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Counter-Strike Xbox Screenshots
Victum_ writes "Over at
Gaming Horizon they have posted some new Counter-Strike Xbox screens. These
are supposedly the very first screenshots that have been released of the Xbox
version. They look pretty much identical to CS:CZ screens, save the lower
resolution." Anyone else feel like innovation in the FPS genre has stagnated since the introduction of Counter-Strike? I played this mod in college and loved it, and while I don't play it much anymore, I can't find another game that gives a better FPS experience.
would Quake 2 engine technology still be relevant now?
Anyone else feel like innovation in the FPS genre has stagnated since the introduction of Counter-Strike?
CS is hardly innovative. It's a good take on the q2 mod called "Action Quake." CS is certainly fun, but just because every two-bit mod-author-wannabe ripped it off doesn't mean it was innovative.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
How do I not have CS on my computer yet? Guess I missed the train. I'm certainly not going to *pay* for it since it's been out so long, but if other people are getting it for free(which they must be), I wanna get some of that and see if I like it.
Anyone else feel like innovation in the FPS genre has stagnated since the introduction of Counter-Strike?
Yes. Good thing Doom 3 is coming soon. Perhaps it won't be the most innovative game ever, but it'll probably help inspire other developers to take us away from the awful amount of crappy FPS games with the "realistic" theme.
Give Battlefield 1942 a try. I recently bought a copy after taking a long hiatus from FPS games and was pleasantly surprised with the strategy and gameplay involved.
I don't really feel that fps have stagnated. While I've never liked CS, I play Day of Defeat daily and it keeps improving with every update, and 1.0 looks like it is going to be amazing.
But all the xbox fans seem to think Halo is better than Jesus. It's definitely prettier than CS, but I don't understand how people can take it seriously. Mostly because I can't get anywhere near the precision control on an xbox controller than I can with mouselook. But that's just me.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I don't think fps games have stagnated. I quite enjoyed the various game types in UT. The one where you have to attack in a certain time limit and then defend for that amount of time makes for a pretty fast paced game. Some might call BF1942 innovative because of all the vehicle types that you can pilot. I personally don't care for the game because its supposed to be realistic yet it takes too many shots to kill the enemy. Thats even if you can shoot him since he is pulling the jumping bean act. That is so damn annoying. For realistic games though I like Ghost Recon with voice chat to your team mates. I'll be buying Rainbow Six 3 when I get some spare change. The demo was pretty cool. Partially opening a door with your mouse wheel so a buddy can shoot them and still have some cover is a good idea.
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Halflife + CS showed that FPS games can be more than just better motion, weapons and effects. Halflife itself introduced a more immersing storyline than say quake and doom, and counterstrike just hit right on the nail of the adolescent desire for competition. Its violence for sure, but theres more, it tends to a persons sense of competition, strategy and planning the way sports do. Counterstrike is also a completely multiplayer game, unlike unreal where people get sick of the game by playing against the bots. Counterstrike brought the clan culture to the masses where players spend certain times of their days just practising for a real showdown, such a social element really improves the quality of the game.
And unlike quake3 and unreal, the clutter and fancy effects are removed to present a simple and very realistic game, just the minimum that even during its beta stages didnt require a $400 video card. Over time the rules were tweaked to balance the strength of the players to push competition and interest in the game. I doubt other developers cared so much about these things before halflife + cs.
One of the gripes about both quake versions was that it was too dark and grey. The constant cave-like walls, so ID presented the very colorful quake3. But the point was some realism. Boys just didnt want to play something like the sims, there had to be violence. Counterstrike now has a culture developed around it, with international matches and so many clans duking it out in every timezone. Now sierra has built an industry momentum and old halflife copies are still selling at the same price. Dethroning this will take effort in areas other than just technology and fancy radeon and geforce effects. It has to be an integral package with a story, an appropriate realism and gameplay tuned for competition.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
First of all I don't think there has been stagnation at all. Take Rainbow Six Raven Shield for example - incredible single player experience and even better multiplayer. This game has it all and looks good doing it.
I personally loathe CS - It was fun for a month or so - but all of the people hanging on to their celeron 300s with 64MB of RAM and a built in ATI Rage 128 need to give it up - get a better machine and play a newer game.
There are plenty of great FPSs out there (look at No One Lives Forever 2 for instance). Just because you can't look past your grainy, boring counter strike glasses doesn't mean there's nothing else out there.
