Poll: Are FPS games becoming unoriginal and bland?

[The_Deleted]

I love a good FPS, but I think it's pointless to complain about the concept going stale because you buy into a shooter to shoot. It all comes down to how the AI plays it and how powerful the weapons feel.
If the weapons make you feel like a FUKKIN' MANN! and the AI presents enough of a challenge or support then story line and backdrop are pretty much insignificant.

I am sick of the Space Marine schtick, though. Which is why Resistance was almost a breath of fresh air.

 

[EzraPound]

Well, duh. I'm trying to think of a few that struck me as genuinely original in the past decade:

- GoldenEye 007
- System Shock 2
- Star Wars: Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight
- Half-Life
- Red Faction (this is debateable; I enjoyed the destructible terrain)
- Metroid Prime
- Half-Life 2
- Unreal Championship 2 (I can't speak for 2K4 - in any case, the third-person combat in this didn't seem to generate due praise)
- Bio-Shock

Of course, there's probably a few more, esp. if you consider Deux Ex or Mass Effect first-person shooters, but you get my drift.

 

[amonduulII]

alien vs predator 2 simulated innovation well in my mind. Playing as a facehugger creeping through the science facility to eventually impregnate a sleeping guard and then eat out of his stomach to escape was pure gory fun. After that, to grow into a xenomorph and use the ability to make soldiers heads explode with an extending biomechinoidal tonguehead thing= major braingasm!
The predator missions while not quite as effectively simulating innovation still made for alot of fun! beheading enemies with the disc was brutal.
Marine missions for me topped it off were fairly standard scare the pants off the player with aliens running along walls and springing out of dark corners blam blam blam motion tracker fuelled tension.
Multiplayer was fun too as the alien running along walls hiding in the dark and exploding heads!!!!!

 

[GenHellspawn]

@OP -

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Did you really have to be THAT blatant?

 

[Avatar Roku]

I love a good FPS, but I think it's pointless to complain about the concept going stale because you buy into a shooter to shoot. It all comes down to how the AI plays it and how powerful the weapons feel.
If the weapons make you feel like a FUKKIN' MANN! and the AI presents enough of a challenge or support then story line and backdrop are pretty much insignificant.

I am sick of the Space Marine schtick, though. Which is why Resistance was almost a breath of fresh air.

I mostly agree, but I never think the story is insignificant. To me, while the things you mentioned are important, immersion is most important, and a good and/or epic story adds to that.

 

[LewsTherin]

Power-suit wearing grizzled (space?) marine #20097759047893845 A

And Aliens/Nazis/Robots/zombies, or any combination of said baddies.

QED.

Would you count fighting mutants as fighting zombies or aliens?

hmmmm.... could they be mutated Nazi?

 

[Digitalpotato]

YES. Freaking bloody yes. When you consider that a lot of FPS games are pretty much Wolfenstein 3D or Doom wannabes once you strap away all their shininess bloom abuse, lack of colours and bland "LET'S KICK SOME ASS!" or Paper doll style characters *cough*GORDON FREEMAN!*cough*. Seriously, enough is enough. There are games like Bioshock and STALKER that are actually done a lot better considering they set themselves out, but for every System Shock 2 or Deus ex there are at least four or five powersuit Sci-Fi/World war 2 games that we've played back when our heads bobbed and made us sick in the 90's.

Can we stop making Doom or Wolfenstein 3D? If I wanted to play them I'd just play them while occasionally switching to something like Bioshock or STALKER (since I lack System Shock 2 and don't wanna pirate it even though its J-RPG-like shelf life sort of forces you to do so)


[Do not take anything after this seriously as it is sarcasm]
If you ask me this could easily be remedied by putting a World War 2 Games tax. The tax only comes into effect after 75 World war 2 games are released. Any more and the developers and publishers have to pay a tax to "Professional" reviewers and magazines who play too damn much per year and to the console developers (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Macintosh) who put it on their system.