The "fun-shooters" return. But why would anyone want that?

[Jonny49]

Why can't we have both? Since when did we have to choose between the two?

Sometimes I want to play Battlefield, sometimes I want to play TF2. It's simple.

 

[rileyrulesu]

Oh, come on. When's the last FPS that had a remarkable story?
Half life 2?

I guarantee DNF will have a story far better than all of the CoD's combined.

Not to mention, since when was a video game being "fun" such a bad thing? Video games are supposed to be fun. Being fun and being a good game and having a good story AREN'T mutually exclusive!!

 

[teebeeohh]

because at the point where "serious" shooters all boil down to pseudo realistic military settings or halo i want diversity. i don't want the market to be flooded with no-brain dakadakadakadaka games but one or two good ones per year would be awesome. the same way i like complex rpgs but just love a simple action-rpg every once in a while

 

[Vonnis]

Because at this point, a colourful, over the top game that doesn't take itself too seriously will be like a breath of fresh air in a genre utterly locked in "human gorillas acting tough in a world seemingly made of naught but concrete and excrement which is somehow supposed to be realistic" mode.

 

[Cuppa Tetleys]

I think you're misconceiving a little; the upcoming 'fun-shooters' are not the exact same games of the past millennium, they are simply re-imaginings of the originals while using what we've learned over the years about the fps to liven up the market, as call of duty and halo clones dominate it. It's just been a while since we were offered a shooter that we didn't have to become too invested in or to take seriously and just have light-hearted, mindless fun. Besides, in my opinion (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) the parade of gritty war games we see are often too realistic for my taste - if you have the ability to simulate being a hilarious jackass who wields future space guns and fights aliens and demons of monstrous proportion - why the hell should we consistently settle for re-hashes of war games with conventional weapons and human resistance? I just don't see why people could prefer to play a game about a real, existing experience, when they could play a completely insane and impossible one.

 

[MCU]

Sometimes when I want to drink, I buy a fresh bottle of 18-year-old Highland Park single malt scotch, pour it into a flawless snifter, add a few drops of room-temperature distilled water, indulge in the aroma, admire the color, cradle it in my palm to warm it up, then enjoy it sip by sip until the dram is done, all the while trying to draw out all the subtle flavors that make it so great.

Other times, I slam Four Loko while I play beer pong and listen to loud, crappy music with my friends.

Sometimes when I want to play a shooter, I put in (insert your favorite "realistic," "smart," or "high-concept" FPS here: Deus Ex, Counter-Strike, Battlefield, CoD, etc.), overclock my CPU and GPU to the absolute limits of stability, kill all other processes, install the whole thing to a RAM disk for further speed, turn up all the graphical and difficulty settings to their highest, turn off all the lights, put on my Sennheisers, adjust the key bindings and mouse sensitivity until they're perfect, and play through it bit by bit, enjoying the side missions and optional bits of exploration.

Other times, I play Quake 3 in windowed mode on my laptop with a barely functional, miniature, two-button wireless mouse.

As with any other fandom, there is a fine line between being a video game connoisseur and being a video game snob. Did Serious Sam redefine the FPS genre or even bring anything truly new to the table? No, it didn't. But did I have an awesome time mowing down wave after wave of baddies? Hell yes I did. So, to me, Serious Sam has succeeded as a video game.

I agree that a true masterpiece of a game will work on all levels; it'll make you think, it'll make you feel, it'll challenge you, and it'll be fun. But in the end, the "fun" factor is paramount.

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

Because every shooter for the past decade has been a gritty mo-fo. They've been taking themselves seriously as hell. Now, I'm not saying that's a really bad thing, but when it's ALL you have, you REALLY miss the mindless fun of 90's shooters.

And Duke is friggin awesome.

 

[Netrigan]

Oh, come on. When's the last FPS that had a remarkable story?
Half life 2?

I guarantee DNF will have a story far better than all of the CoD's combined.

Not to mention, since when was a video game being "fun" such a bad thing? Video games are supposed to be fun. Being fun and being a good game and having a good story AREN'T mutually exclusive!!

I'm going to have to disagree with you here.

Half-Life has narrative out its ass, but precious little story. The original is basically the same story as Doom (dimensional rift opens, monsters come through, threaten Earth, culminating in you having to shoot a rocket into the brain of the final boss while enemies teleport in around you). HL2 and its Episode sequels is mostly a travelogue. You need to go there, shit blows up, so you have to go the long way around. Lots of great character moments and bits of history littering the levels, but who are the Combine, what are they up to... three installments and we've had no real resolution of any of these questions.

