This post is by guest blogger Aramis.
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Categories: Commentary
Tags: contest, fps
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Ack, I’m just a floating gun!This morning I looked down and realized I couldn’t see my feet. I couldn’t see my hands, arms or body at all. I wasn’t having a nightmare; I was playing Half-Life 2. To be fair, I’m no FPS aficionado–that’s Terry’s bag–but I’ve “fragged” my share of “n00bs” and played more than my share of games and I’ll tell you what, as great as some of the latest generation of first-person shooters are, they aren’t good enough by half.
As gamers, we are demanding higher and higher levels of realism in games, but we seem content to settle for better graphics as a substitute for improved gameplay. How groundbreaking is it, really, to expect to see your lower body if you look down? And with the ascendance of widescreen monitors, how difficult is it to mimic (or at least attempt to mimic) human peripheral vision? The way our eyes see is not a rectangle, it’s more like a sideways figure eight, blurring at the edges. In most FPSes you never get that horrified jolt of seeing something scampering by out of the corner of your eye, because there is no corner of your eye. As graphics continue to improve you’ll soon be able to count the nose hairs on a muskrat, but you still won’t be able to see the elephant beside him, standing just an inch outside your field of vision.
Forget trying to get around that elephant with any grace either, let alone, horror of horrors, jumping over that muskrat. FPS have us all tromping down halls, around ledges and across bridges like linebackers doing a line dance. Part of this is the interactivity barrier created by the game: most of us are going to be more dexterous IRL than our characters are in game. Even Mr. Frohman, er, Freeman, with his much-vaunted ability to create strategic cover for himself hasn’t figured out how to rotate an object beyond hitting it against things and hoping for the best. Part of it, however, is artificial; how confident would you be judging a jump between rooftops if you couldn’t see your feet? We can do better, people.
Not another locked door!Another thing we can do better at is the fetch quests that pass for puzzles in most FPSes. Even kiddie jigsaw puzzles have more than 3 pieces. I’m not saying developers should make the puzzles bigger, but they could be more complex, potentially even involving some actual puzzling out. Bringing a key from one room into another is hardly MENSA-worthy.
Speaking of which, it definitely doesn’t take a genius to know that you will start nearly every FPS with a crappy weapon or potentially none at all, even in situations when this just doesn’t ring true. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief enough to allow that by the end of a game I can somehow carry 16 guns (and ammo for each), but what I can’t swallow is that the resistance fighters that are counting on me alone (don’t get me started on that) to save the city/country/planet/universe can’t rustle up something better than a crowbar to send me on my way. Do these people even like me?
Another old chestnut that is almost inevitable is that just at the moment of your greatest awesomeness, when you’re all tricked out and partially fused with infinity, you will lose all your weapons, ammo and any abilities of relevance. Ooh, reversal. Ah, drama. Yes, guys it was a big shocker the first time it happened in, what was it, Pong? That particular equine carcass has been beaten fairly thoroughly; I’m sensing it could use a break.
Look what the Red Cross Fairy left!Also, must we have munitions and medkits strewn about like Easter candy? And this is not just any ammo or medkit either, it’s magic ammo that takes fractions of seconds to reload, and miracle medkits that heal you just by touching the box. These people have this kind of technology literally lying around, and they’re still being oppressed by alien overlords/evil governments/psychic fruitbats? I mean, I understand why these items exist but couldn’t we maybe try something different? Or at least place the medkits and ammo in locations that make a little sense. The sewer? Not so much. The forest? Nope. The profusion of exploding barrels in these places is just as bad, if not worse. No wonder everything looks post-apocalyptic–whole neighborhoods must be getting the shit blown out of them on a daily basis.
If you really look at them, most things about FPSes are like fairy tales: archetypal and unreal. It’s just that instead of princes and princesses and wicked witches they have action guys and sexy girls and Evil Corp. Or better yet you’ve got the “mature” FPS where you’re evil, but you’re still less evil than everyone else. Anti-heroism, how 90s.
Yawn… I see you guys are sleepy, too.At its core the genre is rooted in age-old unrealities. People who have been shot are rarely fit to be running around shooting anyone. Enemies usually run away screaming or fall down crying in pain when shot. Seeing their patrol partner shot in the head unexpectedly would faze even the staunchest guard. And things take time to happen. In most FPSes everything is instant. Instant healing, instant reloading, instant weapon switching. Sometimes, I’m surprised you can’t just press a button and win the game. Try healing in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth and tell me that crap doesn’t build some tension–which is really all I’m arguing, that a little realism could make these games into actual white knuckle thrillers.
While individual games may currently rise above some of these accusations, few rise above very many of them. That realism we keep begging for, in the graphics, in the physics, just isn’t showing up anywhere else. If FPSes really want to shake people up what they need is some honest innovation, not “it’s GTA– in space!” A good model for the industry is Katamari Damacy. Not the substance of the game (though its warpedness is appealing) but the idea behind the game. There’s a game that says, screw this, we’re doing something different. And they did it well, and millions loved it.