Making a Good Modern Military Shooter

[redisforever]

snip

I totally agree with you. I do also want to mention that World at War was excellent at the War is Hell thing, especially during the Russian parts of the campaign. It would have been really great, if there were a few less grenades being tossed by the AI.

 

[ohnoitsabear]

I think they need to start making these games somewhat realistic. They don't need to be complete military sims, but the missions should resemble something that the military would actually do, instead of just a big action movie.

Actually, that brings up probably one of the biggest problems with these kind of games: they're set in modern times, and are dangerously close to touching on very real issues, but instead of handling these situations with any kind of tact, they opt for the Micheal Bay blow everything up route.

Another huge problem with these games is the excessive linearity. I don't have a problem with linear games (I love Half-Life 2, for example), but a line has to be drawn somewhere. I think Battlefield 3 is a really good example of how bad it can be. Early in the game (not very far, because after this point I decided this game wasn't worth it), there's a sequence where you're at the top of a building, pinned down by a sniper. I tried counter-sniping him, but every time I did I died very quickly without even being able to see him. It turns out I had to wait for a slow motion sequence with a rocket launcher before I could actually take him down, instead of being allowed to try to solve the problem by my own methods.

Actually, I think they wasted a lot of potential with Battlefield 3's single player. The Battlefield series' multiplayer has always had large, open maps, and a lot of ways to go at any one objective. So what would make sense, to me at least, would be for the single player to have large, open maps with multiple ways to go at an objective. Obviously, I'm not expecting something like Deus Ex, but maybe something a little more akin to the first Crysis' single player could probably work really well for this series, and would complement the multiplayer nicely. But no, they had to go the Call of Duty but worse direction.

Anyway, that got really ranty, but basically, I think Modern Military shooters should start being somewhat realistic, and start having more open levels.

 

[Rooster893]

Chop down the linearity, no completely obvious objective points, and make the campaigns LONGER.

Everything else is perfectly fine for me.

[small][small][small][small]I'd also like the Ak5C [http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111226211142/nazizombiesplus/images/1/1c/Ak5fua11.jpg] to be included. [/small][/small][/small][/small]

 

[deathbydeath]

It's very simple:
Have a good story, or at least a story worth playing.
Good/varied shooter mechanics, enemy design, and level design.
Have good aesthetic choices that manage to impress without becoming banal.
Bam! Good MMS!

 

[natster43]

Make Battlefield. Oh wait you said Singleplayer, nevermind.
Well first make the main character a character who interacts AT ALL with people in missions, instead of the silent protagonists or protagonist who only talks in cutscenes after the level is over.
Second focus more on the story, make it interesting.
They don't need to be less linear, Look at Spec Ops: The Line, it was completely linear and it was really great. Just don't punish people for moving forward like Medal of Honor did (It forces you to use a single item to progress at points, you can constantly kill enemies but they just respawn, and if you try to move forward it kills you.)
If they are going for a less linear game, allow for multiple ways to tackle any situation, have open areas that allow for exploration.
Third, new main antagonists besides Russians, mostly because that is apparently the only enemy possible for MMS'.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Either you do Bad Company (aka The A-Team) and let people have some fun with it, or you will be horribly boring because everyone has been chewing the same stale bread for the past 5 years... give it a bloody rest.

 

[Faewerd]

I don't think military shooters are about creativity in the sense of plot and game mechanics, but realism, a modern military shooter must be as close to the reality of a soldier in the certain situation as possible, there's not much to be re-invented on this genre really, maybe putting reality aside for a little and mix science fiction like Halo, or dystopian future conflicts like a third world war for natural resources or even not so fictional like cod black ops, or make it more rpg-like and/or open world in the multiplayer, expanding the cooperative mode to more players making it feel like a real army/squad, also adding more vehicles, jets, tanks, helicopters... like in battlefiled 3

 

[thom_cat_]

Take Battlefield 3's multiplayer, turn it into single player. So make it so that instead of fighting to survive on your own and having AI idiots next to you in a linear space, you're fighting with AI against AI over a large space to conquer the environment and capture objectives within a larger storyline. Give the player much much more freedom, allow them to fly that jet or helicopter into the mountains, why should you stop them? Hell, in fact why even restrict them with their player choice, make it so they can snap into various roles around the map with currently spawned AI, maybe restrict that a little, but I played a BF game on PS2 where that worked quite well.
Stop talking to the player like they're an idiot.
Less quicktime events and more fixed quick reaction GAMEPLAY events to replace them.
Seriously, just a more open experience, that is overall driven and not a sandbox, but where the player is free to make their choices inside that space.

