I was recently reviewing several FPS (First Person Shooter) games in order to evaluate them and think about the genre. I replayed or sat and thought about games like the original Unreal, Doom, Half-Life and System Shock 2. I also played games like Quake 4, Half-Life 2, Prey and other fairly modern FPS games. I noticed some significant changes in the genre and I also noticed that I enjoyed the older versions (for the most part) than the newer FPS games. I wanted to start a discussion about why someone might prefer one over the other. Here are my initial thoughts.

The original FPS games (Doom, Unreal, Half-Life, etc) may have had a story or not, but the end-user was not always privy to it. This meant that there was a lot of discovery along the way. In some cases the discovery may have been relatively small. For example, in Doom you wanted to get past a door and so you needed to find the key card for it. Other than point and shoot, there was not much more to the game. However, Doom is still fun to play. This may be because Doom is really not much more than a 2D side scrolling arcade game brought into a form of 3D! And arcade games are simply mindless fun (for the most part). Nothing wrong with that at all!

Unreal added a few other elements. Yes, triggers needed to be tripped to open doors and activate elevators and all of that, but they added some cool things like better AI, the earth would shake (at one point in the game) giving the possibility of knocking the player into lava and a few other cool, but simple, things. For all intents and purposes, the game play between Doom and Unreal was not all that different. Even so, it still remains one of my all-time favorite games despite its age and despite how many times I have played through all the levels.

Half-Life added a few other things to the genre. The story was more complex and there was a sense of purpose that was stronger than in the previously mentioned games. HL was just a tad more than an arcade game turned on its side. Even so, the story and driven purpose of the game did not really dominate the game and, thus, the game for many was as joyful to play as any mindless arcade game. In fact, if you wanted to ignore the story and just run around shooting things and looking for the exit, you could and you could still win the game. So the story was a nice tool, but it did not detract from the overall game. In fact, it did a good job of enhancing it.

But things start to change significantly for me with some of these newer games. I had never played Quake 4. Somehow I missed that one. I started to play it a few days ago and I certainly liked the details surroundings and the nicely detailed models. But I frankly became bored with the game. Why? The reason, for me, is that the story took a higher role than the idea of simply having fun blasting things. And the way this was done was that I was FORCED to do things the way the game wanted me to. I was DRIVEN to move from one point to the next whether I wanted to or not. I did not feel FREE to explore the WORLD of Quake 4. I was simply a cog in a machine and the game was my master instead of the other way around. I quickly found myself turning on God Mode so that I could ignore the game and study the surroundings.

For me, this trend toward controlling the player causes FPS games to loose their appeal. And the control employed (i.e. assigning missions as they do) takes away from the discover of the unknown. There is NOTHING to discover! You are simply TOLD what to do and then, like a good little robot, you go out and do it. BOOOORRRIIINNNGGG.

Now, Half-Life 2 did a great job of trying to combine the two ideas. They did guide you, that is true and you had a little less control of your destiny, but you could make choices and there was plenty to discover. Even so, the mystery of the earlier games was gone for me. I enjoyed Half-Life 2, but I find that I enjoyed the original Unreal even more.

What made the original Unreal so appealing to me personally? Well, as the player you had no real idea what was going on. You wake up on a crashed ship. What are you? Why are you there? No one tells you. It is a mystery. You find your way off the ship and, in the process, see some things that give you a clue to the world you are about to enter. You hear the screams of others on the crashed ship being slaughtered. You catch a fleeting glimpse of one of the monsters running away after tearing apart someone.

Then you exit the ship on a strange planet. No one tells you where to go. No one tells you what to do. You can find messages on dead bodies or carved into a wall, etc. But you can totally play the game never reading them. Or you can immerse yourself in the story. Whatever. The choice is the players. This is not the case with games like Quake 4, where you are led by the nose.

System Shock 2 is another game that I have always enjoyed. While its story was king and the player was led by the nose to some extent, the player still had a sense of freedom. You could be half-way through the game and work your way all the way back to near the beginning if you wanted to. All doors were open, so to speak.

I suppose what I am discovering as I write this is that, in order for a good FPS to be successful, it must give at least the illusion that the player has virtually absolute freedom ... that all choices are his and his alone. If the player feels they are being led by the nose then the experience can be significantly lessened.

Perhaps I am just too simple and like the old school, simple games of the past and, as a result, perhaps the problem is me and not modern FPS games. But I sense this may not really be the case.

What are your thoughts? What would make a good modern FPS game and why?

I totally agree with you - maybe because I'm also an old school.
It would be interesting to know what the youngsters think about it.

I'm working myself on a fps several months and was happy to realize that the old - not that complex - fps are more fun to play than the new complex one.

And this is exactly the point I think: KISS - "keep it stupid simple"

*easy character control
*easy world (switches, doors, elevators, explodabals, breakable walls/glass - thats it)
*easy (but cool) weapons
*smooth training curve
*from time to time new and stronger enemies / weapons
*challenging boss enemies per chapter
*and - most important - IT SHOULD BE A SHOOTER WITH ACTION not a mixedup "adventure", "strategic game", "dark horror" or "soldier team training".

What about "Far Cry"? I think, it still gives you a lot of freedom. Did you play, or re-play this one?

