Rant: First Person Shooters of Today.

So I quite like shooters, they tickle my fancy and peak my interest and so on.

It might be that I am getting old, but shooters don't feel like shooters anymore. It used to be about fun and exploring and monsters, and now it's about 'realism' where the ammo count of your Assault rifle has to be exactly UND EXACTLY the same as it's real life version else the fans have a ragefest, meanwhile the player automatically regenerates bullet wounds while crouching behind a impenetrable wooden crate.

Personally I had more fun with the totally unrealistic weapon below then I ever had with any gun in recent shooters.

Cookie if you remember it.

Rise of the Wolverine.

Before regenerative health we were forced to explore every nook and cranny to get medkits and health vials. If a fight went ugly you had to backtrack for minutes to gather enough medical supplies before opening the next door. This created reasons for developers to make huge elaborate levels with hidden rooms and secret stashes for the player to discover. Easter eggs weren't found on FAQ's just to get that achievement, they were stumbled upon as a player tried to find another pair of rockets for the upcoming boss fight. 

With regenerative health, you can just huddle in a corner and wait till your back to full. Aside from taking away the need to explore, it also broke up the action. Did you remember standing still in Unreal Tournament? Or Quake? No? Because standing still got you killed. The action was fast paced and brutal, strafing and jumping were needed to stay alive, encounters were often and fast, if your health got low you bashed the button for the med kit and continued shooting. 

Now you sit behind a car, pop off a few shots till the screen goes red and then resume sitting behind the car till the 'realistic' blood-blur dissipates. Regenerating shot off limbs and headshots like your Wolverine from the X-men.

Thanks. Dick.

Enter the Hoarder.

In the golden days you could carry 9 weapons, or more. Basicly as much as you had number keys, sometimes with subcategories. There have been games that even let you carry as much as 26 weapons, at once.

This, was, FUN. You hoarded weapons and ammunition for all these weapons and you used them whenever you wanted and wherever you wanted. You could pick off someone with a sniper rifle, switch to a mini-gun to thin the oncoming horde, then pick off the stragglers with your shotgun, and nobody stopped you.

This created a problem for developers. We all hoarded the ammo for all the powerful weapons, so by the time we reached a boss the whole encounter was made trivial, we just pulled out the Devastator with full ammo and unloaded it on the giant creep and be done with it. And if the Devastator wasn't enough we still had a full ammo RPG in our backpack, next to the maxed mini-gun and the plasma rifle we saved up for such an occasion.

And after I shot all 67 rockets up his nostril, I'll throw some pipebombs, then shoot off every rocket form the RPG and then the chaingun and then the...

For a game developer this was annoying. Some tried to take all your weapons away before a boss encounter, or forced you to use a specific gun, but none of these helped.

Enter 'Realism' 

It's not realistic to hoard weapons and mosey around with enough armaments to make the U.S military blush. So fun made way in favor of realism, as did the environments trade places from lush colorful scenery to bleak brown washed 'realistic' scenery.

Graphics improved, game developers wanted desperately to show how 'realistic' they could make their game. It started with the water effects, it was sort of an unsaid e-peen of developers to make the most realistic rendition of water. It started with splash effects, then rippling then splashing sounds, all the way to wet pants.

Realistic was becoming synonymous to good. But it wasn't. Far Cry was a nice looking game, sadly you spent 90% of it inside grey bunkers trying to find X keycard for X door. Before we even realized it, fun was being sacrificed to realism on a day to day basis.

It's sad that only now after 7 'Call of Duty' and just before number 8, we are slowly seeing the return of shooters that spit in the face of realism and walk the way of mindless entertainment once again, and though they forgot how to do it after all these years, they are remembering.

Getting there!

Almost!

What the HELL man!?