 

[Yellowfish]

Well, I think that they can start by not being so damn racist for once. How about having a plot about several large countries uniting to stop an international terrorist organization from taking over the world? I mean, it worked for X-COM, only with aliens instead of terrorists.

 

[Joccaren]

First of all, have the story involve an actual large scale war that you participate in, rather than just some spec-ops style stuff on the side that is nothing like the spec-ops type stuff that would probably happen IRL. Also, no terrorist plots, no crazy foreigners - split the world into clearly defined and logical factions, and have them at war.
Secondly, be able to choose your military of Origin. Not always the US. You could be British, Australian, French, German, Russian - W/E. This adds a lot of work, but is worth it in the end. Preferably this would also let you be on either side of the war, and have a different campaign dependent on which side. Preferably slightly different dependent on which nation as well, but I'll admit that could be asking too much [Not really IMO though. Thanks to the rest of it its largely just a bunch of extra maps you can use for multiplayer and a few different lines of dialogue].

Next, for the gameplay and story. When you start off you have the CHOICE of doing a tutorial mission. This will place you in a military training camp where you will work with other cadets [AI of course, as this is the campaign] and learn how to play the game.
Afterwards you are shipped off to a theatre of war, preferably based off your nation of Origin. It'd be strange for an Australian to go all the way up to Central Europe if there's a battle going on in a closer area, but get to the late war or for major pushes and they'd be required there. Likewise British troops are unlikely to be called to defend Australian borders when they're halfway across the world. Also, keep the theatres of war varied. Sometimes its land based, sometimes your fleet comes under attack and you are given the option of fighting or just moving on to the next part of the campaign if you don't want fleet combat. Sometimes you're given the option of performing an air raid against enemies before engaging, or defending against an enemy one, and you can choose to participate or move on to the next part of the campaign.
The story in the campaign is largely emergent, with some semi-scripted events, and of-course some non-combat interactions with your crew. This means you'll be given some interaction between your squad members, and other members of your platoon before combat starts. You could be sailing on a ship to the next port, you could be sitting bunkered up in trenches. You could be marching through enemy lands. Whatever remains of your platoon will talk with you, and then once they've said all you want them to for that point, warning sirens sound and you have to scramble to battle positions and are given your orders.
The semi-scripted events occur based off gameplay happenings. Say a grenade is thrown at your feet, and you'll die when it explodes. A squad member could jump on it, die to save the team, and then you say your goodbyes to him [Different levels of emotional dependent on how long you've been fighting together], and carry on with the fight. Additionally, members of your platoon that you know could be in trouble in the battlefield, and one of your squadmates will point them out and suggest you help them. If you save them they're grateful and will likely be friendlier to you in the pre-battle cutscenes. If you don't, they are no longer in any pre-battle cutscenes as they died. If they win instead of dying they'll still be there, but their attitude towards you won't change, and they might confront you about why you didn't help them.
Gameplay will consist of major battles on each field of war. Your platoon has limited numbers, and at times will be re-enforced by other platoons, and if you fall too low they might be merged with other platoons where applicable to make up numbers. Your platoon members do not, however, resurrect after the fight is done. If they die, your platoon has its numbers permanently depleted, and they will only be refilled if a new squad is assigned to you or you merge with another platoon. This also allows for some nice emergent story if you merge with a foreign platoon.
On each battlefield there will be several objectives that need to be completed. Your squad will be given one at the start, and dependent on how you perform at that objective and how your platoon performs will depend on your next objective. As an example, you are told to storm an enemy bunker and capture it for your team. You do so, in record time. Your platoon is having difficulty capturing the other bunkers. You may be asked to assist them in capturing their bunkers. If they manage to capture their's fine, you will be asked to move up to the next line of bunkers, or to the next forward objective. If your platoon is having trouble completing its objective, you did yours very well, and enemy re-enforcements are on their way to combat the rest of your platoon you may be asked to intercept them rather than help your platoon. Additionally, you may be asked to hold the objective you captured against enemy attacks if the enemy seems likely to try and re-take it.
How you go about completing your objectives is up to you, however, as is whether you even follow them - though not following them could lead to problems with the higher ups in your platoon. Tanks, Helicopters, sometimes fighter jets, APCs and other vehicles will be at your disposal, as will the terrain and whatever cover it may provide. You are free to approach your objectives however you want, provided you complete them.
At all times you will have your squad with you. Like your platoon your squad does not replenish, and when a member dies they're gone for good, and you have one less member in future battles. Occasionally you may be merged with other squads or receive new members, however. You are the leader of your squad, and you can assign orders to its members. Say you've got an assault rifle, basic medical supplies, a pistol and some grenades, and a tank is coming your way. You can order the Anti-Armour member of your squad to RPG it and take it down. You can have the sniper member of your squad snipe enemies, or use his camouflaged uniform to do some reconnaissance on enemy positions for you. You can also order the LMG man in your squad to set down his machinegun to form a defensive position against enemy attacks.
Additionally, your platoon will not necessarily keep on fighting till its all dead. Unless it is a key strategic battle, if your platoon comes too close to defeat a retreat will be sounded, and that battle will be counted as a loss but the remaining platoon members will live to fight in other battles, and potentially merge with other platoons.

