Shooter Stories-can they be better?

[Exile714]

You know what I like about CoD's stories? They let me use my imagination. For instance, people say it's a plot-hole that:

Spoiler

Makarov ordered the attacks in Europe

but I just IMAGINED that:

Spoiler

after the Russian president was captured, the Vice President (the guy on the plane who Alena doesn't like) who clearly is more hawkish and was maybe colluding with Makarov, ordered the attacks

Is it Shakespeare? No. Is it even Half-Life? Nope. But I like that the story is left relatively unfilled so, after completing the game, I can fill in the blanks myself.

But I guess videogames ruined you guys' imaginations, so you're left with a lot of blanks and that makes you upset. Well, Super Mario Bros. left me feeling that way too and I just dealt with it.

 

[repeating integers]

I don't really want my shooters to have good stories. It would be like wanting great dialogue in porn.
As far as Bioshock goes, I don't really consider that a shooter. Bear with me now. There are games that are shooters, ie, their sole and total purpose is for you to shoot wave after wave of enemies. I don't really need War and Peace to get me through that and it would annoy me because I would be spending too much time reading/watching story and really want to get back to shooting stuff. I've stopped playing games because of this. Games like Bioshock, Halflife and such I consider action/adventure games. I don't consider the sole purpose of those games to be shooting wave after wave of enemies. I consider them more as games where shooting is one of the mechanics used in gameplay. Kind of like how you do a ton of driving, even some races, in a GTA game but I wouldn't consider it a racing game. I know it kind of sounds like double talk but you can't deny there is a real difference in feel between Bioshock's mood and termperment and CoD's.

I don't agree with that - to use the tried-and-tested Musical Analogy™, this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYiahoYfPGk] and this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z98xcWa_NAw] are very different songs in terms of mood, style, and just about everything, yet they are still both part of the same genre (Progressive Rock). If you tried to classify everything into different genres based on mood and temperament, you'd end up with way too many genres.

 

[Swyftstar]

I don't really want my shooters to have good stories. It would be like wanting great dialogue in porn.
As far as Bioshock goes, I don't really consider that a shooter. Bear with me now. There are games that are shooters, ie, their sole and total purpose is for you to shoot wave after wave of enemies. I don't really need War and Peace to get me through that and it would annoy me because I would be spending too much time reading/watching story and really want to get back to shooting stuff. I've stopped playing games because of this. Games like Bioshock, Halflife and such I consider action/adventure games. I don't consider the sole purpose of those games to be shooting wave after wave of enemies. I consider them more as games where shooting is one of the mechanics used in gameplay. Kind of like how you do a ton of driving, even some races, in a GTA game but I wouldn't consider it a racing game. I know it kind of sounds like double talk but you can't deny there is a real difference in feel between Bioshock's mood and termperment and CoD's.

I don't agree with that - to use the tried-and-tested Musical Analogy?, this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYiahoYfPGk] and this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z98xcWa_NAw] are very different songs in terms of mood, style, and just about everything, yet they are still both part of the same genre (Progressive Rock). If you tried to classify everything into different genres based on mood and temperament, you'd end up with way too many genres.

I don't think there is such a thing as too many genres. There are genres and sub-genres and subs of those in music and there should be in everything else. Prog Rock, itself is a sub-genre of rock. Putting everything that has similar characteristics in one genre holds the danger of limiting things by labelling them and holding them to that label.

 

[Spoon E11]

Mass Effect, Bioshock and The half life series are shooters are they not?

 

[ResonanceGames]

Better stories would be nice, but where FPSes have really dropped the ball is in design. Campaigns like the ones in COD and Battlefield do everything they can to restrict the player so they can throw a bunch of eye candy and bombast at them. I miss games that I could actually play. We haven't really had a good, smart shooter since Crysis -- unless I'm forgetting something. I guess Bioshock 2 was pretty decent as well.