Have games become too easy/mindless?

[Reincarnate]

Basically, I feel like games have become way too linear. I'm tired of people praising games like Halo and CoD when it feels like the game is holding your hand every step of the way. Walk through to the next room, kill enemies, encounter scripted event, repeat.

Back in the 90's, I felt like FPS games were much more immersive. Levels were wide, and exploration was encouraged. Key/door puzzles were more the standard, and they promoted nonlinearity.

Nowadays, games seem to be held to this standard of realism. Key/door puzzles are put aside and levels are basically cramped into linear gauntlets. They're easy. But I also find them boring.

Games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Duke Nukem, etc -- all had lots of hidden goodies, hidden passages, secret levels, and diverse level designs. I can't remember the last FPS I played that I could say the same about.

On one hand I do understand why companies dumb their games down. A lot of it has to do with money. A lot of games now come with a multiplayer mode, and so it's in your favor to make a game where they can quickly beat single-player in order to move to multiplayer as soon as possible. Spending a lot of resources on a single-player mode isn't profitable. It might have been fine in the 90's when multiplayer access wasn't nearly as widespread, but gaming was more niche back then, too, compared to what it is today.

Duke Nukem Forever really let me down in this regard because I expected a game that felt and played like DN3D. Instead we got more of the same-old two-weapon linear-pathway BS, and it played like a Duke-themed CoD game.

I miss the days of old and wish we had more games that held true to what made old FPS games so great. Half-Life has generally done a good job of this, but not to the extent I like. Levels are still *generally* linear but at least there is still exploration to be had.

[justin_ator]

You know, I can agree with that. Just the other day I was playing an old star wars game for the PC. Such fun. So much freedom to run around and solve things and pick up keys and the like. I'm with you on this, games now are just too direct and simple.

[Valance]

I can't completely agree with either side to this argument. Games are released to satisfy us players who recognize that games are made to simple. But because it's so profitable, developers continue making games that satisfy the common person. This person could be labeled as someone who doesn't want to see what it's like living in another world, they want to be entertained and nothing more. The FPS just happened to be the genre that which infected by the need to entertain.

[yo man im awesome]

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

'nuff said.

[LJRoX]

Quake was my favorite series to play. Especially Quake II. There were many secrets, levels and bosses to beat. Too bad everything is dumbed down and everything is simple.
All FPSes in this generation are piss easy on the hardest difficulty.
Halo 3, Reach, Black Ops, MW2... You name it.

I'd like to see something as hard as Ninja Gaiden. So far I've enjoyed Super Meat Boy.

[Xx{Midnight}xX]

Yes.

[Profraine]

Originally Posted by LJRoX

All FPSes in this generation are piss easy on the hardest difficulty.

If I can recall, a lot of Japanese gamers think American FPS's are too hard, akin to us thinking Japanese shoot em ups are hard. I can attest to this; never have I been able to properly clear one a stage on a FPS on the hardest without dying a bajillion times and loosing all hope for humanity. I think it's mostly because games have to cater to a wider audience than previously, video game companies take the time to iron out the cheapness from games (ie Simon's Quest) & high quality games doesn't mean f'ing hard.

Well, that's just me. :/

[LJRoX]

I think shmups are easy once you've memorized the stages very well and are able to execute techniques such as when to sweep at the right time, knowing where to shoot, etc.
The ones I usually play, like Raiden III, Ikaruga or Touhou, they carry their own uniqueness of gameplay. The chain and polarity system in Ikaruga is way different from both Touhou and Raiden III, and Touhou has its own focus, graze and bombsave system.
And well Raiden.. let's just say it's an awesome generic vertical old school shmup with upgrades as you progress.

Or maybe it's because I'm Asian and I can play both genres well lool

[linky123456]

It would be hard to make non-linear FPS's in this day and age. Mostly because of development cost.
Doom levels were fairly simple to make. Graphically, they weren't anything special. ID reused a lot of Level sprites, making the creation of the Levels very short. When Doom levels were made, it usually took two people to make a Level. One person would plan a Level, and another person would render that Level. If they worked hard, they could probably push out 2 decent Levels in a day.

It's much harder to make Levels now. Each level has to be completely designed by a team of 3D artists. Each rock or tree has to be rendered individually by the artists. They also need to make sure that a player can't jump on top of a level and completely bypass a level. In a game like call of duty, many of the objects in the game have actions tied to them. (Like a wall can be climbed over). That adds more time to the development of a Level.

That's just the tip of the iceberg for modern Level design. There are countless other things Level designers need to worry about. Why would they want to spend the time and money cranking out non-linear levels when they know 97% of the people who buy the game are going to just play multiplayer?

You wont find a challenging singleplayer FPS in today's market.Challenge in current FPS comes in multiplayer.

tl;dr Multiplayer/3d killed the Singleplayer star

[Reincarnate]

That's part of my gripe, though. I don't necessarily care about multiplayer in many cases. I just want a really good single-player FPS, and I feel like too many of them are dumbed down to the point of being interactive movies rather than actual games.