I really enjoy freedom and I liked HL more than HL2.
A good game that gives you no freedom is CoD4:Modern Warfare. It is because you're just part of a great war, you're not the boss, you're trying to support your members. What the game does great is to show you something new every time. Get the pilot out of the crashed helicopter before the enemy troops kill him (holy crap, Black Hawk Down(tm)!). Fight your way through a bunker to finally stop the nuclear missiles and a third world war...great. The difference to Quake4 is that you have the feeling that although you're just a small wheel in the machine your actions still have an impact on the world. Also CoD4 uses wide areas where you can freely move so it's your choice how to approach the enemy. If you play together with your team mates and use their cross fire as cover the game gets easier - this is cool.

The only thing I didn't like about the game was that although you had plenty of allies there was sometimes no progress whatsoever. Enemies spawn endlessly and if you don't start to try to advance into the enemy area all your comrades will just cover and shoot around (without really hitting the enemies of course)

I like FPSs' with freedom but i think that they need limitation because if they didn't it would end getting boring for players if they can wander far away from the battle.

But on that note i bring your attention to a modern game which redefines freedom (in some sense), this game is Medal Of Honer: Airborne. I liked this game because you can land any where on the given map, so there is the freedom, and it has very standard gameplay, shoot advance blow up shoot keep shooting.

I guess what I liked about old school FPS games like Doom, Unreal, etc, is that I was expecting something akin to an arcade game (back then) and got a little surprise in that there were things to discover! Again, in Unreal, I could totally ignore the storyline if I wanted to. I have played it several times without reading a single message on a dead soldier's message machine or a single prophecy on the walls of the temple. And, yet, at other times I have read through the entire thing and let the "story" grab me a little. Now, admittedly, Unreal really didn't have much of a story. But that was part of its charm. You were free, as the player, to sort of imagine a bit here and there.

The pleasure in Unreal was the unexpected. For example, in the first level, you come to a door you cannot open, but it is obvious that you need to go through it. You hear the screams and the sounds of the creature attacking. The door starts to open in time for you to witness the dead and the monster running. So there was a little drama. Later, when you finally exit the ship, you are treated to an absolutely stunning outdoor scene (for the day in which this game was created)! The turbulent sky, the chasm with the river at the bottom, the waterfall ... it was a great contrast to the interior of the ship, which was a fairly typical RT3D type environment. Every so often Epic threw in a curve to keep you entertained while leaving the basics of an FPS completely intact. It worked!

I have not played CoD4 or Far Cry. I did download and play a portion of the Crysis demo. Crysis was beautiful to see, but it was the same old, I am a pawn to the story stuff. I don't play it. Co4D sounds like fun, but like Quake 4, it does not really strike me as an FPS (from your description). It sounds like someone was trying to mix a bit of a strategy game in with an FPS. If so, things like this are done all the time ... mixing genres to see what works.

I guess the old school in me is a big advocate of the standard fare FPS, but I also want to find a way to make the standard FPS unique without detracting from it. System Shock 2 did this. The found a good balance between making you a slave to the story and letting you play a standard FPS.

Did you ever play Deus Ex, that to me offered the most freedom to do anything I have seen in a game even though it was driven by a multi-linear story

For me, mercuryus hit the nail on the head (k.i.s.s.). Too many gadgets and control keys ruin any game for me. I don't buy a game to sit for hours reading what I have to do to play it, only to find I have to contort my hands in unnatural positions to perform the flying kick that will kill a boss.

One of the aspects that the old-style games seem to have that the new games miss out on is the game pace. Games like Doom or early Quake had intense action followed by lulls that allowed the player to relax just enough to get a bit of shock when the next action set began.

HL2 and F.E.A.R are both pretty good at controlling the game pace.

Far Cry is a good example of a game that didn't have the right pace. I played it a few times. I found myself spending more time stock piling weapons and vehicles than actually playing the game.

Yep. I agree. K.I.S.S. is imperative to a proper FPS. However, there are things that can be done to make one FPS different from another. Otherwise, why create a new one? We can all just play Doom and Unreal over and over again.

One of the things I mentioned that I like about the old FPS is the discovery of what is going on. The story might have been there (Unreal) or not (Doom) but it was not the overriding thing that dominated the game (Quake 4). Discovery in Doom was the new weapons, the new opponents and the new environments. That would be a bit "thin" these days. In Unreal they had all of that, but they added some other things to make it interesting without detracting from the game play. Half-Life expanded the story aspect, but still somehow preserved the game play. It's when the story took over and controlled the player that I see the FPS decaying.

So, in the spirit of K.I.S.S. how does one preserve the spirit of the original FPS, but also provide something "new"?

Give this fps a chance ;): The suffering

...and play it.
I like it VERY much because of:

easy controll
creative and various level design
much action

and the fresh differences to other fps are:

* the strange/cool story without any big complexities (it's leads the game, makes it interesting [the WHY? and WHO AM I?])
* the freedom to decide to be good or evel (with an consequence in the end [what makes it worth to play it again])
* you have short time partners but you're the "boss", the "single HERO" (what is btw. the most important thing to me in a FPS).
* and all other aspects of a cool fps (leveldesign/weapon varity, small quests)

* ah yes - and it's like Quake: you can sloughter through the levels without talking/reading all the extra story stuff - the great leveldesign leads you through the levels without getting stuck (and therefor frustrated)!

[edit]...and very important in general i think: the hero (representing "me") in the game MUST be a cool, smart, tough. This can for example be realised by

* a cool voice (duke nukem)
* a special character (graduation) like in HL (everyone [of the good guys] is happy to see you)
* ...

[edit2] And... a new fps should have one or more cool new features (the player/customers/magazines) can talk about.
Like seen with the "portal technique" or a "gravity gun" or maybe a very new idea for the enemy AI?