FPS: Your Objective is Follow

FPS games have always been fairly popular but now a days thanks to online gaming and franchises like Call of Duty the FPS is more popular than ever, so the games should be better than ever right? Well the answer would be yes and no.

FPS single player experiences have become much more cinematic this generation. They feel almost like big blockbuster movies with all the explosions especially the Call of Duty series (4 and on). Now it seems that more and more games are following suit. However when FPS made that change they have also in turn become much more liner than they had once been.

To be cinematic they cannot allow you to stray off from the path or it will ruin the "flow" so what they do is basically make you go around a battlefield where your objective is to follow a squad mate for what feels like 90% of the time. You cannot even open a door yourself anymore that squad mate has to open it for you. This takes a lot of the fun and discovery out of the experience. I really enjoy the more cinematic style but it's at too great a cost. It's not just call of Duty (that is just the more popular game) Battlefield 3 has done it, the new Medal of Honor did it and many more. Sure shooting things is still fun but we are missing some of the exploring/ freedom we used to get in these games.

For example Medal of Honor Airborne let's you choose what your objective on the battlefield to take on first, Call of Duty 3 also did this. Even the Bad Company games had freedom of how to tackle your objective. You may have had a set order to do it in but not all the objectives were shoot these guys and go to a door and wait for it to be opened for you. You could choose your own way to get there and pick if you want to fight them with vehicles or blow up the building they are in or just go in and have a firefight. All of the older games you could open doors yourself that never seems to be the case anymore! Plus these games had larger battle arenas to fight in.

I was just reminded of this freedom when playing through Halo Anniversary. Just the variation in battle and how everything was handled it was refreshing. I acknowledge that Halo is quite a bit different than a military FPS but still they are the same game type. Plus you are not attached to a turret for what seems to be a large chunk of the game. Those turret sequences are yet another way to restrict and limit what you do in these games. Sure it is fun for maybe a quick level bu not for the large chunks that seem to grow with every sequel, Call of Duty seems to be the worst offender of this but there are others.

Many people including myself enjoy when games give freedom for you to mess up or discover things on your own. I remember how amazing Medal of Honor Frontline was. It gave you a lot of freedom to move around the battlefield, not at all what it is today which is narrow corridors and turret sequences. Plus it had large battle arenas. The levels were long and the game itself was long. I feel like the FPS had devolving instead of evolving like it should.

In my games I want freedom of battle and I think the best way to do that in a cinematic game is give me a more open battlefield let me run around, give me the choice to grab a vehicle (kinda like in Halo) give choice during battle. Just by adding a bigger size to the arena your fighting in and adding the choice of vehicles lets the battle be different and exciting every time. As opposed to following someone down a small short path and firing at enemy on the other side of the narrow urban environment you are in. In my opinion these changes still allows you to have a cinematic game with freedom added in.

In conclusion while cinematic FPS games can be fun they seem to offer a less compelling experience gameplay wise and there are better ways to enhance that just by giving you freedom in battle and the freedom to either choose your own objective or the way your going to get to your goal and complete that objective. The point to all of this is to get you to think is running down narrow linear pathways and having to follow someone around really fun> What about the severe limits placed on each battle when in a more liner map where most of the time it is tight corridors? Is this an evolution in design or a devolution? I think I have made my opinion clear more freedom=more fun. Oh and please please make your campaigns longer 4-6 hours is awful for an already quick experience.