FPS games are so easy nowadays that they’ve turned the genre into a stale mess.
How can developers make shooters challenging again?
Does anyone remember Mile High Club and the ferris wheel scene from the originalModern Warfare?
Why was it so hard to remember?
Why was it so easy for him to remember?
We could really use some shooters that dont just make you feel like you are doing the killing.
I rarely am made to think holy shit, these guys are trying to kill me, too.
Anytrue differentiation between easy and hard difficulties has also disappeared.
The injustice is palpable.
It wasnt always this way.
You truly felt like a 00 agent taking on the responsibilities of a seasoned agent.
If you take on the tougher challenge, you reap all the rewards Drangleic has to offer.
This payoff is not present in current shooters.
There is no real reason to increase the difficulty, unless you are an achievement/trophy hunter.
99.9 percent of the time, you are deserving of your demise.
Developers can do two things to fix the difficulty problem: 1) improve enemy A.I.
and 2) open up their level design.
However, linear level design will not allow even the brightest enemy A.I.
Every move will have to be thought out.
could appear at any time.
Dark Soulsalso relies heavily on tension, something that should be a shoe-in for every current shooter.
I dont mean tension of the Michael Bay variety, but tension of the Hitchcockian nature.
You arent watching with excitement as a high-octane car chase unfolds.
Youre dreading what horrors mightl be around the next corner, anxiously waiting to claim your life.
The game had no music playing during the missions, adding to the tension.
At times, things were quiet to the point where it drove you insane.
You had to be on your toes and think about your next move.
Soldiers that died stayed dead, and there was no regenerating health.
Wolfensteingot this level of tension right when it threw in its supernatural elements.
What made them really work in the games favor was that they were never expected.
Zombies would come bursting out of tombs, or creep menacingly towards the player down a narrow hallway.
It felt like you were waging guerilla warfare with the supernatural and, boy, was it sweet.
The only real problemGhost Reconfaced, and which shooters still face today, is a lack of competent A.I.
You cant just charge an enemy in this game.
you better memorize rhythms, patterns, skill sets, and stop enemies from surrounding you.
And theres no fleeing.
Enemies will chase you to the ends of Drangleic to chop off your head.
Lets face it the first-person shooter, as popular as it currently is, is in decline.
There is no thinking mans alterative like there used to be.
Even more current iterations ofGhost ReconandRainbow Sixeschewed the planning-intensive vision of their earlier installments.
You have to use your Titans powers deliberately and at the right moment.
It is a thinking mans shooter, but it is all in the heat of the moment.
It would be nice to see some of this thinking taking place off of the battlefield.
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