I think my “Join Date” already said that
This actually makes me kind of sad. Level design used to be so creative. You could actually got LOST! Games these days have far too much hand-holding and not enough free roaming gameplay. i don’t mean ‘free roaming’ in a sandbox sense but rather a sense of exploration. it’s actually kind of funny how even some veteran gamers are depending too much on linear level design. i see it far too often when i watch my friends play games or in YouTube Let’s Plays.
Take for instant the Yogscast crew, specifically Lewis. By default, Minecraft is a completely open game with no specific objective. Now if you have haven’t seen a Yogscast LP, the crew typically plays through story-driven levels and “adventure maps” made by Minecraft gamers much akin to the likes of Zelda. Most of which are VERY open-ended and have lots of places to explore. Most of the time the objectives are vague and the world is open for you to get lost in. There are towns, dungeons, forests etc. all designed for non-linear gameplay. However, Lewis tends to get…confused…he doesn’t seem to understand that the game can be played out in more than one fashion. He often asks, “What are we supposed to do?”, which in most contexts has already been answered! What he wants are specific instructions. He can’t seem to make his own decisions or think through what a likely action would be.
if he’s given a choice to do things on his own, he simply emulates behaviors he sees in other games’ situations or he panics. Simon and Lewis stumble into a graveyard. Lewis starts digging up graves because, “i thought that’s what we were SUPPOSED to do!”. With no prompt or suggestion, he just dives into what he thinks the game is going to suggest because he’s already done it in games like Resident Evil. The thought never occurs to him that the graveyard MiGHT BE JUST A GRAVEYARD. Conversely if given a choice to take one of multiple paths, rather then deciding a path based on logic or some process of elimination, he panics over which is the “right one” without considering that either might be “correct”.
in short, if there is one clear and obvious linear path, he’s fine. But as soon as you show him multiple branches, he panics and assume that there’s only one right answer. if you toss him into a game with NO clear path(s), he panics and makes irrational conclusions and acts on them without thinking. He just can’t seem to wrap his mind around making his own local path.
Yogscast adventure map videos are fun to watch but earlier on in the series Lewis literally ruined a few games by acting without thinking. Frustratingly enough, he’s the camera guy too so some videos are painful to watch.
-Kawai Tei-
who needs personal opinions when you can just copy>paste a 1000pg sob story
Because he’s not very smart.
The first FPS that I actually sat through and played was Half-life. I did play Star Wars: Dark Forces first, but I always switched to third person anyways - I wasn’t too good at FPS at the time.
You see, Half-life is special to me because I was an RTS kid growing up; Warcraft and Dark Colony for years. So when Black Mesa comes out, I hope it can spark that feeling again.
I’m only 15 and I wish I was around for games like Half-Life in their glory days.
Half-life was the first FPS i tryed. But i always stopped at unforeseen consequences because i thought it was too hard. I have of course gone through every single HL game in the market a long time ago.
I’m going to go and say that Turok for the N64 was the first FPS I played. No, wait, there was Redneck Rampage and this other Doom-ish game that I can’t remember the name of.
Shadow warrior? Duke? Tek war? Star wars? Corridor 7? Heretic? Hexen?
Anyone here first play HL on the ps2 first?
That was my first experience of half-life. Then i moved to the pc and it was the first game i got for it around 2003. I was obssessed with HL when i played it, role-playing as Gordon freeman when i found a crowbar laying in the garage and what not. 
Playing HL at about 10 years old is what sparked my love for the whole fps genre for years to come.
I really liked Wolf3D and Doom but I found a lot of other games to be more compelling.
My first experience of half life 2 and the orange box was in-fact on the original xbox, and xbox 360. Then I discovered steam 4 or so years ago, I’d always been into PC gaming, with the unreal games and such, but that’s when I started playing the half life series all the way through on PC.
I used to prefer console gaming when I was not fortunate enough to own a semi powerful computer.
That was my same problem at the time. and once i became an official pc gaming addict, i upgraded my whole set up with a base amp hooked up to my speakers, 26in, logitech 15 keyboard and mouse and my dad’s nerdy ass friend gave me his custom built pc and i bought a video card for it.
