longbough

It seems like there's always some new PC FPS around the corner that gets overhyped pre-release press.

First off, I used to be one of those fellas you want to have as a friend because I'd purchase every new "revolutionary" FPS off the shelf and give it to my buddies when I'm done. More often than not I'd give away a game before I finished because the "revolutionary" FPS really .... sucked.

Part of the problem is the pre-release hype.
The other part of the problem is that, otherwise terrific, FPS games can be spoiled by a few common fundamental flaws. It's sad when a game that has fantastic graphics and AI is ruined by bad gameplay mechanics.

Here are some bad gameplay design flaws (IMO) that can ruin any game in spite of great graphics, story or concepts:

1.) Slow weapon swap (or reload) scripted actions: I've run into a game or two that had such a slow reload it was comical that I'd be a sitting duck for so long. Sure, I'd adapt my gameplay to seek cover more often but that's not the point ... if you play a lot of FPS games you know what I'm talking about. There comes a point where slow scripted weapon swaps are too slow to even be playable.

2.) No weapon zoom for "sighted fire." OK this one is only relevant to more recent games. But I consider this feature essential now because the ability to use my sights quickly even in close quarters is what I trained to do in real life. When they started adding that to FPS games I was excited - now I can't do without it.

3.) Zoom feature is too slow: I only encountered this once or twice (I forgot the name of the game but it's a recent WW2/ sci-fi FPS demo I played). Maybe it's only me who likes to quickly use the zoom to target head shots quickly on targets within 50 yards ... but a "slow" transition to zoom mode makes this impossible. Seems like the developers assumed that the zoom is only for sniping. Again, this is just IMO. I have no idea how many of y'all can relate

4.) Too many long cutscenes that can't be skipped. I like a game with a lot of replay value. But the cutscenes aren't helpful when you're playing it for the 3rd or 4th time around.

5.) "Bullet time" - 'cause it's been done to death.

6.) When the game is all about explosions, fire and noise. I loved Doom 3 because of the suspense and the graphics. Sure, it was a "B" movie experience ... but it was a GREAT "B" movie experience. Then the expansion pack came out ... which discarded all the suspense and made it all about noise, screaming and hellfire. It was annoying then got boring fast ... I never finished the expansion.

7.) Wimpy gun sound effects. OK. I love guns. I'm a shooter and own an AR a FAL and several .45s (mainly 1911s and one HK USPC) a .40 Glock, a Browning Hi-Power 9mm, etc... Guns go "BOOM!" There's no excuse when a game has wimpy gun sounds ... it just feels like I'm playing with airsoft weapons or a supersoaker. Even a space-ray gun or blaster ought to have a little impact. Doom 3 made decent sounds ... Quake 4 had wimpy sounds. F.E.A.R. has EXCELLENT sounds. G.R.A.W. also has EXCELLENT sounds with the ambient report of guns fired in a city (like the bank robbery scene in "Heat").

Anyway ... that's all I can think of for now. Maybe you disagree but this is just my opinion and I had to let it out.

Gatorade Frost

I'll toss on being timed to get out of an area that's about to be exploded. I think either the entire game should be time trial to be fast moving, or none at all. Nothing pisses me off more than getting to a certain point and then all of the sudden there's a 7 minute timer at the top of the screen and I have to run the entire level backwards to get the hell out of dodge before the suicidal computer decides Game Over and plans to take me out with it.

__________________
I got in a fight one time with a really big guy, and he said, "I'm going to mop the floor with your face." I said, "You'll be sorry." He said, "Oh, yeah? Why?" I said, "Well, you won't be able to get into the corners very well."
Emo Philips

longbough

That's a good one ... I'll second that. I hate the "timer" thingie.

Also any game that makes you jump across moving platforms - The concept was great in the days of Super Mario ... but give it a rest, please. TRON 2.0 and Serious Sam 2 should have known better.

Gatorade Frost

I dunno... If platforms fit in the game, that's fine. If they're just tossed in as random obstacles that's a pain in the ass, though.

__________________
I got in a fight one time with a really big guy, and he said, "I'm going to mop the floor with your face." I said, "You'll be sorry." He said, "Oh, yeah? Why?" I said, "Well, you won't be able to get into the corners very well."
Emo Philips

longbough

Well, it's hard to think of a "moving platform" level that didn't seem random. I suppose if it's just one or two jumps it's OK. But I was thinking of whole sections where it's jump-shoot-jump-jump etc over a series of platforms over lava, ocean, spikes or just darkness.

filtherton

A la turok the dinosaur hunter.