Derek
Looks like CowboyNeal has never played Tribes2. It was incredibly innovative, and the engine was very good for combined indoor and outdoor playing. The game came with integrated 'email', IRC and newsgroup-ish fora, which was extremely cool (but never lived up to its potential since the "community" got killed along with Dynamix). I recently started playing it again and with a GeForce4 plus every setting cranked up, it's a really pretty game, too.
But where T2 really shined was in teamwork with vehicles. If you've ever played Tribes2 with four or five buddies you were communicating with, you know what I mean. There's nothing like a combined bomber/tank strike (with fighter escort) or a transport full of juggernauts to give you a great FPS experience. Or sending out scouts ahead of a couple engineers with deployable inventory stations, with shrikes keeping everyone's heads down. The Renegades mod really added a lot with all sorts of deployable stuff. I always liked mortar turrets.
'Course T2 wasn't all twitchy like Quake-ish games, and the maps were extremely large and detailed, so I can see why some people overlook it.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Give Battlefield 1942 a try. If WW2 isn't your thing, try the DesertCombat mod. Thats the only game I play now, save a few RTCW hall-wide LAN games.
www.planetbattlefield.com
www.desertcombat.com
Honestly, the first time FPS had innovation was the beloved Starsiege:Tribes. Then there was the FPS/RPG twists of System Shock 2, and Deus Ex. The Thief series added some twists. CS, though, isn't anything really 'innovating,' IMHO. Perhaps the next Thief that IonStorm is working on will help out a bit. BF1942 adds a good team aspect that I haven't seen since Tribes. Metroid:Prime makes the 1-player only FPS the best I've played since Halflife.
My suggestion? Try BF1942 and Metroid:Prime for some FPS goodness until something new comes out.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Could somebody explain why in every 3rd person view the people are wielding their guns in their right hand, yet the 1st person shot shows a gun in the left hand?
This has always bugged me a little bit, I'm right handed and seeing shots with the gun held in a way that I could not do easily is distracting, and that's not what I want in a FPS.
Doesn't suck. I found multiplayer pretty fun, but if you're one of those people in Quake who were always whining about campers when someone you couldn't see killed you, pass it up.
And if the skinnies throw rocks at you can shoot them in the head, and you won't get sued in belgum.
We have been spending some time setting up a new dedicated gameing portal and still find that CS is one of the more popular games. Now granted its very old tech, but tech doesnt make a good game. I developed games for about 9 years from various official quake mission packs, and beyond. I think Urban Terror for the q3 engine is pretty close to CS, but I think CS still is played more due to its simple and clean nature. alot of people tho are switching to BF 1942 Desert Combat mod, if u havnt yet your missing out !
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I thought Metroid Prime (GCN) did a great job of an 'alternate' FPS style. For those of you who haven't played it, you just need to move your aiming reticle near something, and hold down a lock button and your aim stayed on it.
This forced much of the focus of the game to be on maneuvering your character and exploring the surroundings. as opposed to just shoot shoot shoot.
I cant believe there is discussion of FPS games and not one mention of America's Army! AA has taken it to a new level with pretty large maps, great effects, great commitment to new stuff over the next few years, and most importantly teamwork instead of Rambo-style play.
And yes, it is 100% FREE. FREE. FREE. It is recruitment tool, but it is the best FPS I have ever played.
"Ice Cream has no bones"
Anyone else feel like innovation in the FPS genre has stagnated since the introduction of Counter-Strike?
:) (well, if you're American, you sorta already paid for it with your tax dollars). Very strategic FPS, even moreso than BF1942. Wthout team strategy, you lose. You also need to be able to successfully pass standalone missions before certain maps and weapons are made available to you for online play (so no one is a total newbie).
I would definately not call Counterstrike innovative. It was a copy of stuff that was already around.
Now if you wanna try something that's a bit different, try America's Army. Not only is it different, it's also free to download and play
It's better to burn out than to fade away
PC gaming has slowed down as a whole, thanks in part to increased attention to consoles and the recession. I don't blame developers for choosing consoles over PCs because the former has so much fewer issues with customer support. Everyone has the same hardware and software setup, which eliminates so many problems during and after development.
