses, would affect enemies and the surrounding space in a variety of interesting ways that could be chained together with your other guns, plus the already expressive free movement afforded by the FPS, and baby you got a stew goin'. Imagine Bulletstorm with 5 other tools like the whip, imagine Bioshock Infinite where the vigors weren't all identical and boring, imagine Shadow Warrior 2014 where the guns are even half as fun to use as the sword is...
Someone earlier gagged at the idea of a first person shooter Smash Bros, bad news for them since I'm currently working on a game (not versus though) where that's one of the main conceits, along with a ton of the ideas mentioned above. Interesting thread mostly, might have had more valuable contributions if it wasn't for the trollish premise though...
I don't like first-person shooters for a variety of reasons but one of my biggest complaints about them has to be the limited viewpoint and the fact I can never quite tell what my hitbox is. This makes stuff like dodging bullets or doing any kind of platforming an exercise in frustration. I also find that first-person games (with the exception of Mirror's Edge) tend to be limited as far as movement and number of actions go.
Also I like seeing my player avatar
"Immersion" is a weird thing for me, I've found plenty of old 8-bit NES games and text adventures far more immersive than modern-day games... having to use your imagination to fill in the blanks will always beat having a game mimic reality as far as my level of immersion goes.
Also I like seeing my player avatar
"Immersion" is a weird thing for me, I've found plenty of old 8-bit NES games and text adventures far more immersive than modern-day games... having to use your imagination to fill in the blanks will always beat having a game mimic reality as far as my level of immersion goes.
But I don't think you're bending it to the point where it breaks. You're going "woah, what if we took this approach and applied it to a different genre?" Like, say, Pokemon. If you were doing Pokemon in first person, and you had to walk around the world and actually find the monsters in the grass or whatever, how might that game experience work out? It doesn't have to be Pokemon when all is said and done, it just has to be interesting.
I'm going to give this game a go. Does it have bots?
I appreciate that you recognize that seriously dismissing an entire genre is dumb and bad.
Quite a few people in the thread seem to have missed that.
For what it's worth, Dead Space 1 was heavily rumored to BE System Shock 3.
This is a really good way of putting it. I really feel that the game's enhanced by the first-person, because it actually requires players to use their situational awareness. A lot of people think shooters haven't got them, but the truth is, that's more on the player than the game. Mirror's Edge is demanding a constant awareness of a space--third person doesn't improve it in any way; it only makes it easier.
It's up on Kotaku right now.
This is part of the problem I've had with Vanquish. The level design doesn't really matter, and in shooters, it should. Character action games, out of every other genre, are the ones I hope shooters could learn from the most.
What I've got going on is a bit like what you describe. I'm hoping to implement some shot-canceling and bullet dodging in as well. The original plan included wall-runs and a grapple that could fling players across the space, but I think I'll leave that for the sequel, when I can afford more than one programmer. The guns are intended to be nice and varied as well; there are no machine guns or sniper rifles.
I don't like first-person shooters for a variety of reasons but one of my biggest complaints about them has to be the limited viewpoint and the fact I can never quite tell what my hitbox is. This makes stuff like dodging bullets or doing any kind of platforming an exercise in frustration. I also find that first-person games (with the exception of Mirror's Edge) tend to be limited as far as movement and number of actions go.
Also I like seeing my player avatar
"Immersion" is a weird thing for me, I've found plenty of old 8-bit NES games and text adventures far more immersive than modern-day games... having to use your imagination to fill in the blanks will always beat having a game mimic reality as far as my level of immersion goes.
That's being engrossed, not being immersed. Immersion is a technical concept that has to do with the work a game puts forward to create the world a player can participate in. System Shock 2 is immersive, regardless of whether or not you feel like part of the world, because it's doing all sorts of things with its AI and level design and physics and stuff.
Common misconception.
I think you should read beyond the headline, maybe.
Similar threads
- Poll