Thank you the conduit for bringing back secret agents.
Getting shot in the toe is as bad as being shot in the heart. The only area that is worse to be shot in is the head, regardless of how fancy/futuristic your helmet is.
Is it so much to ask for a mechwarrior esque damage system where if your limbs get injured you are slowed down, unable to use two handed weapon and live?
I take it you've not played Firearms, have you? You should look it up. It's damage system would be right up your alley.
Now, as for the "cliches" inu listed, many of those examples only pertain to a few games, thus destroying any way for them to actually be considered cliches. I'm not saying first person shooters are free from their fair share of cliched plot devices and gameplay gimmicks, hell they started the whole explosive barrel thing, but they're certainly not the worst in the gaming industry. Let's face it, most rpgs and sports titles especially, are the ones rife with standard, "cliche", mechanics.
Your team will always contain one girl, she will either be a super-model who works the radio, or a tough girl who ends up dying before the game is over.
Unless the game is half-life 2 in which we have to wait for episode 3 to see which one Alyx ends up.
1. Every Science Fiction FPS must feature space marines. After all, it's not like there are any other kind of jobs in space, are there? (sarcasm.)
If you consider a space marine to be a soldier deployed from a space ship then there really isn't any other jobs in space that would reasonably put you in a position to shoot at hostiles.
What about a space miner (Red Faction)? What about a physicist (Half-Life)? What about a space pirate? What about a smuggler? Space merchant? Intergalactic circus performer? Bio-enhanced space plumber? Mutated space manta ray?
The great thing about space is that battles can happen anywhere, anytime. It makes zero sense that when battles happen, you (the protagonist) would be even remotely prepared for them. Space is just a big idea bucket. Anything and everything could exist or happen in space, so why do game devs keep using Space Marines?
Counter-question: Why do modern shooters always star military personel?
Me: "2. Your standard FPS foes are required by law to be either A: Aliens, B: Nazis or C: Random guys in generic gray/black army gear."
As you can see, I already touched on that a bit. Personally, I hate that cliche just as much as the Space Marine one. Why couldn't there be a modern FPS where you played a terrified South African native fighting off tribal guerrilla warriors to protect your village? What about a Muay Thai champion who takes on Chinese Mafia in order to save his mother? I'd actually play these games... Maybe.
1. Every Science Fiction FPS must feature space marines. After all, it's not like there are any other kind of jobs in space, are there? (sarcasm.)
If you consider a space marine to be a soldier deployed from a space ship then there really isn't any other jobs in space that would reasonably put you in a position to shoot at hostiles.
What about a space miner (Red Faction)? What about a physicist (Half-Life)? What about a space pirate? What about a smuggler? Space merchant? Intergalactic circus performer? Bio-enhanced space plumber? Mutated space manta ray?
The great thing about space is that battles can happen anywhere, anytime. It makes zero sense that when battles happen, you (the protagonist) would be even remotely prepared for them. Space is just a big idea bucket. Anything and everything could exist or happen in space, so why do game devs keep using Space Marines?
Counter-question: Why do modern shooters always star military personel?
Me: "2. Your standard FPS foes are required by law to be either A: Aliens, B: Nazis or C: Random guys in generic gray/black army gear."
As you can see, I already touched on that a bit. Personally, I hate that cliche just as much as the Space Marine one. Why couldn't there be a modern FPS where you played a terrified South African native fighting off tribal guerrilla warriors to protect your village? What about a Muay Thai champion who takes on Chinese Mafia in order to save his mother? I'd actually play these games... Maybe.
You didn't play Red Steel, and that was its plot.
And what about the Fps's where you fight mutants? Why do they always get called Aliens?
inu-kun: I'm really starting to get pissed off from the endlessly shown RPG cliches, so I'm making an FPS cliches in order to show that every genre has cliches, my list:
-Either your body weights 100 tons or there is no recoil in the world.
-Your soldier has no family, no friends inside or outside the army and only thinks about is current mission.
-You can be a regular soldier but still know how to operatre an RPG without causing damage to yourself (And also alien weapons).
-Your body can either absorb more bullets than the devil (and we know because he's the last boss) or heal from fatal wounds in 5-6 secons.
-You feel nothing on the battlefield, that includes madness, fear, anxiety and anger.
-You are the only person who can change the outcome of the battle/save the world, even if youre not even special in any way.
-Guns have 0% fail-rate and will not clog or jam, even if it is WW2.
-Same on grenades.
-You can extract a bullet by bandages.
-The minimal amount of people needed to drive a tank, reload it And aim the cannon is 1.
-Oh, did I mention your average regular soldier know how to drive a tank without any training, and quite possibly also an alien vehicle.
-Vehicles are either invincible and under no circumstances get blown, or extremely fragile and blow up in 10 shots of freaking pistol.
-Shooting vehicles will get them blown up despite the fact that it's chemiclly impossible.
-The hell with a giant sword, the array of weapons you can carry on any given time is: pistol, revolver, 2 different machine guns (one strong one with little ammo, the lesser one with more ammo), a shotgun, 2 rifles, a crossbow/sniper rifle, an experimental energy weapon, little bugs who die in 2 minutes after thrown AND 3 types of grenades. This without counting ammo.