I'm actually a hardcore PC gamer, but let's be realistic. The sales numbers are far, far in favor of those $200 gaming machines (and soon to be even cheaper, according to those rumors). Not nearly so many people can afford $1000 for a decent gaming rig these days-- and that doesn't include monitor(s), speakers, and games. Meanwhile, you can pick up an Xbox, Halo, a nice TV *and* a home stereo system for the same price as a PC box. Plus the Xbox doubles as an HDTV-capable rig with digital surround and progressive scan DVD capability. That is a very tempting bargain.
I just wish the Xbox (and all other consoles) would come with a keyboard and mouse, because the controllers truly don't work for first-person twitch gaming, IMO.
Man, that old Half-Life engine needs to be retired now. I mean really, they've done some great model work in this game, but look at how crappy some of the environments look:
Snow
Jungle
Rock
Anyone disagree?
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
All I can say is, man, we've come a long way from Contra.
"I only speak the truth"
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Natural Selection is another professional-quality but free Half-Life Mod which more/less combines the RTS and FPS genres in a very interesting way. Best way to describe it would be: Imagine playing Starcraft, but your marines are controlled by real people. Truly focuses on team strategy, instead of individual frag counts. The team is currently in final beta for the 1.1 release, very exciting times indeed.
I never thought CS was anything special and I can't believe that 9 out of 10 online gamers still seem to play it as reported by Gamespy stats.
At some point realism just became a big selling point (never mind that CS is by no means realistic, it doesn't even attempt to be). We had already seen tactical, team-based, more-than-just-a-fragfest play with Team Fortress (and even before that CTF...). Semi-realism and a world that comes from the brainless Hollywood action movies made CS the success it is IMO.
We've had plenty of great, innovative mods during the past few years after CS, but everyone just wants to play that. The only mods that manage to get some kind of a following are mods that mimic CS one way or another.
IMO, the current state of online gaming is pretty sad but it isn't because there's no innovation. It's because everyone just plays CS and gets on with their lives.
While reincarnating TF isn't extremely innovative (but if you've got a *great* game, why let it die with the old engines? why not develop it further?) I feel quite "alternative" when recommending that people should try out some of those: Quake 3 Fortress and Unreal Fortress are great mods, but unfortunately not at all popular...
I recommend checking out mod sites likeModsquad to see how much more than CS we have, if only someone would play them...
How will CS on an Xbox be feasible? The controls for Xbox are very inferior to PC controls, and it will feel/act very funny. CS was designed to be played with a mouse, and now they expect people to play it with joysticks? I don't see how you can achieve the same level of precision with a joystick as you can with a mouse. I bet auto-aim will be added to both single and multiplayer for CS:Xbox, and that would totally ruin the game. Bad idea.
One thing that disappointed me about Counterstrike, and many other multiplayer shooters, was the lack of suspense. There's just too many people running around, dodging bullets like they were beanbags. I'd _love_ to find a game where I can try some _stealth_, some _suspense_, some sense that if I get killed, I won't just get resurrected and thrown back into the fray.
Now, I can't say I've played every multiplayer game out there, and there's probably one or two out there that manage to create the sense of careful teamwork rather than individual gun-hopping. But I'd liek to ask: how can one create the suspense of imminent death in a _game_, where the person doesn't really "die?"
try out rainbow six 3: raven shield (if you haven't already) one hit will kill. some 35-or-so weapons to choose from. Vs. and cooperative gameplay. excellent singleplayer campaign as well as online multiplayer action. To answer your last question, you need a little imagination, a very large monitor, and a good surround sound setup. immersion is about the only way to give you the suspense you're looking for.
Get Virtual.
forgot about that one.
Get Virtual.
People throw around the word innovation a lot today to describe things that differ only slightly from the norm. We forget that First Person Shooters can be more than a mousey aim fest, and that they have so much life left in them. For some reason, Quake has become the model that everyone follows-- even though when it came out it was criticized for many things, including gameplay and controls (the mouselook hack was a stop-gap solution that required editing configuration files in the original Quake). What Quake did was drag FPS games all the way backwards from where Duke Nukem 3d had advanced them to. Sure, Duke was juvinile and a little glitchy, but the great adventurous level design took FPS games where they had never gone. The emphesis was on a balanced mix of action and exploring, NOT tedious rocket jumps and 0wning!
:P
Louis (cranky =))
so, yeah, I have to give a nod to Metroid too
Try the new free Enemy Territoy test. It's available from the good folks at splash damage, et al. You can go to the main site here and grab the ~100 MB files from any number of mirrors, in both Win32 and Linux flavors.