And I think Call Of Duty 4 is one of the best FPS stories I've seen. It's pretty much a Bond movie with a neat pre-credits sequence, the fate of the world hanging in the balance, and lots of exotic locales. It integrates the story well with the action, has a good minimalistic take on its characters (they defined enough to be easily identified without saddling you with all sorts of needless back story to make you "care" about them), and the plot builds to a nice epic crescendo. I've seen games that did various elements better, but not one that combined all the various narrative tricks into such a satisfying whole.

 

[drisky]

Military settings are incredibly boring to me, and games that attempt to be humorous are rare. I remember when Psyconaughts came out, all the reviewers we're talking about how refreshing it was to have a game that was genuinely funny. If you like gritty shooters theres thousands of them, so you have nothing to worry about, but I for one am excited to kick people across a room in Bulletstorm.

 

[MuppeTeN]

Because I'm tired of games that take themselves so fucking seriously.

Your so right thats why Mass Effect, Red Dead Redemption, Dragon Age and many other serious games suck, right?

That wasn't his point...

 

[repeating integers]

Sure, for some games a story makes it better, but the same old generic war shooter clones (Call of Duty, Battlefield, Halo, Medal of Honor, etc.)

Sorry for the minor derail, but in the order you listed those games:

Spoiler: images

Find the odd one out!

Anyway.

OT: Personally I think the thread title is a bit of a misnomer. Why do you think people nowadays play so many shooters like CoD online? Not to revel in the awesome realistic-ness, but to have simple fun with friends. The definition of a fun shooter.

Still, I get what you mean, and if I'm honest I think I'm looking forward to some of these games as well (assuming 1) I can get my hands on them and 2) they don't suck).

Comedic shooters and "serious" shooters have always been enjoyable for different reasons. Personally, I can't see why we could never have had both at the same time, and thus get the best of both worlds, but I guess that's the way corporations work (or rather, don't).

Actually... I think I do see why. It's because of a simple divide between multiplayer and singleplayer. HYPOTHESIS:

Generally, Multiplayer is seen as where the crazy fun happens. If you want to loosen up, let your pants down and indulge in some serious hilarity, you go and play CoD or Halo or Battlefield online. And let me tell you... as a general rule for the amount of fun you'll have on a game's multiplayer with friends, assign an arbitrary value (from 1 to 5) of how much you enjoy the game in question, and multiply this by the number of friends you're with. The arbitrary number you come up with roughly sum up how much of a good time you'll have if you aren't a horrendous sociopath.

As such, game devs generally see the singleplayer as where they get down to business, as it were, and set about trying to craft a decent experience that can be taken seriously on your own. After all, they reason, if the player just wants crazy fun, he goes to the multiplayer lobby - we have to give them some reason to play the singleplayer. The logical choice is to make it enjoyable for a different reason - say, a gritty story that tries to take itself seriously. Whether you think games like CoD succeed with this (or whether it's a good idea) is another matter.

Of course, since I can't speak for the devs, there's a chance I am talking bullshit. But it makes sense to me.

...Wait, that wasn't "OT" at all, was it? Oh, dammit.

 

[Brawndo]

Both squared jawed heros, fighting hordes of aliens all by themselves. Silly oneliners, colorful game design, oversized weapons, huge inventories, fast movement, no cover system, emphasis on sidestepping attacks, no iron-sights, precision = skill with the mouse.

Yawn... so 1995. Do not want.

I agree that a change from the CoD-style military shooter might be nice, but using gameplay mechanics from over a decade ago and just adding flashy current-gen graphics is hardly the way to go

 

[Chorionicstu]

Why are we excited for the return of fun shooters?

Because games are meant to be FUN. Games like Call of Duty, Halo, and to some extent Left4Dead2 have become hyper-obsessed with competition and making games harder to play because a handful of players complain games are too easy now.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Because I'm tired of games that take themselves so fucking seriously.

Pre-freaking-cisely.

See, so few games these days stray from the "SO REAAAAAAL!!!" appeal. And honestly, the whole realism thing doesn't move me. At least halo has plasma grenades, giant laser sniper rifles and a gun that fires purple crystals into people and makes them spontaneously combust into a glorious purple cloud.

I want total insanity in my games. And for that factor alone, I think TF2 is a million times more fun than any call of duty game ever. The market is so over-saturated with realistic crap that I'll gladly take any random awesomeness I can get!

 

[ImprovizoR]

I salute the return of fun shooters because all realistic shooters have become like one game. They all have same weapons, same enemies, they are set in relatively same areas, and they all share same gameplay mechanics. That's why I want a fun-shooter. I am, however looking forward to Red Orchestra 2 because that one won't be as generic as the rest of military shooters.