Through this you get fun and interesting gameplay, more realistic military experience from the campaign [Though its still not great I know], a story that differs each time you play it and that could be emotionally involving if done well, and a grand scale to the conflict you're in, potentially with different endings to the war based off how you perform in each battle and which race/nation you chose, and which team they're on.

 

[bananafishtoday]

Set it 5-10 years into the future, make the protagonists not American/British, make the USA either the main antagonist or irrelevant to the plot. The backstory explaining this turn of events is that the US ended up where it is by acting precisely the way they do in most modern shooters. Could be, say... a civil war in Pakistan, republicans vs. fundamentalists, with both sides suffering from US drone strikes, or Cuban republicans who overthrew Castro but now need to fight off an American invasion. Or a ground war in Europe between the northern creditors and the southern debtors following a collapse of the EU, or a resumption of the Korean War, or a breakdown in order in Mexico, or whatever, with the US unable or unwilling to intervene.

Or just do something drastically different with the gameplay. Make it more like Far Cry 3, or make it more like SW Battlefront, or come up with something novel.

But yeah, the problem with the genre is that everyone's using the exact same mechanics to tell the exact same stories. Devs need to try something new in one area or the other. (Or both!)

 

[Nazulu]

Lets make a great MMS. CoD4 is a good place to get inspiration, but I reckon we should also look at great war films like Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan, etc. I'm not saying it should be more story based or super serious, or even that it has to have a message (it can be silly fun), but I would like to see more interesting narrative pieces and possibly some twists.

I'd personally like to play through the life of ONE soldier going through heaps of exciting and horrific shit. Think of some interesting challenges other than kill this thing marked on the map or save the this dude here (I don't want to have to mention idea's, that's for the artist to do).

Also, get the game tested but as many gamers as possible and perfect the mechanics.

I don't mind linear, and I couldn't care less about super realism. I reckon Half-Life 2 is one of the greatest gaming experiences, that's another good example.

 

[barbzilla]

I would start with Arma2 as my base point. If you are looking for a military shooter, what better place to start than the game they used to train soldiers in squad tactics. From there we make sure the game works well from a technical and gameplay standpoint (Arma2 is buggy and horribly optimized) to make sure people don't become frustrated with your game before they even play it. After that we work on game design and story.

Story wise, I think we should focus on fictional wars rather than historical. This isn't so much for being politically correct or not offending anyone, but for having a bit of suspense and confusion (you can't be confused when re-enacting a historical war, as you know the outcome and general plot). I wouldn't even opt for the game being set on earth, but an earth like planet with fictional countries (this is to not offend anyone). We ensure that countries have diverse populations, and that your squad isn't filled with a bunch of white guys, one token Hispanic, and one token black guy.

We would make sure that the diversity doesn't just extend to the races in the game, but the personalities as well. We throw out that old cliche book of game personalities, and opt for some more realistic ones so we don't automatically know what someone is going to do throughout the campaign just based on your first meeting.

We would engage on a global front (perhaps some kind of world war like a previous poster suggested, where the player can choose what country to start as with varied campaigns for each). We have a combination of typical squad based combat (this is how 90% of how wars are fought after all) and full scale battles (though I would go for a more 70/30 split then a 90/10). The full scale battles would be hard to make interesting though, so I wouldn't want the whole game to focus on it. We make sure that each mission has a different type of objective, rather than just kill this guy, chase this guy, or find this guy.