It always ruins it for me when my character moves to slowly.

Another one is when what in real life would be a small, easily traversed obstacle is impassable. So my guy is supposed to be some super badass super soldier but he can't scale a two foot high brick wall?

pacaveli

when you have to jump from place to place, but being it an FPS you can't actually see your feet...

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Gatorade Frost

There's just a level in Halo 2 that has that situation and it was both on Halo the ring world and on the covenant ship at one point.

__________________
I got in a fight one time with a really big guy, and he said, "I'm going to mop the floor with your face." I said, "You'll be sorry." He said, "Oh, yeah? Why?" I said, "Well, you won't be able to get into the corners very well."
Emo Philips

MSD

Sorry, a 31° climb is infinitely harder than a stroll up a 30° incline.

As for mine, if I hear wood crunching when I shoot an office door but can't blow it in with a grenade, or if I leave "sorry excuse for a simulated bullet hole" decals on drywall, or run into magical cardboard boxes that can't be destroyed, or can't do some simple thing to my surroudnings that would be pertinent to gameplay (Counterstrike is full of magic barriers, and in a game like Rainbow Six I should be able to stick door charges to drywall or plywood,) it bothers me. One of the big reasons I'm starting to ignore FPS games in favor of airsoft or paintball is the realism factor.

Also, if my character can't jump or can't crouch, you, the game designer, have failed miserably.

nukeu666

i dont like the fact wen most of the game has human opponents, then suddenly a big bunch of ugly aliens are thrown in(far cry)
jumping puzzles suck, espcially if response is bad(legacy of kain etc etc)
playing the game with retards online(cs)

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Zeraph

My biggest complaint is when bullets move too slow (bullet time??). Like 20 yards away and the target is moving fast enough (read: walking) to move out of it's trajectory before it can reach the target.

The other one is explosives, the radius is almost always way too small. Yeah a grenade just went off 8 feet away with no cover, I'm sure you'd not get a scratch.

longbough

Oh yeah.

Also I hate it when the keyboard controls are not customizable ... I don't know if this still happens but it used to be a bitch ... especially if the WASD keys are mapped to the arrow keys or the keypad - (is it because the game was designed for a console and PC version was an afterthought?)

Coppertop

The fact that in Co-Op GRAW the mission is over if the squad leader dies. Frustrating. Also in GRAW - the unskippable, long mission intro sequences. Coupled with the insta-fail upon the leader's death, it makes for one aggravating afternoon with my buddies.

Personally, I liked FarCry's transition from human to Trigen enemies. It followed the storyline, and human enemies were never entirely dropped once the Trigens were introduced. Some of my favorite moments from the game are when the humans and Trigens are fighting it out and you're just trying to get past them all to your objective.

Gatorade Frost

Can't forget zombies. I hate zombies whether they be in the form of head-crabbed people or the flood. Hate hate hate hate hate. I hate Zombies.

__________________
I got in a fight one time with a really big guy, and he said, "I'm going to mop the floor with your face." I said, "You'll be sorry." He said, "Oh, yeah? Why?" I said, "Well, you won't be able to get into the corners very well."
Emo Philips

djflish

It annoys when a new feature thats introduced into a games expansion pack, isn't part of the games bonafide sequel.
I second the platforms. Jumping between platforms should not be involved in a game where you can't see your feet.

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CSflim

The jumping puzzles must die!

I find it annoying when levels seem really "linear" - you never feel like you have freedom of any kind. You can't explore an area, instead you are basically walking from point A to point B at all times. If you want to make a game feel more realistic and more immersive don't force me along a pre-defined path.

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Willravel

One of the biggest urks for me is simply that fact that other people are able to spend 8-10 hours a day practicing FPS games, so that by the time I get home from work I am behind in training. I simply can't compete with kids!!! While I'm pretty good at video games in general, any skill that I have doesn't make up for the fact that I only get a few hours of game time per week. I guess I can chalk that up to having much different priorities.


