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Upcoming FPS Titles In 2006
IGN has a look at some of the many high-profile First-Person Shooter titles slated for this year. From the article: "At any rate, as we near the realm of photorealism some fifteen years later, brave and storied heroes like id Software, Epic Games, Valve, and DICE continue to evolve the genre with things like voice communication, fancy lighting, and flying limbs. So today we bring to you our list of the upcoming shooters of 2006 whether they make us giggle like little girls or not. Some of these are expansions, some of them are fever dreams of the future, and others simply games we know are gunning for 2006." Appropriate, then, that Gamespot just released another 'Greatest Game' article this week. Doom certainly deserves the spot they give it.
Bots put back into games, why in Star Wars Jedi Knight and Knights of the Old Republic were there bots in multiplayer if you wished, but not other online FPS games? Sometimes at 3 AM you just can't get a decent number of people gathered for a good game, get 3 others, and a few bots though and you have something.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
First shot! err... post
*sigh*
Duke Nukem Forever will be released.
....
And so was last year and the year before that and before that and before and before that
Anyway, looks like a loaded FPS year.
To be fair, it was another id game, Wolfenstein 3D, that in 1992 introduced gamers to the concept of the first-person shooter.
Except that it wasn't. Even if you don't count Maze War (and its successor, MIDI Maze) for some reason, you still have id's own Catacomb 3D.
Rob
Woo.
Actually the time shifting game looks interesting, if it works in a non-constrained manner.
...RTS is what I'm most excited about. Supreme Commander is supposed to come out this year (last I heard) and that trumps anything that could possible debut in the FPS genre.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
I really liked FEAR, and hope to see mabey a sequal. Ever since FEAR came out it seem to blow away the so called (Scary games) Such as doom. Perhaps this is what STALKER is trying to do. What do you guys think? Does STALKER seem up to par?
Can we please, for the love of god, have a game like Quake 3? *Every* other FPS is exactly the same. You know what the difference is between Halo 2 and Half Life 2? The story. Oh sure, the storylines are great. I loved those games. But they are all the same in terms of gameplay. They just have different graphics. Quake 3 - particularly with the threewave mod, is totally unique. It's not like anything else out there.
In quake, the movement speed is so fast, it feels like being in the matrix movies. And everything is so well balanced. Case in point, everybody knows what a camper is, right? In every other FPS game, there is one super weapon, and everybody goes and gets that weapon and that's it, the game consists of marching around holding down the fire button. There was a map in Q3 called space ctf. You all played it. There are the platforms way up in the air with railguns on them. Newbs would go up there and sit on the railgun and fire at people. But it wasn't a problem in Q3. I used to love it when people went up there because that showed they were inexperienced. In quake, the shotgun does as much damage as the railgun, which does as much damage as the rocket launcher, which does as much damage as the grenade launcher, etc. The BFG was probably an unbalancing factor, but most servers took it out. So anyway, if you were a newb in quake and you picked up that railgun, I could kill you easily with the shotgun, I just had to get close to you. And with Quake's speed of movement, that wasn't a hard thing to do. See, that's called strategy. I don't see that kind of thing in other FPS games.
Other games are fun, don't get me wrong. They just aren't as good as Quake 3. Take a look at this website, it has videos of people playing Quake3. Have you ever seen Halo or Halflife or UT videos that cool?
So basically, game makers are just going to give us more of the same old same old. They are going to make versions of Halo and versions of Halflife with better graphics and different storylines. That's it. That's what we have to look forward to.
Only one game is really different.
Well they're certainly optimistic, Prey and STALKER? I'm not saying that's not gonna happen, unlike DNF :)
SWAT's already gone gold though, so some of them are almost here, and I'm looking forward to some of the others. The Ghost Recon sequel, HL2-AM, Quake Wars, Commandos Strike Force, the next UT can all kick ass.
You know, I don't care if they've got the gold master in their hands and have been deathmatching for a month...I simply can't take them seriously when they talk about DNF coming out.
And to think, there was a time when I thought nothing could be a bigger joke than Daikatana...
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
FPS are so last century.
...
In some of the Gaming magazine polls, a large number of people have indicated that there are too many FPS and they all start to feel the same after a while.
Which is why Japanese games involving rolling things to satisfy your dad the King of the Stars, or dancing games, or other simulation games are starting to get more attention.
Now, if we only had a FPS which involved shooting stars as they flashed past on your HDTV, so that they would make musical sounds and flash like rainbows - now THAT would be interesting
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"You know what the difference is between Halo 2 and Half Life 2? The story. Oh sure, the storylines are great. I loved those games. But they are all the same in terms of gameplay. They just have different graphics."