We would need to make the majority of the levels are more open (similar to Arma 2) with a list of objectives that you have the choice on how to complete, and what order to complete them in. We would have a few corridor and linear levels to help keep the gameplay varied and fresh, but we make sure that there are some interesting interactive objects involved in those segments.

Destructible environments, do I need to say more on this? Probably not, but I will anyway. Nothing changes the tactics used in a game in quite the same way that destructible environments do. By having some interesting battlefields with aesthetically pleasing structures, we can insure that there are multiple ways to complete each objective. This will help provide replayability and involve the mind in coming up with creative tactics. Plus, it is always fun to blow shit up.

Complex and intuitive damage system. Once again I will bring up Arma 2. In Arma 2 damage worked in a very realistic and intuitive way. If you jump from too high, or take a bullet in your leg, your leg will break. This can cause you to have to crawl, meanwhile if you jump from a lower distance, or take a small amount of damage, you can sprain your leg. That would only cause you to limp and move slower. Shooting someone in the hand/arm could cause you to only be able to use one handed weapons, like a pistol, or it could reduce your aim stability. Shooting someone in the gut causes a painful gut wound that will reduce your stamina and cause you to bleed out. Most any wound could cause you to bleed and slowly die, for that matter.

Bullet physics also help to make the game more realistic. When a gun leaves the barrel in Arma 2 it is subjected to the bullet physics. This feature takes into account the humidity, the temperature, the wind, and the muzzle velocity. These things will cause your bullet to behave in a realistic manner causing the bullet to slice to the side and have drop. Most modern day MMS games tend to use a vector tracking system that works similar to a laser, then the bullet magically appears at the target in the indicated location, this isn't very realistic or fun.

I could go on, but I am being pressured by my girlfriend to get to bed, so I will leave you with that for now. I will come back and make a list #2 when I get up (or if I can't sleep). Any other ideas anyone has relating to this, please quote me so I get a notification (I tend to forget to check back in the threads I respond to) and I will try to respond in kind.

 

[Saregon]

Take mw3.
Increase the size/openness/paths of levels.
No hand holding in missions (ie follow this guy and do everything he says, word for word).
Far, far, far fewer scripted events/on-rails sections.
Make it 3x longer.

Pretty much this, except for the MW3 part, haven't played COD since MW2. I would also like to see something like the ending of Operation Winback, where, if you're too late in the last mission, instead of getting game over, and having to do it again, you actually get another ending, where the titular Operation Winback was a failure. I'm kinda sick of always getting the "good ending", it would be nice to have a game where you could actually fail to achieve the objective. Spec Ops: The Line was the closest I've seen in a long time. Also, more freedom in weaponry. It's no problem at all to realistically be able to carry AT LEAST two or three handguns, and two or three rifles/shotguns/what have you, the whole 'no more than two guns, period' thing is getting really old. I'd also really like to see some kind of progression akin to Full Metal Jacket, where you start out as a fresh recruit, and having to work your way up, and hone your skills with the weapons instead of being an instant special forces level marksman with all guns. This is of course assuming modern military shooters aren't too stale already (which they are).

 

[cikame]

Warfighter played it straight, the twist was boring, the characters generic, the best part was the very well made car chase sequences.
Video game stories which stick in my mind after the games are the crazy ones, the ones which briefly make no sense, games like Metal Gear Solid 2. Figuring out what the hell was going on in that game took some time.

Imagine what your perception of Warfighter would be if after it came out you started hearing "wtf, 3 hours in all the colours changed and i was upside down, now the crouch key disables gravity and everything looks like Tron, the bad guy just got thrown out of a window by a dude who looks like Ogre from Tekken, IT'S TURNED INTO PAINKILLER".

Just throw us a curve ball, throw us anything, fiction is fun because anything can be made real, making real real is kind of boring, even real life twists like "oh a character died" is kinda boring.

EDIT: I just had a sweet idea for a fps where you can disable gravity at will, everyone and everything floats off the ground and starts spinning in a random rotation which, obviously makes you as vulnerable as the enemy, then you can disable it to fall, you might fall on your side or upside down but so do they, press the jump key to get up. Could be used for platforming, disable gravity, dump into the ground to fly upward.