[XxMidigamixX]

I agree on this. Campaign mode (single player) are just "fixed" in a way that there's nothing to explore anymore. I mean yeah Metroid still has it in a way that you can search for secrets (I'm talking about the Metroid Prime series, but the NES/SNES series along with the GBA that are TPS [Third-person shooters] had plenty of exploration with secrets and whatnot). Personally, I think that the creativity on Single-player mode is dying and all that's worth playing single player are for achievements/trophies that we have to pull off some weird shit in order to get it.

[devonin]

In all fairness, you may be giving too much credit to Wolfenstein 3d et al.

Feeling obliged to run face-against-the-wall all the way through the zone spamclicking your "open door" button to try and find a secret door isn't really exploration in the strictest sense. Nor is level design where there are just wings of the level that don't actually lead to the end of the level.

[playe]

Originally Posted by yo man im awesome

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

'nuff said.

Ocarina of Time? pfft that game is easy as well, even on a 3 heart run. (even though it's a good game I will give it that.)

Now if you want to talk about difficulty I'd bring up Majora's mask in a heartbeat. (I also think it's the better out of the two but I'm not going to say anything else.)

Now on the account of games being real easy nowadays... uh it's more like they're way too linear for my taste, actually they're too linear for me to enjoy. Sure there's some games like Twilight Princess that still have the feel of exploration but that was what? five years ago? Things just don't feel the same anymore. Nowadays it's all about what game is graphically the best etc. when we used to focus on how fun the game was. I honestly miss those days. (though I'm sorta anticipating a few games but that's it.)

[Izzy]

I don't think the point was whether or not it is easy. Ocarina of time's dungeon design is a lot more intricate then today's games. On the other hand when you think of games like Super Mario 64 and then compare it to Super Mario Galaxy I would think it has improved.

[wargasm1]

games nowadays are built for multiplayer gameplay. If u play solo then thats why u feel these games suck. Now im not saying cod4's multiplayer is fun, ****ing people constantly calling airplanes and chopper freaking ruins the game for everyone. The fps genre sucks now, what owns is mmo and rts. For rts u have to stay away from the big name rts' and go back to games like battle for middle earth 2 and red alert 2, those games rocked.

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by devonin

In all fairness, you may be giving too much credit to Wolfenstein 3d et al.

Feeling obliged to run face-against-the-wall all the way through the zone spamclicking your "open door" button to try and find a secret door isn't really exploration in the strictest sense. Nor is level design where there are just wings of the level that don't actually lead to the end of the level.

While I agree that spam-clicking can be a bit tedious, I disagree about the level design bit. Check out the following:

http://www.ps3trophies.org/forum/wol...ions-maps.html

Not all levels are listed here (namely certain boss levels/secret levels) because not all levels have keys (most levels do), but I think these designs speak for themselves. There are plenty of levels here with lots of interesting designs, especially when you consider how basic the engine was.

You can also see where keys are and which wings are "useless." There will certainly be parts of the levels that you could totally bypass. But you risk missing out on things like weapons, health, ammo, etc. But just because a wing is useless doesn't mean it can't add value. There were plenty of areas in, say, Duke Nukem 3D that had nothing to do with the endgoal of the level but were present *because they were cool* for one reason or another.

To some extent, hidden content is a result of trial and error. If not, then there needs to be some sort of hint present that would make you think of looking there. Duke Nukem 3D did this a bit better than Doom, which did this a bit better than Wolf3D.

I concede that really mazey levels can be frustrating. But I also find linear levels to be absurdly boring. I'd argue that obviously a middle ground should be present, but I do think that it needs to err on the side of being expansive enough to actually explore different pathways instead of resorting to a lot of handholding.

[yo man im awesome]

Originally Posted by playe

Ocarina of Time? pfft that game is easy as well, even on a 3 heart run. (even though it's a good game I will give it that.)

Now if you want to talk about difficulty I'd bring up Majora's mask in a heartbeat. (I also think it's the better out of the two but I'm not going to say anything else.)

Yea I wasn't exactly talking about the difficulty system, it was more on the basis of the ability to explore and do-whatever-the-hell-you-want runs.

But yes, I do agree with you, Majora's Mask is by far more difficult. I don't think I've ever even passed the third main dungeon or whatever that give's me the boss' remains or whatever. I haven't played in a while, so I'll have to check it again.

[Izzy]

It seems for a game like that it would be 100 times easier to design a complex map when you don't have to spend so much time on minor graphic details of every part.

[Reincarnate]

Worth a read:

Secrets of the Sages: Level Design:http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...gn.php?print=1

Originally Posted by Izzy

It seems for a game like that it would be 100 times easier to design a complex map when you don't have to spend so much time on minor graphic details of every part.

This is actually exactly what ID Software's new ID Tech 5 engine is meant to remedy. This is the engine being used for two upcoming games: Rage and Doom 4.

[G.S.M]

the good old days of fps games

sad to say we are never going back to those days unless something magical happens.