Yes, but what school of thought does that innovation apply to? Is it an innovative RPG or an innovative FPS? Is it either?
When I think 'shooter' I think 'action-game' along side it. Neither Deus Ex or System Shock we focused on innovating on action tropes, they amalgamated a first person viewpoint and hybrid (because shooting relied on stats) combat systems into the context of a roleplaying game.
A first person shooter is more than just the viewpoint or the number of guns it offers- the depth of combat mechanics (weapon balance, movement rules, etc.) are what make a straight shooter innovative. Deus Ex's and System Shock's shooting mechanics are even simpler than 'rock-paper-siscors'ideas- in DX all you do is aim and shoot with different weapons fitting in to traditional FPS conventions (melee, rocket launchers, pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles)
No alternate firing modes, and the damage boxes are simple. Headshot means instant death.
Innovative FPS mechanics from an action standpoint? Nope. In the wider context of the game it's just one of the pieces that make it interesting, but it isn't necessarily great by itself.
Yes, but what school of thought does that innovation apply to? Is it an innovative RPG or an innovative FPS? Is it either?
When I think 'shooter' I think 'action-game' along side it. Neither Deus Ex or System Shock we focused on innovating on action tropes, they amalgamated a first person viewpoint and hybrid (because shooting relied on stats) combat systems into the context of a roleplaying game.
A first person shooter is more than just the viewpoint or the number of guns it offers- the depth of combat mechanics (weapon balance, movement rules, etc.) are what make a straight shooter innovative. Deus Ex's and System Shock's shooting mechanics are even simpler than 'rock-paper-siscors'ideas- in DX all you do is aim and shoot with different weapons fitting in to traditional FPS conventions (melee, rocket launchers, pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles)
No alternate firing modes, and the damage boxes are simple. Headshot means instant death.
Innovative FPS mechanics from an action standpoint? Nope. In the wider context of the game it's just one of the pieces that make it interesting, but it isn't necessarily great by itself.
Conceded. I suppose my idea of innovation for FPS differs from yours. Mine is simply "an FPS that is innovative." It doesn't have to have wonderful, complex, detailed shooter-bits, it just has to be innovative. Yours seems to be "an FPS that innovates in FPS categories."
Honestly I'd say your arguments make more sense than mine.
the regenerative health system wasn't 'revolutionary' it was in-fact ripped off from Jurassic Park: Trespasser. But I guess only someone that bought that underrated game (that tried too many new things) would know that.
So you have nothing to say to the other two points? OK.
Tresspasser- ah yes. Poor thing. The fact that the player had to stare at their avatar's enormous boobs to check their health had nothing to do with the failure of this concept in said game? Not to mention the bugs, horrific performance and bizarre interaction issues (the 'Rubber Arm')?
It also featured vehicles that actually controoled well, as well as an easy-to-use interface and relatively precise controls as far as console shooters went. The way the grenades functioned was also refreshing, though I wouldn't call that aspect innovative so much as pleasant.
Im going to say halo 1 but Ive been shot for that before. Reasons I think it is original being.
-The mix or regenerating shields and normal med-pack style health. Here we had one of the first regenerating health bars but it made sense and you still had a health bar that followed the normal rules.
-Mapping of grenade, shoot and punch to three different buttons. I know it doesnt sound like much, but it gave the game much better "flow". Kind of hard to describe, but it fits the game very well.
-Also the controls actually worked well for the console. Sure it ran at slow speed, but you could still do awesome stuff and there was always lots of things going on at the screen. The maps were pretty big for a console game that time btw, and had impressive lighting and shadow effects.
-Only being able to carry two weapons, and how they managed to make it so that players didnt always carry the same weapon (read next line).
-Every weapon being balanced and good at something and bad at something else. In other shooters one would just use the best weapon until one would use up the ammo and then use the strongest after that. Here we had these weapons:
Assault rife: Good starting weapon since its an allrounder, but when it comes to the flood it isn't that good and only average for taking out aliens and is not very accurate. But the strongside is that it is a very good weapon when fighting those small flood things that crawl all over the place (also like I said simple to use, and can be used for almost every occasion).