 

[Racecarlock]

Fuck the linear levels and just take the multiplayer maps and stick a bunch of AI bots in there. Then invent some bullshit as why we need to kill the bad guys and I'd be pretty much good. Infantry, ground, sea, and air units against the same units but on the other side. That's all I want really. I've only played the MW2 demo and that's pretty much been my Military shooter exposure. That and I watched some BF3 and arma 2 videos. And the whole black ops 2 campaign on youtube.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Cast doubt as to the morality of what you are doing, depict violence graphically and realistically, make strategising a worthwhile thing to do, have optional vehicle sections, allow for at least some choice as to what happens (I'm not asking for an RPG, just a bit of agency every once in a while would be nice), include modern technologies like that rifle that goes round corners, but at least try to make them useful throughout the game rather than in one section, never have infinitely respawning enemies, nor may you vanish enemies as the player passes, allow customisation in guns, sniper rifles shall only be one shot kills if it is a headshot or at very close range and shall have drop off, the bad guy should not be Russian or Middle Eastern unless you are confident that they are interesting characters enough to merit it, give the enemy a reasonable goal, there must be no unreasonable 'fencing' insta-death mechanism (a mine field, random artillery fire, and snipers should deal damage conventionally and not work as divine intervention), a tactical system with NPC squadmates is also nice, and if multiplayer (which should not be appended to a singleplayer game unless it intends to do something different or very well), minimise the prevalence of killstreaks if they are included at all, and have tactical moves count in the same system as kills.

I'd like to see a bit of integrated multiplayer with some NPCs on both sides substituted for humans, but baby steps.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

The setting has been so overdone that its not even worth investing time in even thinking on how we can improve it. Honestly, would much rather see some WW2 games make a comeback or something.

What I never got is why we can't draw from other periods in history. World War One had a couple guns, some cannons and some sabre-toting cavalry. That'd be fun to play with, right? Hell, using a bow qualifies as a First Person mechanic, right? Why not apply that to Medieval warfare in a way that's a little more polished than what Chivalry offers?

Or, Hell, why can't we explore the histories of other countries using the FPS format? Guns and artillery mechanics were used in the Meiji Era of Japan, for instance.

I really would rather we didn't return to World War Two, in any case. There comes a time where you've seen enough "Saving Private Ryan" sendoffs, when you've heard enough about American parachute teams ending up in remote villages and needing to make their way to the frontlines. Of course, I remember when Call of Duty used to be synonymous with historical research. CoD I and II were awesome precisely because of the attention to detail and historical accuracy they brought to the table.

Modern Warfare's swept this under the rug, and has done so rather badly. If you're going to draw from fictitious conflicts, don't have the gall to work off of the War on Terror when it's such a contentious issue! Better yet, don't make your main antagonist a freaking Russian - that's both cliché and horribly offensive!

And now, Black Ops II puts the final nail in that coffin by going Near-Future on us and *still* going back on tired ethnic stereotypes...

What really needs to change is the script-writing. You feel like pulling an honest take on modern warfare? Good. Then draw from Spec Ops: The Line, or reboot the Six Days in Fallujah project. Face those difficult issues you backed away from because a few easily shaken mothers of dead soldiers don't understand we might narratively NEED to explore that sore spot. Who knows? If we do, we might grow up a little as a medium. Drop the childish competitive edge and show us the raw, human side of it all. Drop the revenge tales and the Near-Future Sci Fi tall orders and show us how most soldiers are pawns in games of power and politics most of us don't even begin to approach or understand on a daily basis.

War isn't awesome. War isn't about shooting brown types or Caucasian types with a Russian accent. War isn't about kickass drone deployments. Make us REGRET our player character's actions.

That's going to help the genre tremendously. Will that happen, though? Of course not. Thinking is for faggots, if you follow the logic of your average CoD multiplayer zealot.

 

[Treblaine]

Well the "Modern Military Shooter" tends to imply a certain aim of "authenticity" which is a synonym for "realism".

The problem is the real life is pretty sucky for a video game But i've had a few ideas.


Merge multiplayer, co-op and singleplayer

This is a problem for COD where the type of gameplay in the single-player is jsut far too different from multiplayer.

And example of doing it right would be Team Fortress 2 and Mann vs Machine,

This is also a way to avoid "corridor syndrome" where levels are nothing but a railroaded corridor with zero exploration, just compare a typical COD game to a rail shooter like Time Crisis.


Yet the multiplayer is nothing like this, it's fast, kinetic with so many blind corners and always trying to cover your back. Take a look at this map from an ANCIENT game, Doom, which is 20 years old this year.