I was in pc gaming heaven from that point on. haha
My first FPS was Doom. I was 5 at the time. I was scared shitless.
After that I think my next FPS was Doom II, then Quake, then Turok, then Goldeneye 64, then Half-Life, then Unreal, then Perfect Dark. After that the FPS genre really took off so I don’t remember what order I played the rest.
I was 8 when the FPS was really born with Wolf3D. I had played it quickly, but didn’t really play it through before DooM was released (later went back and played it all).
DooM was the first game that felt like a drug. That opened up a whole new world for me. It was the first game that got me absorbed into the world… I felt like it was a place.
Quake was what got me hooked forever… maybe more specifically Quakeworld TF. I remember that music playing in the background of the UnholyKingdom map, and just standing on the top of the castle, looking into the “sky”, and wondering what was out there. (I now realize it was nothing, LOL.)
I remember my forays into Heretic & Hexen. I remember loving “expansion packs” almost as much as I did the original games. There were always two…
I was around for the birth of a genre… when they called other FPS games “DooM clones”. I remember when the terms “deathmatch”, “frag”, and “gib” were first coined. I remember when CTF was a new concept (Threewave!) rather than a staple game type.
I remember when I first switched from using only keyboard to keyboard and mouse, console commands, key binding, LAN parties with industrial music playing in the background, and lag prediction for sniping in TF.
I remember when the concept of hardware accelerated graphics came into my world with the introduction of GLQuake and my first 3DFX card, and how I got just as excited about the new box art as what the hardware did. (Remember that card from 3DFX which was going to come out with the external power blocks? I think it was the 6000. Too bad…)
I remember playing Unreal with Glide drivers, good transparency in textures, and reflections! I remember when shadows were introduced into game engines… when we first saw curved surfaces…
Those were the days when being a “gamer” was something that was usually scoffed at by the majority of your classmates. Because of that, it became a sub-culture underground movement that most people didn’t understand, but you always felt special to be a part of. Those were the good old days…
I think the early FPS games meant the most to people of my generation born in the early to mid 80s, because we grew up with the evolution when we were the most impressionable, and it meant the most to us. As we discovered the world around us, we simultaneously discovered game worlds, and they meshed in a strange (and probably unhealthy) way. Those born earlier were a bit older and less impressionable, so there was less awe there. Those who were born later missed it or were too young to appreciate it. I wish everyone could have experienced it through the eyes of myself and my peers. Either way, GOOD TIMES!
Does anybody remember Shogo? That was a damn fine game back in the day. Was my first truly 3D game I played. Also played it I think half a year ago and I still liked it.
Goddammit. Why did you have to remind me. That game was terrible! it was like the Daikatana of giant robots. The only redeeming quality of the game was the awesome collection of anime sound effects. CDs of those effects cost upwards of $200 but anybody with winrar could jack those sounds FOR FREE! (guilty)
Seriously, though. FUCK the themesong. There’s nothing more ear-raping than a mumbly Japanese singing karaoke’ing her way through that garbage. Oh, dear GAWD!! And my friends! They sang with it at EVERY LAN PARTY!! We used third-party mods to enable in/out of robot matches. The game was funner playing deathmatch with a team of humans vs. a pack of giant robots. That and racing was sort of fun. Maybe it’s because i hopped the band wagon late (2002-ish) but that game was probably one of my biggest regretful game purchases. it was $5 at Wal-Mart or something and i picked it up on impulse.
i could’ve bought a Coke and a box of donuts with that $5 and i still dream about what could have been. sigh
-Kawai Tei-
Just skip the damn intro, I was talking about the actual game and gameplay, which rocked.
I’ve played pre-Wolfenstein games like “Catacomb Abyss”, although I got to them few months after Wolf3d.
I got to Doom about 6 months after release, and was immediately hooked. In 1995 I also started making maps, and this I continue doing to this very day, although for different games (Trackmania, Starcraft…)
So, yes, I am old enough to have caught the games when they were new.
history of FPS:
a bunch of shitty low-res games (1989-1999)
Half Life (1999)
a bunch of shitty hi-res games (1999-2011)