My Top Ten: FPS Differences

The many and varied guises of the FPS are intelligently dissected...
Published 06/11/2009 at 13:00 by colossalblue

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People are always banging on about how every FPS game is basically the same. Those people are idiots, here’s why:

In Doom they have floaty fireball monsters, a gun called The BFG which actually acronyms a sweary word and a health meter represented by a little picture of a face (presumably yours) getting more and more beaten up.
In Call of Duty they have characterisation which makes you sad when one of the non-playables gets killed. It’s almost like the storytelling is having an impact on the player. Oh, hold on, they have this in Brothers in Arms too. Well Call of Duty is set during the Second World War! Oh…
In Medal of Honour they have Nazis and it’s set in the Second World War… Oh, this isn’t going well is it?
Well, alright then… In Wolfenstein the Nazis have robotics and, in later iterations, they’ve found some magic rocks which make them slow down time and see floaty ghost-like things which remind you of Slimer from Ghostbusters if he’d had a motorcycle accident and can’t get around so well these days.
In Halo you can jump and almost float like you were Michael Jordan doing wire-work for a new Star Wars movie. You can also dual-wield your weapons unless you’re playing the first Halo. Or the latest one. They hadn’t worked out how to do it for the first one and by the time they made ODST they’d given up trying.
In Far Cry 2 there’s pretty fire and the “baddies” are mostly Africans who have plots to overthrow warlords and steal things and shoot at you in a church and let you get halfway through the game before breaking completely and never bloody working again. Almost every other FPS let’s you finish the game so that’s different.
In Duke Nukem there was a gun which shrinks your enemies into tiny little frantic nutcases who are easy to stomp in a sickly comical fashion. Like cockroaches or ants. Or kittens.
In Modern Warfare it’s set in modern times rather than an old world war or a spacey future. Alright, some others are set in modern times too but none of them actually tell you that in the title. The only way the title of this game could be more explicit is if they called it “Runny Shooty Look Quite Pretty”.
In Portal you don’t actually have a proper gun, there are no Nazis and you’re not sure if it’s set during a world war or in the future or even right now. You also have to eat cake. I think that was the aim of the game – to eat some cake. It was like an FPS version of Fat Princess. But good.
In Six Days in Fallujah you have to be outraged that anybody would dare to reference a conflict that was so recent and pretend that you didn’t spend hours making accurate maps of Port Stanley and Camp X-Ray in the Delta Force map editor on PC. At least, that’s what I did.
In Gears of War you have to play Halo but from a different perspective. It’s not even in the First Person anymore, how about that for a big difference?

Oh, alright, that was cheating…

In Mirror’s Edge you’re encouraged to refrain from shooting anyone and just do jumping instead. A bit like 90s denim-clad Irish pop-puppets B*Witched but with more style and less soul-crushing despair.

Comments

Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.

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mynameisblair | 06/11/2009 13:40
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That was really funny!
Great read, and I now you know you like to stomp on Kittens amongst other things.
Severn2j | 06/11/2009 13:47
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“A bit like 90s denim-clad Irish pop-puppets B*Witched but with more style and less soul-crushing despair.”

Best. Finish. Ever. :D
- everybodysinging | 06/11/2009 16:05
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  yo Severn2j im really happy for chu and imma let chu finish…but Scorpion from Mortal Kombat had one of the best finishes of ALL time…ALL time
Deathbrin | 06/11/2009 13:48
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Kudos for starting an article by calling people idiots.

There are good examples of “different” shooters, like:
Chasm: The Rift featured proper dismemberment of enemies, i.e. you could shoot a guy’s weapon-wielding hand off;
Bioshock featured tons of plasmids and tonics that greatly varied the gameplay;
Red Faction featured total destruction of pretty much everything you can see.
There’s also Aliens vs Predator 2.
Even Quake/Quake 2 had a nice feature: if one monster hits another by an accident, they then fight each other to death. In Quake there were also Gremlins that were eating corpses and multiplying over. In Quake 2 there were Medics that, well, brought the dead back.
You know, back then they were full with ideas…
Michael | 06/11/2009 13:49
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Quality article, CB
toutski | 06/11/2009 14:03
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Genius!

Anyone know where I can pre-order “Runny Shooty Look Quite Pretty”???
rht992 | 06/11/2009 14:15
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has nobody said it yet? . . . ok then

THE CAKE IS A LIE
- Gamoc | 06/11/2009 20:19
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  The cake is of unknown status.
fontanaboy08 | 06/11/2009 14:41
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haha lol i really liked this article made me laugh
2ofclubs | 06/11/2009 16:23
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Very funny indeed.
Tuffcub | 06/11/2009 16:28
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Im going to ignore the fact you are calling me stupid due to the mention of B*Witched. EPIC WIN!
spooner_22 | 06/11/2009 18:13
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Totally agree. Just coz its FPS doesnt mean it cant bring something new to the genre. I was never a fan of FPS until COD4 and Mirrors Edge came out (except Doom 3…old school). Now I like em. Getting MW2…seriously hope at some point in the future they bring out another Mirrors Edge.
gazzagb | 06/11/2009 18:29
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Awsome.
Gamoc | 06/11/2009 20:18
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Mirror’s Edge isn’t an FPS

Otherwise: Good. As usual.
- 3shirts | 06/11/2009 20:48
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  I thought that. I played the whole game without ever shooting anyone (mainly for the trophy but also as a bit of an experiment in moral gaming)
- colossalblue | 06/11/2009 21:25
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  I also didn’t get sad when non-playable characters died in Call of Duty or Brothers in Arms but if we stuck to hard facts then there’d be very little funny in the world!
  - Gamoc | 06/11/2009 21:29
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    Sorry, hard what?
    
    Oh. Facts. Never mind.
DRCD1 | 07/11/2009 11:21
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“Alright, some others are set in modern times too but none of them actually tell you that in the title.”
How about Battlefield 2: Modern Combat
BadBoyBoogie | 07/11/2009 19:40
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2689 TSA Points | Member since: Mar 2009

Another good one. I’d forgotten about how broken Far Cry 2 was. Never have I had so many different game saves before to jump back to when I encountered a ‘problem’.

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