Holes in FPS Gameplay
For years now, the first person shooter has been a ‘genre’ criticized by many gamers as being devoid of innovation. While certainly, technically speaking, they have come a long way since Wolfenstein 3-D, the primary advancements have been in the way of better graphics, higher polycounts, better framerates, larger environments, more enemies onscreen, more weapons, etc. While this is a generalization, and hardcore FPS fans (like myself) can name many exceptions; unique gameplay features, obscure innovative games, genre splits, etc, it is still largely very true of FPS on a whole.
So, I’ve decided to write on some of the key weaknesses of FPS, many of which are really not that complicated to improve upon given the attention is there.
The primary problem with FPS is that they have become pigeon-holed into being thought of as a single genre, when in reality, they represent merely a camera angle and control scheme which could be applied to any other genre of gameplay.
Nearly every FPS in gaming history has stuck to variations of the Wolfenstein/Doom/Quake/Half-life/Halo formula. The lone hero running through repetitive warehouse-type environments blasting dumb aliens. There is little to no puzzling, platforming, exploration, strategy or any gameplay facet typical of games in other genres.
In the past few years a few sub-genres have emerged. One is the multiplayer-focused FPS, started by Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament followed by Tribes, Battlefield 1942, and like. There is the dreaded overdone WWII shooter…which is often not much different than the “Doom-style” FPS except where monsters are replaced with Nazi’s. There are tactical shooters of varying quality, popularized by Counterstrike and innovated by more obscure titles like Operation Flashpoint and mods like Infiltration and Red Orchestra. Lastly, there have been a scarse few FPS like System Shock and Deus Ex which have taken on RPG elements, but have remained too obscure to influence the industry much.
In reality, an FPS could have a much broader range of gameplay styles. Platforming, adventuring, Contra-style crazy arcade action, Zelda-ish puzzle and exploration, Resident Evil or Silent Hill style survival horror… really, you could make a game of any genre with FPS camera and controls. Even hand-to-hand combat could be done in FPS, as games like Breakout and Unreal Championship 2 have shown.
One big sore spot in terms of variation and thought in FPS games is the lack of attention brought to movement. In many other genres, the main character’s abilities of movement can define the game and set it completely apart from other games which might otherwise seem very similar. Just compare Super Mario Bros vs Sonic the Hedgehog. They are both adventure sidescrollers where you proceed left-to-right to the end of the level collecting gold tokens and jumping over stuff. What really seperates the two characters and thus, the gameplay, is the way in which they move.
It’s rather ridiculous then, when you look at FPS, and nearly every game has the exact same movement. Run forward, back, left, and right…jump, crouch…that’s pretty much it. The only major difference of movement in the vast majority of these games lies in the running speed and jumping height the programmers arbitrarily set for the game, most of which are overwhelmingly similar, and primarily different only by coincidence or accident, not by concerted design decision.
It’s rather poignant when you consider that the FPS series with one of the deepest movement systems to this day – Quake – attained all of the major features which set it’s movement apart from other games completely by accident. Strafe-jumping, circle-jumping, air control, double jumping, ramp jumping, etc. – all manuevers which have become mainstays of the series’ gameplay mechanics, and are practiced furiously by hardcore competitive players – were essentially all glitches and exploits which ended up in the game because of programmer oversight. They only became intentional elements of gameplay after players found and used them, and the developers realized that they contributed to gameplay rather than detracting from it, therefore leaving it alone in future patches and sequels. It’s a very similar story to the inclusion of combos in Street Fighter 2.
The series with the next most developed movement system – the Unreal series- is largely an attempt to intentionally replicate Quake-style movement with simple key commands. However, the actual result, as of UT2003, is closer to old-school platformers; dodging (like dashing) via double tapping any direction, double jumping, wall jumping (like Mega Man X or Ninja Gaiden), dodge-jumping, etc. These moves are a big improvement over the typical move set of every other FPS, but could be implemented in a more fluid manner, and there are even more moves which could be added to the player’s array.
Of course, those were very complex examples. A simple way to illustrate how primitive movement in FPS’s is, is to point out that going ‘prone’ and ’sprinting’ – two relatively recent innovations which are just beginning to become popular in tactical shooters like America’s Army – are extremely simple mechanics which have been in other games since the days of Contra and Super Mario Bros, and are just hitting FPS.
Movement characteristics are usually overlooked by developers and set almost at random without really thinking about it. Often, simple things one takes for granted, like momentum, and the speed a person can change directions and turn “on a dime”, are completely forgotten in games, which can be disastrous in games like tactical shooters, where realistic abilities and strategies are intended to be prominent. How the hell can games like Counterstrike or America’s Army be realistic, when characters regularly avoid fire by repeatedly jumping 6 feet in the air or strafing in circles? It’s supposed to be soldiers vs. terrorists, but often it’s more like Elmer Fudd vs. Daffy Duck.
When developing an FPS, the designers need to be much more conscious of how the player’s movement capabilities suit the type of game they are intending to make. Developers have continued to cling to the same “WASD, jump, crouch” configuration, despite the fact that it is not necessarily suited to many FPS coming out today.
In particular, jumping is completely inappropriate to military tactical shooters. Realistically, there are almost no instances in today’s tactical shooters where a real soldier would use a jump to get somewhere – particularly not jumping 5-6 feet in the air to scale crates or evade fire the way as is all too typical. It would better serve mil-sim tactical shooters to replace ‘the jump’ with a climbing or mantling system, and yet few shooters have implemented anything like this.
On the other hand, there are countless shooters which are not trying to be realistic in the slightest, they are simply trying to pack as much action and frenzied shooting into the game as possible. In these games, it is a travesty that strafing, jumping, and crouching is all the player is given to work with, and unintended exploits like strafe-jumping or bunny-hopping are usually the closest the player can get to pulling off a cool action move. Things like diving, rolling, sliding, wall-jumping, rope swinging etc would be perfect for action shooters…and yet Max Payne and UT2003 are the furthest a 3D shooter has ever gone in this territory.
Developers continue to stick to their duke-nukem-style WASD, crouch, and 6-foot hop out of complete laziness and lack of creativity.
Overall, movement could go a long way to differentiate gameplay in FPS. Each game could have it’s own unique ‘moves’ available to the player; from realistic sprinting and climbing, to john-woo-esque stunts, to fantasy moves like double jumping, sliding, wall jumping, gliding, or floating…the possibilities are endless, and completely untapped. These features don’t even require that much creativity, as the games of the past; adventure games, action-platformers, fighting games, 2-D, 3-D, current generation, to 8-bit generation, are rife with moves which could be imitated in FPS and vastly increase the variety, depth, and fun factor of the ill-termed “genre”. Instead, 99% of FPS continue the exact same generic manner of movement which is not particularly well suited to any particular sub-genre or style of FPS, and only barely serves just to get the job done.
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Originally posted on 12/20/2005
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