Poll: It is foolish to expect a decent single-player campaign in an FPS.

[Judgement101]

I base the entire game solely off of single-player so I disagree.

 

[Rayne870]

If UT2004 and Quake 3 Arena can manage to have fun single player there is no reason that current gen games can't.

 

[AceAngel]

The problem with Homefront the the expectation associated with it.

The back-story and all the hype going around were strong points in favor of it, and frankly speaking, they could have incorporate the idea better within the game. Instead what we get is pretty good kick-ass intro video (the build-up to an average solider being shot on his own backyard, and looking very young hit me hard), followed by awkward moments of heart-thug which are animated very stiffly, followed by extremely generic macho-liberal patriotism, if MovieBob though Battle for LA was a military fetish, he clearly needs to play this game.

It also doesn't help that the game relies to much on the suck-sink-punch formula, essentially making it homogenized on so many levels, it's not even funny. This helps greatly the few moments of reprise to shine through the thick of a mess that this game is, however, even so, the few moments of brilliance we have are covered in another thick blubbery roll of mess and one lines which feel dull to the least. Basically, the games moments, never reach their peak climax, and fall short.

Instead, scene per scene, cover to cover, all I could see infront of me was COD, and I didn't like that. If I wanted to play COD, I would have played COD, and even then MW1 was much better paced then this game. In MW1, the nuke scene was strong that is essentially stayed with me through the game. On the other hand, on HF, the scene that provoke me the most was of the child's parents getting shot, but that was a farcry at best, since I mentioned it was very stiffly acted out. Plus, I felt nothing when the KPA started sanitizing everyone in hopes of getting the rebels.

What took the cake for and totally eviscerated it, was when I heard about the multiplayer. All of my friends were praising, and after seeing a friend of mine play it, and was explaining to me certain aspects of it, all I could think of was "Counter Strike did this already! All they did was take the basic mechanics from that game and give them an RPG system".

I could be mistake in the MP area, since I didn't play it, and my friend a big MP buff, but from his playstyle, explanation and generally what I could see, I couldn't help by wonder why Section 8 didn't become more famous.

 

[BoredDragon]

Hell to the fuck to the no. Now go watch Zero Punctuation so Yahtzee can hammer that idea out of your head.

 

[manaman]

Mass Effect2 was pretty much an FPS.

Which is my answer.

Now talking about strictly a shooter: Bioshock. No it's not wrong to expect a single player to be decent if they offer a single player experience.

Mass effect is a THIRD PERSON SHOOTER AND RPG. Is not First Person Shooter.

Yes it is in third party perspective, and that is totally something to get your undies in a bunch over as well.

I thought shooter and it popped into my head. I didn't even think of the perspective. It was a mistake, people make them. Take a nice deep relaxing breath. There you go!

Mass Effect was an RPG with shooter elements, Mass Effect 2 was a shooter with a few RPG elements. It was mostly a shooter. And how does perspective suddenly disqualify it from being an example of how an FPS can have a story. At the core it is a shooter, and surly if you can have a decent story in third person perspective, you can do the same in first.

 

[Saelune]

Duke Nukem 3D has a very fun single player game. Hopefully Forever will too. Doesnt have to be smart or deep though, but that same outthere fun that 3D had.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Disagree completely, everything can be done if someone wants to, most often it's down to "is it worth our money" and right now the sad answer is no, games will become a success mainly due to advertisement and not content or quality.

Luckily there are still some people with souls out there that will do want to bring their story to life regardless of sales.

 

[Wintermoot]

it,s not foolish its just normal! for 60$ (the regular price for any FPS)it should be normal too have a long campaign! (like HL2,BIOS etc.)

 

[lapan]

The problem with FPS is that it's a genre that's often mainly used for multiplayer games.

If you want a decent singleplayer, the look for a game that was made with singleplayer in mind, like for example Dead Space.

 

[Flac00]

Disagree, its not the genre that makes bad games, its the developers. In fact, FPS's are great games by their own merit, as their gameplay is far beyond RPG's, TBS's, etc. The only problem is developers forget that gameplay isn't everything, and they don't focus on level design, story, or balance.

Yeah, FPSes are far beyond those shitty games like Civilization II and Planescape: Torment. [http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys.php]

Well, actually in some ways yes. I love civilization, but if it was just barebones in gameplay, without any sort of progression, it would get boring fast. I probably didn't elaborate on gameplay enough. Yes, Civilization 2 was a great game (though i suck so much at it), and I have never played planetscape so no opinion on that, but that doesn't suddenly make all other FPS's have horrible campaigns.

