My name is Izzy, and I am the Retromancer, bringing the games of yesteryear back from beyond the grave.
I'll admit to being an RPG guy, first and foremost. I'm not even going to hide that. I love the RPG genre. I've always been sort of a literary type of guy, and nothing makes me happier than a bottle of Scotch and a great book. It's my relaxation. My friends and family know that I have a three-hour window during the evening where I take my phone off the hook, shut down my cell, and chill out with a glass of MacAllan in one hand and Herman Wouk in the other. RPGs tell stories, and that's my secret pleasure. The fact that I also get to indulge in gaming at the same time is like chocolate sauce on top of awesomecake.
But admittedly, I have a Y chromosome, and so I am as prone to the joys of shooty-bang-explosion-headshot as much as the next male. And, as much as I enjoy my old (and sometimes not so old) classic shooters like Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and the like, I've played them to death. I can practically waltz through some of the older games blindfolded, and no matter how vindictive a person may be, there's only so much vicious mayhem you can unleash before you start getting bored with it.
I need something new, something that I haven't played into the digital ground. I want a challenge, and the old stuff just ain't cuttin' it. The problem that I run into is that the current FPSes that are available all suck mankey goat testicles.
There are no words to tell you how much I despise, loathe,detest, abhore, disdain, deride, spurn, revile, and absolutely HATE the path that modern FPS games are taking. Everywhere you look these days, there's yet another gritty first-person-shooter with grunting, steroid-popping, one-liner-dropping über-macho stereotypes blasting the crap out of everything that moves for the good of America. Honest to god, I'm surprised that "America, Fuck Yeah!" isn't playing in the background of every FPS trailer released.
I'm sick to death of it, guys. I mean, I've got no problem with FPSes as a genre in and of themselves. Hell, some of my favorite games of all time are counted amongst them - Borderlands 2 and Unreal Tournament (the original, that's right) still get hours of play a week. But every time I hear some fifteen-year-old gabbing about how awesome the newest Call of Duty is, it makes me shudder.
One of my friends at work is a huge nut for first-person-shooters, and we got into an argument about a week ago on the subject. Words were said, lines were drawn, and at the end, he asked me a question that I haven't been able to get out of my head since:
"What is it about modern shooters that make them so awful compared to the ones from the 90s?"
And the thing was, I didn't really have a coherent answer. At least, not one that was a valid reason and not just personal distaste. I went home that day and actually started thinking about why I held such love for the old shooters, but none for most of the new ones.
It's easy enough to say why one doesn't like a specific FPS. Hell, right of the top of my head, Call of Duty: Ghosts -
It's boring.
It has crappy characters with one-dimensional personalities.
It's the Madden of the FPS genre - we've seen it all before.
Predictable plotline attempting to hide beneath specular clouds and bloom lighting.
It brings nothing new to the table.
All drama is forced and unnatural.
The dialogue is stupid and loaded with obnoxious machismo.
Seriously, don't even get me started - I could go on for hours. But taking a shot at a genre as a whole? I sat down and, over the course of the next two or three days, I played a bunch of modern FPSes, and tried to pin down exactly what it was that made me so unhappy to waste my time on them.
Nothing. No matter how much I played, no matter what I played, I couldn't arrive at an answer. I mean, I clearly wasn't enjoying spending my time with these games, but it wasn't simply game-specific problems (though trust me - these I had in abundance!). There was something nagging me, hanging just outside the realm of comprehension, that I couldn't really rationalize or put into a coherent statement. I kept 'playing', and became more and more upset.
It was only on the third day that I figured it out, and it was only by the merest chance. I'd had enough - I practically threw down my 360 controller, and if looks could kill, my XBox would have been a puddle of molten plastic. I'd had such an awful time in the pursuit of a reason that I felt I needed a break. I decided to throw in an FPS that I loved, so I popped a copy of Goldeneye into my N64. I was gleefully blasting my way through the Runway level in the tank, and I remember saying, "Why can't modern shooters be like this?"
Gnosis. Immediately, I paused the game. I had my answer, but not the answer I had expected.
It's pretty universally acknolwedged that the N64 Goldeneye 007 is probably one of the best, if not the best, shooters on any platform, period. It doesn't have great graphics, the thumbstick is kinda hard to be accurate with, and it's full of bugs. So what makes it superior to modern shooters?
The answer is found in the game's best achievement - the Multi-player mode. Any fan of the game will be able to tell you that Goldeneye 007, which started development in September/October of 1995, didn't even have a multiplayer mode up until March/April of 1997, and it wasn't even planned. It was coded and added in without prior authorization, but it performed so well that it was decided to include it in the final product. It was a pretty substantial part of why more than eight million copies of the game sold. In fact, it can be said without exaggeration that Goldeneye 007 popularized multi-player in FPS games.