I am curious how far you played into Half-Life 2. IMHO, it offers one of the most unique gamplay experiences of all the first person shooters out there. I will give it to you that for the first part of the game, it is standard fair, but once you obtain the gravity gun, the game launches into new territory. I can't remember a game where you had to become so intimately familiar with your environment to be successful in completing the game. Sure, you could continue with your typical FPS mentality of "shoot first, ask questions never" (which I did through Ravenholme the first time I played which was a big mistake), but that would only get you so far. Halo 2 was enjoyable (which I will attribute to the storyline), but to say that the gameplay mechanics were nearly identical would be a gross injustice to Half-Life 2.
Now, if you are talking about the multiplayer aspect of it only, then I have to agree. I have played a few DMs and it feels the same all around. I wasn't sure which you were addressing, though, the single player or the multiplayer parts of the game.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
There is nothing special or unique about Quake3.
It's just like the original Quake, except it has fancier graphics and an unimaginative single player game (ie, maps with bots).
Love sees no species.
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. The only reason, Splash Damage. I STILL play Wolf: ET at least 2-3 hours a week, and I am keen to see what Splash Damage does in the Quake universe.
No sig for you!!
Tripewrie will hopefully get it pushed out the door in February even though they've been holding off for final tweaks.
http://www.redorchestragame.com/
Mostly likey the most realistic FPS so far as far as WWII combat goes...
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
That everyone equates FPS to multiplayer, or at least most of them do? 3 our of the 4 games in tfa seem to be MP-only, and most of the comments are about MP games. As someone on a sucky internet connection who also sucks at MP games, I vastly prefer games with a decent singleplayer campaign, like halo, halflife $whatever, quake 1,2,4, even plotless games like painkiller or the serious sams.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
Based on this screenshot I'm really looking forward to Medal of Honor: Airborne.
No doubt we'll find out later that that's just from a cutscene and the in-game graphics will end up being the usual low-detail FPS garbage, though.
Registering accounts later than some other chrisb since 1997
How about Quake 4????
I just put together a piping hot new system that Fear and Q4 can't touch on Ultra and max settings. I am look forward to the possible challenge these game might give in making me scale back the settings. Still need to try EQ2, but I don't consider crappy graphics code a accurate system challenge.
Shit - I'm still trying to get a decent framerate out of the Doom 3 engine. So now they're going to clog up the CPUs again.
No wonder people still play Return to Castle Wolfenstein hardcore. You get a broad swath of players with capable hardware instead of a niche of a niche of a niche. Big fun for all of 10 people on the planet. Whoop-de-fuck.
Two words (or one acronym and one word): RTCW & Beach. Smooth tactical gameplay that screams on any hardware invented since y2k, PC or MAC. Just wish the mod-servers wouldn't keep removing the weapons so much. Noobs with flamethrowers are just one of many fun factors that should be enjoyed by all.
FPS has largely devolved into a frag fest game of reflexes, but I find that there's a real art which has gone missing. This misses the point.
Games are all about play.
Zero sum shoot or be shot is fun and all, but its an exclusive club. Its zero sum, you kill or you loose. Not everyone can escallate in such a harsh environment.
I really want to see ET:Quake Wars. Involved multiplayer is where its at. I'm hoping its like U2XMP, it was a little bit slower, all the weapons had really good purpose and you didnt have to be a frag god to do really well.
On the other hand, rocket arena always was a damned good time.
From what we've heard, this game should be among the Nintendo Revolution's launch titles in 2006. If it's a solid shooter, combined with the Revolution's Direct Pointing Device technology, it'll blow away every FPS on every other console. The "Nunchuku" attachment in your left hand for W-A-S-D movement, and the main controller (with its trigger-oriented B button) for the mouse. Point and fire.
What do they mean, "it's about time that the PC crew had a chance to share in the goodness"? I have played every Rainbow release for the PC, I don't remember one being released for a console without a PC version. I haven't checked the release dates, but I think the PC got them first.
How about Metroid Prime: Hunters for the DS? Isn't that fairly high-profile, what with the unique control method and online play?
Gamertag: WyleType
I don't know what bots you dealt with in BF2's single-player mode, but they proved to be quite intelligent and accurate in the games I played.
As for miltiplayer, you can get bots on BF2 relatively easily, but it would be best served in a LAN environment or a system with all of those ridiculously large numbers of server ports open. (Something like 15 different port ranges? What the F*CK was EA thinking!?)
The single player is actually a type of 127.0.0.1 server with you connected in via the client. So, even a single-player game is a multiplayer game with you and bots. (When you start, note that it says "Connecting to server" even for a single-player game.) Once the server/game is running, anyone who attaches to the system via the Internet -> Connect-to-IP function can replace a bot in the game.
The main drawback to this is that you are restricted to the single-player, 16-player maps. There are hacks out there to activate 32-player maps, but I don't know how stable the game is after that. There are also stability problems even in the 16-player maps. I don't know if it's due to how bug-laden the out-of-the-box version was, or if it was because of instability caused by multiple players logged into the "single player" game. But I do know that my nephew and I were able to get this to work on multiple occasions.