 

[Sir Boss]

Yes, it is foolish to expect good singleplayer in such a game, as so very, very sad as it is to say, it's one of the reasons I've given up on the genre, well... apart from TF2 and Bioshock

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Team based FPS? Not necessarily - though it would be nice.
Single player FPS - why would you not want to include a single player campaign?

 

[L4WLI3T]

Snippity!

In my opinion, this is everything that's wrong with the industry. How can the quality be improved, if people like this keep demanding the same cookie-cutter action game?

 

[RobCoxxy]

FEAR, Crysis, Half-Life 2, Half-Life, Metro 2033, Left 4 Dead, Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl and especially Call of Pripyat for design, original Halo was good, etc.

I don't understand why I should expect to constantly play yet another military multiplayer shooter that is so devoid of innovation that it is totally boring.

I can understand playing Red Orchestra online and the first Modern Warfare and Halo 2 and Battlefield 2, etc. All offer something relatively new, especially in the case of the first game.

What I don't understand is why you would want more of the same. I get incredibly bored of multiplayer FPS these days because they're either badly designed or devoid of innovation. I don't find that much enjoyment in Bad Company 2 now that I've got past the destruction element and I can't even stomach playing Halo 3 or yet another Call of Duty game when they offer pretty much the exact same multiplayer as the last iteration. What is worse, I'm somehow expected to like the multiplayer in the dozens of copycats as well.

Competitive multiplayer in FPS has always been an important aspect, but it's just one side of a coin. Cooperative and more importantly, single player are the other side of the coin. Single player FPS, especially with good AI, can challenge you and provide an experience like the original Crysis, which was amazing (only first half of the game though). There's also the potential for immersion and better storytelling (Metro 2033 and Half-Life 2), as well as great graphical quality and the opportunity to keep innovating with close up visual beauty.

I prefer single player FPS, but it's a damn shame that consolitis has simplified all modern first person shooter single player campaigns on console to basically corridor shooters and taken away from the fantastic PC orientation of better AI and such to appeal to the Michael Bay crowd of gamers. Even multiplayer FPS is affected and we have rubbish like from DICE telling us that 64 is the maximum for multiplayer. That's bullshit, we should constantly be pushing the limitations of multiplayer first person shooters, with higher player counts, more immersion. If you didn't know you were playing a multiplayer game with Red Orchestra for instance, you could confuse it for a single player game based on the immersion and the overall tension of the experience. It's those types of experiences we should be moving towards, more innovative and fresh and constantly challenging, not this garbage minimal innovation from games like Battlefield 3, anything after Halo 2 and Modern Warfare, etc.

This, it's happened. There have been some incredible FPS games, and I for one thoroughly enjoyed most of CoD4.
Unfortunately most developers go for big flashy setpieces and waves of enemies as oppsoed to making you feel like a hero with a very specific mission.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

No, I don't think we should be satisfied with sub-par single player campaigns.

It's a nasty trend and it's the reason a lot fans freak out when they hear whispers of multiplayer being mentioned for games like Mass Effect or Silent Hill.

Silent Hill Multiplayer?

The only thing I can imagine is pyramid heads chasing humans.
Or a japanese girls screaming contest.

EDIT:
OT, I've been assimilated by Yahtzee and demand that singleplayer must be good before moving onto multiplayer.

the only problem with that is production time will take twice as long, so therefore cost of production would be twice as much money, which publishers arent willing to pay for, they push devs into giving up portions of the game, these days most people dont play a brown FPS for its single player, so devoting 2 years of solid work to it is just a bad business move.

also dont you think halo games have balanced it quite well? maybe co op helps, a lesson for amateur devs there, co op opens up the option of re playability.

EDIT: look at alien swarm for an example.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite, Deus Ex, Fallout has become an FPS (w/ rpg elements), X-Com...

They still exist. Few and far between, but FPS games that don't devote most resources to multi-player are still wanted, and are still being released.

I hope the trend of another 'CoD type game' every year keeps the FPS multi-player crowd busy, while other great games are released to a crowd that still appreciates them.

The companies take so long to release these great (FPS campaign based) games for a reason.

because it takes alot of development time to keep someone playing on their own from getting bored.

look at bioshock (no1), amazing visuals and gameplay that kept everyone entertained.

call of duty multiplayer, plain boring maps with just buildings and path ways (maybe the odd roof top access around), the fun of course comes from the players themselves, and the competitive nature.