And herein lies the problem with today's shooters: They're still envious of 007's success, but instead of viewing the game's success as a single, conceptual whole, and as a product of its time and culture, game companies are zeroing in on a narrow-minded fallacious conclusion that multi-player in and of itself was the sole reason for the game's success.
In short: It's all Goldeneye's fault.
Okay, so that's a little misleading. It's more accurate to say that modern shooters suck because they're copying Goldeneye's 'killer feature' without bothering to create a solid framework underneath it all as a support base. Modern shooters are built around a multi-player experience with single-player tacked-on at the end. In a way, the games' development processes are almost completely inverted from that of 007's.
Don't get me wrong - multi-player functionality in a game is a very good thing. With the advent of the Internet as both a technological culture and a method of instananeous global communication, game designers are designing features to take advantage of global communications to implement critical additions to their games: Things like updates, DLCs, bug reporting, and the like. And that's a great thing, because it allows a kind of personal feedback of a user's own experiences directly to the company, who can then use that information to provide better content and support, which is better both for the end-user and for the company itself.
The problem is that multi-player functionality should never be the only thing, nor should it become the main feature in a game.
007 focused on creating a well-designed environment with a nod towards varied challenges. Sure, you could run through a level blowing the hell out of everything that so much as twitched, but even on the easiest difficulty level, you'd get your ass handed to you in short order. The game had an excellent balance of pure combat, stealth sections, and task-oriented goals. It transcended the title of just another 'game', and instead became something to be 'experienced', not simply played. Combat, while not a minor part of the game by any means, wound up being just a piece in a large puzzle.
The game demanded the players not only have good reaction speeds, but also forced them to THINK. Hell, in the very first mission on some of the higher difficulty levels, you could actually fail by misusing an item, or even by installing it in the wrong place. And the weird thing was, none of this cross-genre functionality ever broke the flow of the gameplay. Everything was molded as part of a cohesive unit.
By contrast, modern shooters have made competition their biggest focus.
Competition is a part of human nature - we are at our best when we have an obstacle we must work to overcome, and there are actual physiological benefits and rewards to the process. Indeed, in the grand scheme of things, competition can be said to be the one defining feature of humanity as a whole - it makes us strive for greater heights, which can only better us as a species. Game designers are well aware of the competitive nature of humans, and so it's only natural that they design games to take advantage of that fact.
Where it all breaks down is in the scope of the implementation of our competitive natures. While online deathmatches have been around for a long time and always will be around, there's a larger goal to be concerned about, and that's the idea of conceptual stagnation. Conceptual stagnation is a term referring to the lack of either entropy or growth of an idea, and unfortunately, that's where we are today with FPS games. We have embraced the multi-player online gaming culture so fiercely over the past twenty years that game developers have either been fooled or fooled themselves into treating shooters as if they have reached the pinnacle of their evolution.
When the industry as whole embraces a video game model as 'perfect', then the desire to excel evaporates. It's totally understandable, too - if you have a good thing that makes money hand-over-fist, why take risks with something new that could fail? Why not just rehash the formula from the last shooter, throw on a bit of glitz, and trundle the thing out a year or two after the last one?
Unfortunately, this is causing damage, both to the companies themselves and to gaming culture as a whole. I'm a firm believer in the view that video games are a form in art, but one of the key factors about art is that it has to continually grow and evolve. If there was no evolution in art, we wouldn't have people like da Vinci, Picasso, Dali, and van Gogh. Nobody ever got famous by just copying what the last guy did and slapping their name on it. The gaming industry must be willing to evolve if it is to survive, and they're just not doing that with First-Person-Shooters.
There will come a time when gamers will turn their noses up at Medal of Honor XVII, and I've no desire to see 1983 happen again in my lifetime. That year gave us a landfill in New Mexico that took thirty years to be cool. Oh, Goldeneye 007. I love you so much, but at the same time, I hate you for what you've inspired. While I can't lay all the blame at your feet, a significant portion still rests on your shoulders. You're like the Dorito's of the gaming world - you're so awesome that we can't help but love you, but after gorging ourselves on you for two decades, we''ve grown quite potato-y and weak.
Time for gamers to hit the Gym, ladies and gents.
Remember, my name is Izzy, and I am the Retromancer - bringing the games of yesteryear back from beyond the grave.
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I am DoctorDan, making a second account which is completely against NA's rules.
Edited: 05/03/2014
at 05:29 PM
by TheRetromancer