 

[RUINER ACTUAL]

Games that take themselves seriously need to exist for gaming to be taken seriously as an art. On the other hand, these non-serious type shooters help in the same way. I think they will be modernized, remember, a lot of the level design in games 15 years old is due to lack of power, programming, and polygons.

 

[Bakuryukun]

I'm not quite sure where OP gets the impression that Halo and Modern Warfare and most "Modern shooters" are NOT testosterone filled immature games. Like the only difference I can see is that one takes it's half-baked, silly plot seriously, and the other doesn't. Let's not even pretend that FPS' are the epitome of creativity and mature story writing (the Bioshocks of the world not withstanding) Simply put your argument doesn't really have a strong leg to stand on, because FPS' haven't changed as much in tone as you seem to think.

 

[Vrach]

So between bulletstorm, Duke nukem, and the upcoming serious sam sequel, throughout lots of threads, people on here have been celebrating the return of the so called 'fun-shooters'. A somewhat misleading term, that refers to the kind of fps we had before there was half-life, before there was Modern Warfare, before there was halo. The kind of fps we had before such games started to have stories beyond "demons / aliens / nazis over there, kill they ass". The kind of game we had in times where going into a room, having all doors close, and defeat x waves of enemies was considered clever level design, especially when it happened five thousand times per level, with nothing else.
In short: The kind of fps we had, before fps became any good.

Now, on the off chance of sounding sexist, maybe you need to be a guy to like that kind of games, but seriously - abandoning the story in favor of un-funny one-liners doesn't work. Bad Company 2 proved that much. And neither badassery, nor comedic effect requires you to abandon years of game-design progress.
So, I ask you dear escapist, why would anyone want such games to make a return?

Disclaimer: This is by no means a judgement on the upcoming games, I don't know those. It's just that all the "good old games" mentioned in the various discussions about these games, are from my perspective horribly boring, repetetive grindfests soaked in testosterone and immaturity, and that I'm trying to grasp why anyone would want a game coming out in 2011 to be like a game that wasn't any good in 1995.

Your opinion would be all well and good if it wasn't for the fact anything other than the initial Modern Warfare had the storyline quality of a Michael Bay movie script. In fact, those games bathe in testosterone too, the difference is, the "fun shooters" take the piss out of that and games like MW2 and... wait, hold up, what other shooter even pretended to have a story? Ohrite, Medal of Honor? And what else? Well anyway, those non-"fun shooters" take themselves seriously while they shower the protagonist in testosterone.

But I get what you mean to a point. However, I would disagree that the current FPSs are a clear evolution of what you consider to be lesser, more fun oriented FPSs. I think there's room in the world for both and frankly I gotta say, I'm a hell of a lot more excited for something like Bulletstorm than I am for Modern Warfare: Jet Black Ops or whatever.

What I'm most looking forward to is the return of FPSs with non-Counter Strike/Modern Warfare mechanics. Battlefield 3, Crysis 2, Brink and such. Games that actually evolve the gameplay (that makes for 95% of most FPSs) or at the very least, differentiate it from the cookie-cutter infantry with guns:infantry with guns method by throwing in extra variables
(Not that I'm against these - I merely enjoy the fact we're about to see several new games that'll try/push new concepts and create more diversity in the FPS market)

 

[gibboss28]

Snippity snip

I agree and disagree, half life yeah thats a good example, in fact that is the only good example, if you're talking about the first one.

I say this because Half life 2 (to a certain extent), Modern Warfare and Halo do a variation on this:

The kind of game we had in times where going into a room, having all doors close, and defeat x waves of enemies was considered clever level design, especially when it happened five thousand times per level, with nothing else.

Rather than the waves of enemies, you have someone force feeding you the plot which is considered good game design.

The only thing Bad Company 2 proved was that DICE should stick to what they know, story and characterization isn't what they know. They know how to make a good multiplayer game.

But anyway answering your question: because we've managed to stagnate the FPS genre.
Modern shooter after modern shooter after modern shooter that all have similar sounding names and the same dull duck and cover mechanics and even duller enemies, if this is what is considered progress...I'll pass.

At least there was some imagination back then, and it'd be nice to have it back especially with the improvements in game development, which in some respects the first person shooters of back then helped create.

Which is why i'm looking forward to Bulletstorm. Game play that is over the top with fresh new mechanics, and it should be a return to form for Epic, Gears of War was meh and Unreal Tournament 3 was just Gears of War Deathmatch in the way it was designed and the way it looked.

Also the bit about games not being good in 1995, i couldn't disagree more with but ah well, I'm not here to change anyones mind.

 

[Irridium]

If these shooters return, that means there will be a market for a Timesplitters game, which means Crytek UK will be tasked with making said Timesplitters game, which is the greatest thing that could ever happen.