Topic: Is Retro FPS Better Than Modern FPS?

I'm happy we're not getting another Unreal anymore, too, since Epic sucks at shooters now.

That's because they didn't need junk like that to be fun.

I can't say I dislike the modern FPS because I really enjoyed Left 4 Dead and the Rainbow Six games are still fairly similar to the ones I played on the N64 and DC. Games like CoD bounce around too much and I find that it takes away from the game in the hopes of being more "realistic." With that said, I invested a good chunk of my junior high years playing Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. There weren't many options on the N64 either: Turok was ok, Duke Nukem and Doom were ok, so I find it difficult to compare generations since there are so many games to choose from today. It's apples to oranges for me. I prefer many SNES titles over today's games, with Donkey Kong Country being one of my favorites, but I'm not going to say DKC is better than DKC Returns.

Do Retro FPSs overshadow Modern FPSs? Nope. Aside from Quake and Doom (anything id related), many developers have simply perfected the genre. Call of Duty 4 says hi. While others have innovated it and even formed entirely new genres with first person shooting being the foundation. Mirror's Edge, Borderlands.

Halo is great, too.

Ummm, you do realize that the Unreal series and licensing the Unreal engines to other developers are the two of the only things that made Epic money pre-Gears right? They made all their money from their PC fanbase before they sold out those very fans in favor of Microsoft and Gears. Of course we aren't getting a new Unreal after the awful Unreal Tournament III but the entire Minecraft shooter thing is so ironic. The last thing people who play Minecraft want is a generic FPS added in. Kind of how the last thing Unreal fans wanted was a slow as hell Gears-ified Unreal and we got UT3.

Yes. For one reason. They knew what they were. Games where you shoot guys. Fun games. Video game writers (mostly) can't make good movies, make good games instead. Just make games that are fun and please stop trying to make your annual FPS releases anything more than they are because you're still ashamed of being in the gaming business instead of working on the latest big action movie. Also overuse of covering is not fun.

Valve and Irrational games are the only notable exceptions.

Battlefield is probably my favorite shooter series out there, otherwise it's Star Wars Battlefront. Both are fairly new. Halo is also a great series, and I don't understand why it gets so much flak. Far Cry is pretty fun. But I would probably say that most retro FPS games had a lot more thought put into them.

And now, with Call of Duty, it's hard to look at the modern FPS in a good light.

@Shadx: My experiences with Halo and Halo 2 weren't good. In the first game I got stuck with my rover in a rock, vetically upside down. And in the second game some npc mates were stuck in a car (couldn't drive as car was stuck in wall). Both glitches effectively keeping me from progress (unlucky autosave).
And what I said about "all graphics - no gameplay" wasn't true. Halo's graphics weren't that great.

They were definitely great for their time. In fact, that goes for all of the games. And while those are unfortunate glitches, why not just restart the level? The levels in each game are very fun and replayable for me. I can see where the backtracking might be a turn off. But if you like Metroid, you should be used to it. And most people on here seem to have a high opinion of Metroid.

Metroid's backtracking is completely different from Halo's.

LOVED METROID PRIME! Corruption was okay IMO. I love playing Halo multiplayer casually with a few friends. I'm not experienced with the titles enough to take on those who know the map layouts like the back of their hands but its fun nonetheless. My first FPS was with tribes where i had never played a PC FPS before, outside of DOOM does that count?, and i remember to this day it taking me not only 20 minutes to get a hang of the controls but another 20 minutes to realize that everyone in the game was messaging me about how i'm a few choice words. o well. lol

Yes, I like Retro FPS better than Modern ones. I think it has to do with the aiming. With Doom and Wolfenstein you just run around you shot like a shotgun from the hip, not having to move the cursor around all the time. With a mouse it can be perfectly fine to do this, but with dual analogue it's just a pain. I think the Wii helped with this, but still, I don't see why I need to always move a cursor around.The idea of first person is that you're seeing what you're shooting, and it just makes more fun this way. Cursors/crosshairs make more sense to me in third person shooters, so that's why it works so well in Resident Evil 4 for example, but just running around and shooting , like Doom, was simply more fun. You can concentrate on strafing and avoiding for example all the fireballs that the imps throw on you, it becomes more hectic and exciting.

