A few people have now told me that most FPSs are a waste of time. To a degree they are right. If you take Modern Warfare 3 as an example then they would apparently be right. People are getting a tad bored and annoyed, they are restless of the same FPS formula being rolled out year after year. They’re tired of the over the top ‘block buster’ campaigns. The tech is tired yet the numbers hold? Why is this? Is the FPS scene stuck on its last legs or is it just a simple case of familiarity?
It’s a bit of both, the single player has really lost its way. Some people would say ‘who cares about single player anyway?’ well I do, I still play it and I still buy it – I want what I pay for! The strange thing is that it used to be the other way around, go back a couple of years to the PS2 era and the multiplayer was barely worth a shoot. Goldeneye is a good example of this, the campaign is awesome but the multiplayer lacking in places – great game though.
Some of these newer titles seem to have an ‘anything goes approch’ which does bring new ideas to the scene. Plus they weren’t afraid to test players, it meant your were a beast if you completed that level, or got that challenge. I am told you only have to look at Bioshock and CoD 4 to see this. Recently Battlefield 3 set the modern game bench mark in the single player scene, with its great graphics and more realistic story. Although the problems are, along with most other FPSs is: a linear story and no chance to explore and the way you can’t take another route that is taken for granted in multiplayer. It’s just walk up to your objective marker, kill everything and remember to take cover to recharge your health. CoD has those constant spawning enemies! You may race through the campaign you won’t remember what happened.
Part of the problem has got to be the characters, they are unbelievable, are you seriously supposed to feel sad when that animated guy who you saved his life for finally dies? Yes, but it’s never sad. You only ever shoot the bad guys because ‘they’re bad guys’. The bad guys nearly always run to one prescribed spot and pop their head up every couple of seconds. Are they trying to go back to the last decade? Is it too much to ask for to have proactive and reactive enemies. As much as the jet sequence in Battlefield looked good and the submarine level in MW3 looks good but they might aswell have put non-interactive cut scenes in. What’s up with the ‘quick time events’ at the moment?
All in all, if you don’t care about the poor acting, storylines and the predictable AIs then it’s a great time to be an FPS fan. If not then just make sure you love the multiplayer!
Spudsgaming 