....That and slow lasers. Lasers and light based weaponry should move at the speed of light. If you can see someone through a scope and you pull the triger, you shoudln't have to lead at all.

longbough

willravel, try a game like Star Wars Battlefront II. One of the neat things about it (other than the fact that it's Star Wars) is that it's entirely team based. You can spend a whole game trying to capture the caves on Hoth or crawling around hiding from the AT-ATs strafing the ground. It's given you'll get killed a lot but it's still fun even if you're on the losing team.

I'll second that notion on the "slow lasers." It's odd that a beam of light still travels slower than a speeding bullet. Blasters are OK, though .... just because they're so damn cool.

To add about the platforms ... It's bad enough when there are platforms and you can't see your feet ... but it's even worse when they make the controls so sensitive that each tap of the button makes you take 2-3 steps off the platform into some lava pit.

Willravel

Actually, I am a god at Star Wars Battlefront, because I was able to spend some real time with it when it first came out. I still play it on my PS2 all the time. I can take over the universe without dying once. What I was referring to is, of course, half life or counterstrike. While I'm good at games like Unreal and really good at games like Battlefront, I am but an ant on CS. People wipe the floor with me. I spawn and instantly get sniped by a guy on the other side of the map who was using a hand gun.
Hell yeah blasters are cool. Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.

longbough

I'm a SWBF and SWBF 2 (for PC) regular online. I can't play FPS games without a mouse and keyboard. Another nice thing about the PC version online is that you can have servers with up to 60 players. It's amazing when you're in a battlefield full of real players.

for SWBF I was one of the top players in the TF clan. We played some big tournaments. I'd say we were second only to NERV.
I was known as =TF=ENORMOUS_Gntlz
If you were regularly online you might know my name.

I left TF a few months ago.
Nowadays you'll see me in SWBF 2 with one of the following names:
British_nanny_babyshaker
Mrs_Green_in_the_hall_with_a_pipe
killed_killed_killed_killed
really_really_big_titties

I play the HL2 story but I don't play CS or HL2 online. I don't like deathmatches either...

Zeraph

So shouldn't you love killing them?

t3m3st

Jumping puzzles are a pain!

Hmm... What else do I hate in FPSs...

When FPSs have the name "Goldeneye" or "Perfect Dark" in their titles, leading you to believe they are good games like those games you loved on the N64, but they in fact suck.

Or when the FPS is on the PSP and you can't look up easily, but looking is integral to the gameplay.

Or when they give you bots, but you have no control over how difficult they are. Or when there are no bots at all.

Or when everyone raves about how awesome a story Halo has, and you play it and realize the story is actually terrible, the dialogue is lame, and the aliens actually call themselves names like "elites" and "brutes", even though it originally and realistically sounded like the humans used those as nicknames to identify different enemy units, like in any other war.

Or when a game is made primarily for single player with a weak multiplayer, or vice versa.

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filtherton

Yeah, anytime someone raves about the plot of a fps, well, you just have to wonder. Doom has a great story because there isn't any story. It's just "Kill these things before they can kill you" and the sequel "Kill these things before they can kill you" and so on.

nukeu666

another thing i hate are small irritating hard to hit monsters that keep jumping at you, slowly leeching your health away (headcrabs)
not being able to save in middle of a level also sucks(project igi)
getting sniped/1 shot kill without warning sucks(project igi/delta force)...atleast you can expect to be sniped in cs etc

__________________
Why did the Comp. Engineer get X-mas and Halloween mixed up?
Because Oct(31) == Dec(25)

portwineboy

Everyone has pretty much covered what I want to say, but these three points pretty much sum it up for me! I know MGS isn't a FPS, but I kept hearing how good the story is and when I played the games I felt like I had been sitting through a bad Japanese anime movie with a lousy translation.

Far Cry, however, did have a neat story. It was just too long in parts...some levels went on FOREVER. Trigen v. human guards tho, yea, that was the shit.

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caver

Zombies, GRRR I hate gratuitous zombies. Um ok, I just hate zombies in games.
Particularly Return to Castle Wolfenstein. damn zombies.
Or even in Halo 2 where the zombies are a real part of the story line.
Zombies HATE them.

Thank you, no zombies please.




Did I mention, zombies suck, and not in a good way.

biznatch

Also, parts where you have to follow an NPC, like in HL2. Move it, Alyx!!!