Spoiler

Seems complex but that's for single-player, but look at a COD map from multiplayer:

Spoiler

See this genre CAN to intricate, labyrinth and non-linear maps but they are for multiplayer only.

These need to be MERGED, and have the singleplayer campaign consist of "combat zones" where the objective is not simply to get through them to the end but fight in them. And single-player and co-op would have much the same in common, just with co-op the team-mates are player controlled rather than AI controlled. And what you learn in campaign (co-op or single-player) the weapons, items and all that apply equally in competitive multiplayer. So playing the campaign is training for multiplayer.

These areas still have exploration. For example the final level of COD4, the nuclear missile bunker, that should be a labyrinth where you have to explore all over the place to get where you need to go. Not necessarily all done in the same order, you have to actually stop and THINK about where you are and where you need to go. Instead you just had to follow your nose through a load of scripted events.

This is important in terms of game design to really impress on players what environment they are in, they are not in a long winding tube of polygons, they are in (a representation of) a place, where things interact and have significance. It's strange that a game as ancient as Doom is a 3D game that gives me more of a sense of being in a place than most first person shooters today, with their incessant corridor driving forward, you never take a second to look at anything because you're going to pass it and never come back to it.

Create a class and other "pick your own class atributes" inherently unbalances gameplay

In a game like TF2, the fast and small scout doesn't get to chose the health and minigun from the heavy. Trying to have compromise within each perk or from how you don't get another perk doesn't work, you end up having to water everything down so much that perk choices don't mean much.

Have fixed classes and bolt on stuff from there. For example the big huge body builder, he's the guy you can hang a load of armour, ammo and heavy weaponry off, and he won't be slowed down as much. The guy with the steady hand is not going to be a high strung guy, the sniper is going to be physically fit but not or sprinting or fighting, he can be accurate with a sniper rifle at the cost of slugging ability.

body armour is the asnwer to OP weapons
Real if weapons are very deadly, fully automatic, powerful and accurate it takes all the gameplay out of the game as you just have to click on them and they are dead, it's beyond even reaction time, it's simply whoever saw the other first. But body armour can iron this out, at the cost of a bit of speed and how much you can carry.


few weapons balance ideas

Pistols are inherently going to be weak and held back by a low fire rate, balance this by how you can effectively have them constantly sighted in when the weapon is drawn. Actually holding the "use sights" button only moves the lined up sights towards the centre of the screen.

To balance out pistols, most rifles are semi-auto or burst. Because this IS how they are actually used, the full auto is for extreme close quarters and suppressive fire soldiers in modern armies are trained to aim and fire single shots to kill specific targets not pin the trigger and mag-dump. Now assault rifles are "controllable" in full auto, but they are not accurate. The gun won't fly up in the air, it will stay controllabel enough to spray an area, but anything beyond very close range you will put more shots on target in 10 seconds with rapid single-shot fire than with held-down full auto.

There are 2 ways to get effective "full auto":

-Submachine guns: these are weaker and about as heavy as assault rifles, the weaker round won't have as much recoil. These will have higher dps in terms of shots hitting over medium distance. They are essentially identical in handling to assault rifles (who quickly they can be hefted around) but pinning the trigger works. COD seems to be going the opposite way strangely, they are making the submachine-guns more powerful and less controllable, while the assault rifles are weaker and more controllable.

-Belt-fed Machine guns: these have identical ballistics and damage as assault rifles, but by being a heavier weapon they can absorb the recoil for controllable full auto fire at the cost of extremely limited handling and mobility.

-make headshots worth it: these measly 1.4x headshot multiplier hardly matter. It's their freaking cranium, don't tell me by brain is only 40% more vulnerable than my shin.

 

[Johnson McGee]

As long as a MMS avoids being 'herp-derp guns good brown people bad' they have a decent chance at decency (e.g. Spec Ops: The Line) but unfortunately the core foul-mouthed-13-year-old demographic is turned off by deeper thinking so the odds of another decent MMS are slim.

I think an interesting idea for a MMS is one where the player actually does real military duties like patrols before seeing any firefighting at all. They could encounter events like a group of seeming civilians running towards them and they have to decide whether to shoot or not, with a risk of either getting ambushed for not shooting or a military tribunal for deciding to shoot needlessly. Just anything that encourages thinking more complex than 'thing move pull trigger'.