The Future of FPS as I See It

I consider myself to be somewhat of a Bungie fanboy. More accurately, I am a big Halo fanboy. I don't get into the lore all that much, but I really like the mechanics featured in all the modes. I enjoy how multiplayer can be enjoyed in so many ways, from hardcore competition, to completely stupid minigame maps. Many a LAN have started with Team Slayer on Guardian, and end with "Duck Hunt", which in my case involved Gauss Hogs and people being forced out of an elaborate cannon. (I only mention that because after some research, my beloved Duck Hunt may not be what everyone else plays)

So the day before Destiny came out, I wasn't freaking out like I usually do when it comes to new games, because I was still trying to figure out in my head what it was supposed to be. It also helped that I play PC primarily these days, so I had no means to play the game besides take a 20 minute drive to my sister's house to play on her husband's sweet TV.

I shouldn't dwell on Destiny too much- I played about half a mission while I was waiting for everyone to get back inside to start playing 7 Wonders. But Destiny, along with other recent games, like TitanFall, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, have made me realize that FPS may be going in the direction that I have been hoping it would for the past couple years.

There are a LOT of shooters that didn't have jetpacks before, now featuring jetpacks. There is a reason for it too- Jetpacks are awesome in first person shooters. They offer movement on an axis that usually gets the short end of the analog sticks, and open up tons of cool ways to construct levels. Everybody has probably dreamed of how great it would be to jetpack to work (assuming your place of living has weather that allows it [not Minnesota]).

Not all is grand in this new, and hopefully growing trend.

The biggest problem I have with almost every single game that sports a jetpack as a significant part of the core movement system, is that they are usually just glorified double jumps. Not only that, but they are often worse than a double jump would be, since traveling in a smooth, predictable trajectory has been known to be lethal to the user in more than one billion dollar franchise. All these jetpacks do is lift you off the ground more than you could before. If the level designers really wanted to, they could set up ledges to hop on everywhere, and just remove jetpacks. Or maybe go a step further and add a bunch of staircases, so players don't even need to jump.

Adding jetpacks to existing franchises isn't just a "one and done" thing either- existing players have expectations on game flow of their favorite game. In Halo Reach, for example, the jetpack was up there as one of the most controversial additions to the game. The competitive crowd basically despised it, because it disrupted conventional Halo map control strategies. No longer were players restrained to specific paths to travel throughout the map, which made it hard to lock down on an opposing team in 4v4 game types. It didn't help that Halo Reach had a handful of classic maps that players were very comfortable with, and have been for a long time. All of a sudden, players could come out of places that there was no reason to watch before. Nobody was rising like a phoenix from the middle ring in Sanctuary, but with the jetpack, that ring was more or less a playground.

Even for people who don't read about manipulating spawns for fun and profit, jetpacks can cause some issues. The nice thing about a hallway is that there is a wall, a ceiling, and very clear entry points. This aids greatly in helping new players figure out what the hell is going on. Their heads don't need to be on a swivel. In jetpack-centric games, ceilings are the first thing to go. Players are coming at each other in all three dimensions, which makes things much more complicated.

Running in all the wrong directions

Jetpacks aren't the only thing that I think sucks about a lot of FPS games. I've grown to loathe sprint buttons. In basically every game, pushing sprint causes you to lower your weapon, therefore disabling your ability to interact in the game until you stop sprinting. This is compounded by the fact that many games force you to snap into iron sights in order to hit anything farther than the reach of your fists. A genre that once was about running and gunning, is now about running AND THEN gunning. Sprinting and 'ADS' go hand in hand these, leading to completely separating arguably the two most important parts of a shooter.

In my opinion, the actual shooting is by far the least interesting thing about shooters. Usually, it is just a dexterity test that can be improved with practice, but doesn't require much strategic thinking. I'm okay with that being the case, but when there is a large emphasis on the firing of a gun, with elaborate sights, different firing modes, and being forced to slow down to use it at all, I find that to be incredibly boring.

In contrast, interesting movement mechanics not only can take great dexterity, but also end up being very strategic. Quake strafejumping is probably the easiest example. It takes a little practice to get a little bit of speed from the technique, but with enough practice, strafejumping can make players go extremely fast- even around corners! TitanFall is a more modern example, and gets the privilege of being a game that has mechanics that I am both criticizing and praising in the same blog post. Titanfall's wall jumping links the game's glorified double jump translate into both forward velocity, and with some help from the map, vertical ascension.

SO DOLD, IF YOU DON'T LIKE SPRINTING, IRON SIGHTS, OR JETPACKS OR ANYTHING, WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN SHOOTERS????

Well, I'm glad you asked.

The first two videos are your standard montages, for the games Legions: Overdrive and Tribes: Ascend. Both games feature deep movement mechanics that require both technical skill and strategic thinking. To emphasize this, the third video is a playlist of videos featuring nothing but various flag capping routes, on a single map. Players in Tribes Ascend could spend months on just skiing around the map and hitting flag stands from all sorts of angles. Routes were optimized and redone with new setups, to compensate for things such as where they found that the enemy snipers were setting up camp, or to use a particular hill to hide their approach. Cappers were innovating for years after the game came out. All without shooting any players. The twenty odd minutes in that playlist is the end result of probably thousands of hours of work from maybe a few dozen individuals.

I like games where all the mechanics come together to become more than the sum of their parts. In games like Legions and Tribes, incredible moments happen all the time, as a result of how the weapons work, and how players move about the map. They require a ton of teamwork to pull off a successful flag heist, but also allow for creative and talented individuals to make magic out of a dire situation. They reward hard work both in practicing the weapons, but also the movement.

In summary, I need sleep now, and I'm really disappointed with new games, but also disappointed that games I do like got robbed of a chance to become great. I'm not one to edit blog posts to death, as long as they are not a pain to read, and I'm sick of typing. I have a lot more to say, but I don't have the words for it right now. I'm just sitting here, wishing that I could have ordered pizza before all the places closed.

Stupid weekdays.