Plasma rifle: Weapon that freezes up enemies making holding the enemies that can kill you in one hit away from you, also very good at taking out an elites shield (preferably change to another weapon or punch the elite after draining his shield). Instead of having to reload it can overcharge itself if you shoot for too long. Isn't that effective against the flood and has a low battery (ammo) Also you could destroy alien shields.
Plasma pistol: Probably thought by many as the weakest weapon (you always start with it as the secondary weapon), but with one charged shot you could take out a grunt, remove the shield some of those aliens sometimes carry, or remove an elites shield), also it follows the enemy. Very weak against the flood.
Shotgun: The best weapon to use against the flood as it kills everything in one shit. Not that good to use against aliens because you don't want to come that close to them.
Sniper rifle: For seeing in the dark and taking out aliens from a distance. Inaffective agains the flood.
Rocket launcher: Weapon with ridiculously strong splash damage. You can therefore end up killing yourself if an opponent is too close. Useful for taking out banshees, tanks or groups of enemies, but it has a long reload time and you cant carry many rockets.
Pistol: A little weak against the flood but you can scope aliens from the distance and also take banshees out. Also very good at taking out those hunters (those aliens who have impenetrable armor in front).
- Grenades that are easy to see and avoid for once 1, only downside is that the splashdamage is so high that it will often take out your human friends even though they dodged it and stand two meters away. You can of course stuck with the plasma. Perfect usage is to stuck a grunt who will run in panic at his friends screaming at them to take it off. Also you can trigger detonations if there lies some already on the ground when you throw.
- A fantastic AI that makes the game extremely replayable. Its not so much that the enemy are incredibly clever, its that its varied. Another thing that helps the replayability is that the enemy respans change everytime you die. You never know when a flood person will come holding a rocket launcher in your face.
- Perfect implementation of checkpoint system. 1
- Original Wehicles. And you were never forced to use a specific wehicle in a level (except when you had to fly). Also this was great in coop.
- Original soundtrack: Who would have thought that river dance music would fit in an epic sci-fi shooter? Not to mention the songs that play when you fight the flood. The song probably is only made of drum-sounds and an alarm-clock. 1
- Thousands of recorded audio clips for both the enemy and the humans, so that they will say something appropriately for every occasion (jump of with a warthong and the humas will go "wo-hooo", jump of a cliff and they will go "idiot!". 1
- No invisible walls at all. You could do a lot of fun stuff, but you still didnt "break the game". 1
- An refreshing change of how you'd play. Because of the regeneration system you could be rambo for a little while, but when your shield is down you have to take cover. And the elites is actually so smart that they try to hunt you down then So you have this sort of cat and mouse gameplay, where you are the role changes constantly. Of course you cant complain about the difficulty if you havent tried the harder difficulty settings. The difficulty settings is very nicely done. As you ramp up the difficulty, you will have more enemies, be weaker and do weaker damage, and the enemy behavior will actually change (for example the grunts will throw a lot more grenades). Also the enemies would run and shoot at the same time... I found half life (1 at least, not 2, even though I liked 2 better overall) to be pretty challenging, but the enemy AI was pretty bland. They swat team your battling would often run against you when you're firing at them, and start to shoot only when they have stopped running and have already sucked up quite a few bullets. But I guess other games were better at this.
1 means not necessarily revolutionary.
Other than that I would say that Oddworld: strangers wrath had some really cool and refreshing gameplay elements, but then again it was both a third person action game and an fps.
When it comes to the cinematic experience I would say half life were pretty revolutionary.
When it comes to great story telling, atmosphere and presentation I would say half life 2.
Also I would mention max payne for its awesome slow motion and great graphics.
edit: sorry for writing bad its late, and I realize much I wrote was pretty unnecessary to put up here. W/E
Nope, the I found the AI quite decent at the time. And weapon balance, well, other than Halo, I can't even name that many games that had good weapon balance to begin with. And Let's not get started on BF2... PKM = 100 clip sized sniper rifle.
Weapon design blew, and was very unbalanced. I can kill you with a shotgun from 30 feet away and a sniper was God who rained unmerciful death. The regenerative health system has tainted the genre making the games far too easy. Lastly The Elites were not that smart or even fun to fight. They just kinda ran after you and grunted yelling "I'm going to kill you". Besides if they could not even comprehend that I was behind a wall lobbing grenades they were not very engaging.
