It was the same in the Doom games, where there’d be fake windows you can walk through, hidden buttons on walls, and underwater passages all filled with secret goodies. A time when game developers were learning what it was like to explore systems in 3D space.Ī product of this new creative frontier, I think (and this is 100% not researched,) is the wide open, secret-packed levels in SW. SW originally came out back in 1997, which was kind of a golden-age for 3D graphics technology on PC. That’s all well and good- but now I’ll elaborate on some of the bigger aspects of the game that make it awesome. What matters is there’s zombies with guns, ghosts that breath fire, and explosive demons all trying to kill you. It doesn’t really matter who he is, actually.

In SW you play as a cheeky, badass samurai. And I’ll do that by talking about a game that was gifted to me a while ago that I’m having a lot of fun with, Shadow Warrior: Classic Redux (shortened to SW from now on). Clearly my opinion is that older shooters were generally better, but what I’d like to do with this post is to highlight the differences between the two. And just to be clear- this post isn’t to condemn modern shooters and to praise old ones. Personally, I can’t tell if these movement mechanics are plainly an advancement of the genre, or if developers are blatantly just copying each other.Įither way- the trend of tired FPS games isn’t really a new one. Titanfall charged us $60 for jet-packs and mechs and got away with it, so Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare followed suit with parkour mechanics and thrust-jumps, and it seems Halo 5 is going to be showcasing it’s own take on ‘dynamic arena traversal’. What we’re accustomed to in the genre now is the repackaging of ‘gameplay innovations’ from one game to the next, painfully linear single-player campaigns, and cluttered and uninspired multiplayer progression systems. Tight and interesting mechanics, varied level designs, and exciting stories are all things sorely lacking from FPS games nowadays. Of course there’s some exceptions to that conclusion- Wolfenstein: The New Order and Counter Strike: Global Offensive being prime examples that the genre can still be fresh and satisfying.

It’s generally accepted, at least in some circles, that many modern first-person-shooters are in a bit of a quality rut.

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