It's not a whole lot different from CS or other FPS, except that it has a skills system that lets you rack up experience points and get promotions that enable better weapon handling or stamina, for example.
It's still a teset now, but runs very smoothly - in native Linux as well as Win32. Best of all, you don't need Return to Castle Wolfenstein to run it, and, did i mention, IT'S FREE!!!
Gotta love it.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
Tactical Ops: SWAT v Terrorists, realistic guns, damage, etc.
Strike-Force: all of the above, plus "pulse", a neat feature that takes into account how much gear you are rucking and what you've done recently--keeps folks from hopping constantly--pulse lowers their accuracy and makes them breathe noticeably, exposing position. Windows users click here.
Actually finding the download for Strike-Force for Mac was really hard--it took me a couple of days and a load of German. Tactical Ops has been called "better than CounterStrike", but I'm not sure I agree. The UT engine has trouble with ladders--you fall off of them a LOT.
blarg.
Play QuakeWorld!
He says lower resolution?? Most competitive players play in either 640x480 or 800x600.
This is the FPS I've been waiting a decade for. I couldn't care less about the team aspect of it, I've just always wanted a combat sim where I could pick the vehicle I control on the fly. The Desert Combat mod is also beautiful. Nothing like skimming the desert five feet above the sand in an A-10, laying waste to anything that moves. :)
Their Apache is also very cool, though it takes a hell of a lot of patience before learning to fly that damn thing.
Because if you have, you've certainly heard of the multiplayer FPS gaming joy that is Battlefield 1942, which bears little resemblence at all to CS. In fact, I'd suggest that CS - is not quite God's gift to FPS. I think that award goes to Team Fortress, which introduced the concept of goal based team combat (and classes) into the MP-FPS genre. BF1942 extends upon that and creates near perfect gaming MP-FPS marred only by the occasional TKer.
And if we're talking general FPS and not merely multiplayer FPS, lest we not forget Deus Ex.
I think the biggest reason for the proliferation of CS was that it could probably run on a graphing calculator if one were so inclined. In terms of evolution, Natural Selection is a pretty amazing step up in the evolution of the FPS, and it looks like Savage is following its lead on a mainstream level. As far as tenporal peers, Tribes was far more creative than CS but both its and its successor's extremely steep learning curve kept anyone but the extremely dedicated from playing Tribes at all.
I personally think it's a mistake to label CS as an evolutionary benchmark in terms of gameplay. In terms of mere quantity of people playing? Yes, it is vitally important in the history of both multiplayer games, mods, and FPS's. But not in technical game design. That belongs to Tribes and Team Fortress.
The Desert Combat mod for BF1942 deserves the name "Counter-Strike Killer." Playing that is akin to playing sidescrollers for years and suddenly discovering 3d. Its just phenomanal. It improves on counterstrike in every way possible. I would love to see it on console. *cough* gamecube
I think something most people overlook in counter-strike are the character animations. People always blast the game for its dated textures, but i still havent seen better character animations in any FPS. When a player is crouching and walking, it looks almost real.
:-(
Only game that came close was Battlefield 1942, but i would get so much lag when playing a huge game it became more annoying than fun.
I'll stick with cs, until something better and along the same vein comes along.
Wheres my teamfortress 2
The thing that CS and HL have is a special feel to them. When you are blazing away at someone with a machine gun, it has a solid realistic feel. When someone jumps past you and you blast them out of the air with the shotgun you know you got them right away. Call it collision detection or whatever, no other FPS IMHO has this. UT is a great game, but the FPS experience in HL is just "richer". Tribes2 cannot be compared in any way to HL. Sorry, but it can't. It may be fun, but for raw, gut wrenching, blast your way to glory fun HL is the one. period. I have tried them all, and I keep coming back to the king. I really want to find a FPS that has better graphics and gameplay, but it doesn't exist. Think about it, HL has been around how long? I hope that HL2 can follow in it's own footsteps, but I am not holding my breath.
There really isnt any [propaganda] in the game
No, because the whole game is a piece of propaganda.
I mean, the US army footed the bill, they must obviously feel they are getting something worth paying for.
It's basically a "infomercial", and by that I mean a bunch of fucking lies.
At least if the US army is anything like the army I served in.
Get a real job instead kids, the army isn't cool.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."