The weapon balance sucked yes, IN MULTIPLAYER.
In the context of the single player game it worked effectively in the mode of all other linear shooters that had come before it- the player is facing of against multiple adversaries at all times, and as such the advantage in numbers concedes that the design must allow something for players to make up for this- wide open spaces with high perches incidentally have Sniper rifles placed conveniently nearby, but the player can't take out all the approaching enemies so has to be economic and precise with his shots. The rocky hills part in the first game typifies this best- the situation changes once the enemies move into the covered position in between rocks in the hills. The battle changes to a close quarter once the remaining foes move into the hills near the player's position- AND THE WEAPON BALANCE SUPPORTS THIS CONTEXT.
I can understand how one would be frustrated in the context of blood gulch.
But fuck multiplayer.
I would completely agree. Doom and Quake laid a lot of things out for the PC FPS experience, but Half-Life is what really set FPS on fire. To date it still holds the record for the most copies of a PC FPS ever sold (Behind only The Sims, L2, Sims2, Starcraft, and WoW) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games#PC
Halo did introduce some pretty awesome innovations (correct me if I'm wrong) like the limited supply of weapons, each of which was useful, the seamless integration of Vehicles and normal FPS gameplay and the recharging health/shield system were all pretty clever innovations at the time. And believe me, I'm no Fanboy, I had to think pretty hard about this.
Half Life was more innovative from a storytelling and straight game design standpoint. The actual "gameplay" was pretty standard though it was all utilized very well.
An interesting thought- to what extent can level design be considered part of the gameplay?
The MacGuyver-esque boss battles are good example of this. The design of the 'levels' forced the player to use conventional tools in unusual ways in familar situations (blast pit).
Im going to say halo 1 but Ive been shot for that before. Reasons I think it is original being.
-The mix or regenerating shields and normal med-pack style health. Here we had one of the first regenerating health bars but it made sense and you still had a health bar that followed the normal rules.
-Mapping of grenade, shoot and punch to three different buttons. I know it doesnt sound like much, but it gave the game much better "flow". Kind of hard to describe, but it fits the game very well.
-Also the controls actually worked well for the console. Sure it ran at slow speed, but you could still do awesome stuff and there was always lots of things going on at the screen. The maps were pretty big for a console game that time btw, and had impressive lighting and shadow effects.
-Only being able to carry two weapons, and how they managed to make it so that players didnt always carry the same weapon (read next line).
-Every weapon being balanced and good at something and bad at something else. In other shooters one would just use the best weapon until one would use up the ammo and then use the strongest after that. Here we had these weapons:
Assault rife: Good starting weapon since its an allrounder, but when it comes to the flood it isn't that good and only average for taking out aliens and is not very accurate. But the strongside is that it is a very good weapon when fighting those small flood things that crawl all over the place (also like I said simple to use, and can be used for almost every occasion).
Plasma rifle: Weapon that freezes up enemies making holding the enemies that can kill you in one hit away from you, also very good at taking out an elites shield (preferably change to another weapon or punch the elite after draining his shield). Instead of having to reload it can overcharge itself if you shoot for too long. Isn't that effective against the flood and has a low battery (ammo) Also you could destroy alien shields.
Plasma pistol: Probably thought by many as the weakest weapon (you always start with it as the secondary weapon), but with one charged shot you could take out a grunt, remove the shield some of those aliens sometimes carry, or remove an elites shield), also it follows the enemy. Very weak against the flood.
Shotgun: The best weapon to use against the flood as it kills everything in one shit. Not that good to use against aliens because you don't want to come that close to them.
Sniper rifle: For seeing in the dark and taking out aliens from a distance. Inaffective agains the flood.
Rocket launcher: Weapon with ridiculously strong splash damage. You can therefore end up killing yourself if an opponent is too close. Useful for taking out banshees, tanks or groups of enemies, but it has a long reload time and you cant carry many rockets.
Pistol: A little weak against the flood but you can scope aliens from the distance and also take banshees out.