But I fully agree with the overall sentiment. It's completely ridiculous to not include bots. There has been plenty of AI code written for many, many years to allow bots. So, the idea that AI needs to be re-thought to allow bots in every game is disingenuous. Sure, it might need to be integrated into the engine, but that doesn't mean that it has to be done completly from scratch.
Additionally, the idea that gamers only want to blow away other humans (virtually, Mr. Thompson, you moron!) is ludicrous and highly arrogant. Bullshit! If I have friends over and my Internet connection goes down or I just don't want to deal with the infantile complainers on the Net, it's always nice to know that I can fire up a multiplayer game and we can still blow away bots together! Sadly, this ability has been rapidly diminishing, and I for one am sick of it.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
They completely ignored Armed Assault... although it's pretty unlikely we'll be seeing the "Next Project" (aka OFP2) this year. Seems like a lot of the mainstream media have forgotten all about BIStudio and Operation:Flashpoint. Well, I'm looking forward to it! :-)
It certainly has more capital letters 'n dots. I wonder what kind of nonsensical acryonym that will make up? Like First Encounter Assault Recon: you find it, you shoot it, then you look at what you shot.
On second thought, that's a pretty good description of FEAR. ^_^
We'll if you think about it, this wont be a good idea in the online (registered) hosted game servers. If you have bots there is a degree of predictability in their behavior, where as humans are a little more unstable :)
:)
And now to the point, if you exploit a bot's weakness you will skew the online rating system, and it would be very easy for someone to pad their scores.
Conversely if the bots where too good, they would slaughter you and you would have a negative score, not nice
While FPS games keep pushing for better and better graphics, sometimes I wonder if they sacrifice the fun factor for the eye candy. I mean lately I haven't been interested in most of the newer FPS games. I did buy HL:2, however while the graphics were great, I wasn't too impressed with the game. Too short. Doom 3 was great too, but not the same. I did enjoy the Star Wars FPS games, especially the sabre dueling. That was interesting, and a good break from the traditional guns only mentality. I guess what I'm saying (or rambling) is that I feel that the market has been saturated with FPS and that I have become jaded somewhat to them. Eye candy just doesn't do it for me anymore. I would rather have a game with Quake 2 graphics but tons of fun than a game with the latest engine that is the same mindless killing.
Just my two cents.
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
No, no! You misunderstand. I'm not talking about including bot gameplay with the rankings. I mean just regular, LAN, or at least non-ranked servers. Yikes!! Bots on ranked servers is a recipe for disaster ... but at least bots don't give the arrogant "you guyz sUxOrz" from egotistical teenagers.
I'm talking about allowing bots in games that are separate from ranked systems, like a LAN or in my case when you have friends from all over the country. Every weekend, my nephew, a friend from North Carolina, and I do team "Ghost Recon" of us vs. the bad guys for several hours. It's all password protected and it's started as a LAN game, but I allow the ports to be directed to my system at the firewall. So, when by friend from NC connects, my system just happily allows him entry to the server.
One of the biggest dissapointments that I have with most modern FPS games is that bots are nowadays an afterthought whereas before they were just about required.
It boggles my mind when I hear developers talk about how difficult it is to implenet bots in multiplayer. Well, what the hell would you consider the enemy to be during single-player games? How are they not "bots"?! They react to my character as a threat and react accordingly/ Games like F.E.A.R push the enveolpe on bot AI! Would it really be so difficult to modify that to allow the same reactions to multiple targets instead of just me? Somehow, I doubt it but that seems to be the going excuse.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
There are just a glut of FPS and RTS games coming out this year, too many. While they all cover a lot of settings and era's, and some better than others, they are still the same game. This year's PC offerings are some of the most one dimensional and narrow of recent memory. New life needs to be breathed in somewhere as things are stagnating fast, Spore is one great example but you're hard pressed to find any more examples like it in PC gaming.
It is starting to hurt publishers, but they aren't making it known outside of stock talks. Everyone wanted to claim the huge growth and demand in gaming, but now the financials are showing the exact opposite. More companies posted a loss across the board than any other year. Many tried to blame it on the upcoming new consoles, but that just isn't so. I'm really hoping some new spark jumpstarts this industry and takes it off-track from becoming another homoginized hollywood or pop music industry. Gaming never started that way, and it isn't a natural progression for it either. It was about fun and the money followed, not about money with the fun following.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
as we near the realm of photorealism
FPSs aren't anywhere near photorealistic. We've just finally gotten to the point where there is only a little pixalization and we have some decent lighting effects in our fake looking graphics.
Static scenes, sure, we're near photorealism, but for interactive games... Especially for first person shooters, we're not even close, mostly because the current use of texture mapping, bump mapping, etc... only looks good from a narrow range of angles. When we can push enough polygons to actually model the texture of a surface, or when we start using different textures for different angles (we do it for distance, so why not?) then maybe things will improve.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.