Comments on: Epitaph for the First Person Shooter

By: Eric Tilton

Eric Tilton — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 04:02:59 +0000

Oh, c’mon. The FPS genre kicks out decent games at exactly the same rate now as it did when it first started — somewhere around one a year (maybe one every two years). There’s no halcyon days of yore when all these games were good.

I just finished up HL2:1, the maddeningly named perfect condensation of the Half Life experience. HL captures my attention in a way Halo never did, but I’m not going to pretend one is inherently better than the other — I think it’s just a taste issue. For me, HL2 perfectly captures that sense of pacing that — for psu — Halo does. And both are vastly superior to, say, Doom 3.

The commenter who refers to them as spookhouses has it correctly — you’re walking down a convoluted but ultimately linear hallway. It’s the pulls that keep you walking down the hallway that matter, which is some mystical melange of story elements, gameplay, and level design.

By: peterb

peterb — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 09:02:08 +0000

I gave it another shot today and managed to get System Shock 2 working on Windows XP on my MacBook. But I had to sacrifice a goat.

It’s exactly as good as I remember it being.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 11:19:00 +0000

Perhaps saying genres is too strong a term, although survival horror/crazy scooter/squad tactics/platform puzzle/phsyics puzzle were all there. But they do keep changing up the combat in a way that didn’t happen in Halo–taking out snipers, adding the ant lions, placing turrets… blah blah blah.

It felt more varied than other games did, and the tone changed with those sections. Maybe that’s why the word genre came to mind.

By: Adam V.

Adam V. — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 10:04:01 +0000

I keep reading that Half-Life 2 switches genres, but I don’t see it, other than “zombie movie area” and “argh heck vehicle driving sections.”

Can I get a breakdown?

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 09:35:49 +0000

I’ve got SS2 running on Windows 2000 where it wouldn’t run before. The difference seems to be the soundcards in the laptops are different. Games based on the Thief engine seem really sensitive to hardware. You might try a different machine.

Some people just don’t go for FPS, and I think it’s a very individual taste. I thought HL2 was brilliant, partially because I felt like it kept switching genres on me. On the other hand, I only made it through Halo because of the story–the actual game was often clumsy and frustrating.

By: rmitz

rmitz — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 07:59:09 +0000

So I just went and installed my copy of system shock 2 (which came as part of a bundle, not the original copy). It seems to be installed and is running just fine on my copy of XP SP2 running on the Mac Mini.

Where does a problem happen?

By: peterb

peterb — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 06:35:28 +0000

Let me know if it works for you. I’ve tried just about everything in that thread and had no luck.

By: Brett Douville

Brett Douville — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 06:24:28 +0000

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69958

How to run/install SS2 under Windows XP. I may play through it again this weekend. Man, that game was fantastic.

By: psu

psu — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 06:16:17 +0000

I played through Half-Life 2 and had a bit of fun. I didn’t think it was the be-all though. Too many stupid vehicles and physics puzzles, not enough crossbow sniping and ninja babes. Overall the game seemed too enamored of its engine and “narrative”, and didn’t pay enough attention to ya know, the shooting parts.

Resident Evil 4 is a great recent shooter to go along with Halo, IMHO.

By: Will

Will — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 06:10:52 +0000

I did very much like Half Life 2.

The gameplay itself was good, it was *brilliant* fun taking down the striders, flying along at pace in the two veichle sections (crazy controls aside, it WAS fun), getting to fight, then have on your side the Antlions… it was all brilliant, I loved every second of it.

I pirated it, I have to say. Completed it, then BOUGHT it (and got Ep 1 on steam). Yes, I suffer through owning an legitimate copy and dealing with Steam because I like it that much!

Halo… I can see why people disliked it, ESPECIALLY people who like RPGs. Halo, here’s the thing, you need to take at a run. Do Not Kill Every Baddie. Just blaze through the levels at a run, don’t stop – it’s very hard to die, and the game is a lot more fun. Repetitive corridors? Not if you run through them! Just blast at what you can on the way. It’s an arcade shooter with an epic storyline.

Prey… I have that for the PC and something about games with the Doom 3 engine bug me… they just have this weighty feel to them that I can’t get over. It feels like the game is sets entirely under water. I couldn’t finish it, despite the awesomeness of the gravity “puzzles”.