I'd say you need to give it another try. Condemning the games simply because you had some unlucky glitches is a tad unfair, don't you think?

I would have replayed the games if I liked them enough. The glitches were just the reason I never beat Halo 1 or 2. I didn't want to start a new file. I believe other games at the time were more interesting.

And going back to them in this time and age? They need to have pointer controls.. as an option at least.. for me anyway.

To me it's not about whether the FPS is retro or modern more as what gameplay mechanics are present. While I feel two-weapon limits and cover mechanics are annoying (and fairly pointless in terms of the second complaint), I also don't like how some old-school FPSes force the player to find a specific doodad to continue. To me, the perfect example of FPS design is actually the first Call of Duty, as it doesn't confine the player to wall-hugging nor does it force the player to spend non-gameplay time looking for doodad X. While it does only allow two weapons, those weapons exclude the handgun slot, meaning that the game really allows for a total of three weapons and doesn't choke the player into specific ones.

This is the main issue, and not only in multiplayer. Regenerative health has ruined single player FPS for me, the intensity of having 30 health left in Quake 2, 6 slugs for your Rail Gun and two Gladiators waiting in the next room, is something that can't be matched by the modern mechanic of being able to take a pot shot, retreat and hide while your health fully regenerates, rinse and repeat. Ammo and health conservation added huge amounts of strategy to single player FPS and they've been almost completely removed in modern times (with the exception of GoldenEye's 007 Classic mode, which I'm currently loving). Loadouts have also killed multiplayer for me, controlling the health and weapon pickups in Quake and Unreal Tournament added so much strategy to the game. Levelling up, as seen in most online FPS these days, is another thing I'd rather do without as I'd rather compete with all opponents on a level playing field, although I can see the appeal of such a system.

Also fully agreed, mouse and keyboard is by far the best, dual analogue is horrible, especially with the "snap-to-target" auto-aim system usually incorporated. The Wiimote has gone some way towards redeeming console FPS although movement is still very limited compared to the capabilities of a mouse and keyboard such as Quake's strafejumping or UT's dodging/dodgejumping. PC is the perfect format for FPS in my eyes, although having said that I'd still prefer to play them on my Wii simply for the convenience and comfort of sitting on my sofa in front of the TV.

Another personal gripe of mine is class-based shooters and customisation, although that's really a biased opinion due to the fact that I'm only really into deathmatch and CTF, where you don't really need classes. You can simply adjust your style of play to fill certain roles.

And finally...

10000000% this.

I don't think any shooter will top Perfect Dark for me. Wish I had time to argue my point on that one, cause I just don't feel the same about newer FPS

And another thing! Delayed respawns! I can just about deal with a five second respawn time, but in games like TF2 where you're waiting up to 20 seconds, or even worse CS or the search and destroy gametype in CoD where you can be waiting minutes for the next round... It's unbearable. Instant respawns please.

I think/hope we might see more of a resurgence of retro FPS mechanics in the near future. The reason modern FPS games are the way they are (less intense, slower and less skill-based, as a very general rule) is to make them more accessible and less complicated, which has resulted in a huge new playerbase for the genre on consoles. Now these players have had a few years to become proficient at the games, maybe they're becoming ready for more fast and furious games. The road developers have recently been trying to go down seems to have been mass-multiplayer, 64 player warfare and the like, and while Battlefield has succeeded with it to a degree, most attempts have failed and the most popular FPS right now is undeniably CoD, which is the fastest and most intense of the popular modern FPS games. This is a good sign. I've no idea if I'm making any sense