- Grenades that are easy to see and avoid for once 1, only downside is that the splashdamage is so high that it will often take out your human friends even though they dodged it and stand two meters away. You can of course stuck with the plasma. Perfect usage is to stuck a grunt who will run in panic at his friends screaming at them to take it off. Also you can trigger detonations if there lies some already on the ground when you throw.
- A fantastic AI that makes the game extremely replayable. Its so much that the enemy are incredibly clever, its that its varied. Another thing that helps the replayability is that the enemy respans change everytime you die. You never know when a flood person will come holding a rocket launcher in your face.
- Perfect implementation of checkpoint system. 1
- Original Wehicles. And you were never forced to use a specific wehicle in a level (except when you had to fly). Also this was great in coop.
- Original soundtrack: Who would have thought that river dance music would fit in an epic sci-fi shooter? Not to mention the songs that play when you fight the flood. The song probably is only made of drum-sounds and an alarm-clock. 1
- Thousands of recorded audio clips for both the enemy and the humans, so that they will say something appropriately for every occasion (jump of with a warthong and the humas will go "wo-hooo", jump of a cliff and they will go "idiot!". 1
- No invisible walls at all. You could do a lot of fun stuff, but you still didnt "break the game". 1
- An refreshing change of how you'd play. Because of the regeneration system you could be rambo for a little while, but when your shield is down you have to take cover. And the elites is actually so smart that they try to hunt you down then So you have this sort of cat and mouse gameplay, where you are the role changes constantly. Of course you cant complain about the difficulty if you havent tried the harder difficulty settings. The difficulty settings is very nicely done. As you ramp up the difficulty, you will have more enemies, be weaker and do weaker damage, and the enemy behavior will actually change (for example the grunts will throw a lot more grenades). Also the enemies would run and shoot at the same time... I found half life (1 at least, not 2, even though I liked 2 better overall) to be pretty challenging, but the enemy AI was pretty bland. They swat team your battling would often run against you when you're firing at them, and start to shoot only when they have stopped running and have already sucked up quite a few bullets. But I guess other games were better at this.
1 means not necessarily revolutionary.
Other than that I would say that Oddworld: strangers wrath had some really cool and refreshing gameplay elements, but then again it was both a third person action game and an fps.
When it comes to the cinematic experience I would say half life were pretty revolutionary.
When it comes to great story telling, atmosphere and presentation I would say half life 2.
Also I would mention max payne for its awesome slow motion and great graphics.
edit: sorry for writing bad its late, and I realize much I wrote was pretty unnecessary to put up here. W/E
Maze War invented it, Wolfenstein furthered it, Doom popularized it, Duke Nukem satirised it, Quake made it prettier, Goldeneye brought it to TV's everywhere, Rainbow Six brought in tactics, Half Life told a story, Halo further perfected many elements (including vehicles), Portal added puzzles, and Mirrors Edge stylized the whole thing. It's hard to say which is most innovative really, I suppose I'd say Doom, because without that, who knows where we'd be now?
I played games almost identical to Halo, but with a bit more dated graphics 5 or even 10 years before Halo was released. It wasn't revolutionary, or innovative in any way. It was a success, that's all it has going for it. Everything in Halo has been done before, and most likely better, but those games just weren't as well known or as well recieved.
An interesting thought- to what extent can level design be considered part of the gameplay?
The MacGuyver-esque boss battles are good example of this. The design of the 'levels' forced the player to use conventional tools in unusual ways in familar situations (blast pit).
That's a good point to make about Half Life and is definitely in it's favor towards "most innovative". I forgot how "problem solving" oriented most of the action and gameplay was in both Half Life 1 and 2.
Half Life introduces innovative Game Design and associated Gameplay whereas Halo introduced innovative mechanics.
Actually, Valve make a really great job of making every game as different and intresting as possible. Half-Life 2 with the gravity gun, TF2 with the graphics, L4D with co-op that actually matters.
I played games almost identical to Halo, but with a bit more dated graphics 5 or even 10 years before Halo was released. It wasn't revolutionary, or innovative in any way. It was a success, that's all it has going for it. Everything in Halo has been done before, and most likely better, but those games just weren't as well known or as well recieved.
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