Don't make it a debate on cliches in gaming just give your own cliches.
Sorry if this has already been said. But you need to play Operation Flashpoint
- even if you cleared an entire village of whatever-the-hell-you're-fighting, there will always be one to shoot you in the back when you least expect it.
It's great that people are standing up for FPS cliches, the RPG cliches get no love :p
Here's a couple for you: Years of medical training? Not necessary. Health packs are step activated. No matter where you go, no matter where you are. You can always find just the right caliber of bullets lying around. (RE4 was the worst offender, since none of the villagers had any guns, but their houses were fully stocked with ammunition)
ZenMonkey47: It's great that people are standing up for FPS cliches, the RPG cliches get no love :p
Here's a couple for you: Years of medical training? Not necessary. Health packs are step activated. No matter where you go, no matter where you are. You can always find just the right caliber of bullets lying around. (RE4 was the worst offender, since none of the villagers had any guns, but their houses were fully stocked with ammunition)
You need to play you some Urban Chaos. Healing is done by finding medics, walking over dead bodies gives you whatever they were carrying (Molotov Cocktails, Meat Cleavers, etc) and you can zap people with a stun gun whenever you feel like it. Oh, and satire= win.
Speaking of RE4, I've never understood how crows could carry grenades. What, were they hiding 'em up their butts?
inu-kun: -Guns have 0% fail-rate and will not clog or jam, even if it is WW2.
-Same on grenades.
Sorry if I'm a bit late, but does this cliche seriously bother you? If a weapon ever randomly jammed while I was playing, I would break the disc and use the jagged edge to stab the developers.
Half-Life. Question mark isn't even necessary in the slightest.
Yeah it is, Gordon Freeman is the badass space marine good guy. He just happens to be a theoretical physicist instead of a soldier. (which only makes him more badass as he slaughters his enemies with no combat training whatsoever)
That game in which Nazi Germany invades the US is closer to what he's looking for.
searanox: That's actually one of my biggest problems with Call of Duty 4 - its audio mix. You see, weapons in real life are loud. Very loud. They're incredibly sharp cracks that you can physically feel punching your eardrums, they're so noisy. In most games, they don't use realistic gun sounds, but rather things that fit the character of the weapon. However, in Call of Duty 4, they use authentic gunshot noises; if they used them straight, though, then they would be way too loud. Instead, I'm pretty sure they cut out a lot of the peaks in the volume, so there's much less dynamic range overall. This means that while the game can be loud, there's very little variation in that volume in order to reduce listening fatigue. The worst are the voices of your teammates, though. While I understand it's important to hear what they're saying, there's very little audio positioning applied to anything they say, and the volume doesn't change no matter how far away you are from them, so their voices actually sound like they're coming from inside your head. It might not be immediately noticeable, but grab some headphones and you'll see what I mean. It's incredibly strange. All in all, it blends into this really messy sort of murk that lacks any impact for me.
Crysis, by contrast, uses dynamic range incredibly effectively; while its guns are loud, they aren't too loud, and there's enough actual ambient noise to contrast effectively (firing a gunshot outside will produce a convincing echo, not to mention the birds and bugs will stop chirping and stuff for a while after you fire). If someone is talking to you and they're too far away to hear, their voice actually switches over to radio, complete with distortion and other effects processing, all in real time. There's even dynamic music that seamlessly changes depending on what you're doing; wandering around the jungle lets the ambiance take over, sneaking around gets you a tense, Metal Gear-like soundtrack, and action sees it explode into all-out epic instrumentation. Despite this all, the game still never sounds like, well, a game, which is a testament to just how well done its audio is. People like to praise Crysis for its graphics, but its sound design actually deserves equal, if not greater praise.
Anyway, there's my little rant. Yeah, I don't like Call of Duty that much.
I'm with you on what you said and I realize that to most people this is just splitting hairs, but the virtues described in Crysis are owing more to the ingame audio programming than the sound design per say. A sound designer's job begins and ends with making the sound effect(s). The implementation of the sound by way of, for example, an algorithm determining the logarithmic decibal falloff in relation to the XYZ coordinate discrepancy between where the script occurs and the camera's position in the environment is the task of the audio programmer.
Now, sometimes sound designers do both, but there is usually a divison of labor there, perticularly in larger development houses.
Part of what makes truely realistic audio in games very difficult is that unlike the real world, where the is infinite dynamic range of sounds, everything in games has to be mixed to fit within the 0db Unity ceiling, or face distortion. Consequently, spectrally speaking, there can only be so much amplitude in any given range of frequencies, since ultimately no matter how you calculate the volume, in decibals or in a linear value, they will be mathematically summed +. There is no visual equivalent for this... it would be like saying: nope, we can't fit that much RED in at once... you've have to mute these textures *this much* and reduce *x* light source.
So, despite the technicalities of this tangent, I'd say it's of prime importance to have fun and satisfying sounds (though I hate using such subjective terminology). Realism is great, but it should not (ideally) detract from a videogame's experience, which is inherently a form of escapism in which we willingly suspend our disbelief, because we REALLY want to blow that zombie up with the bazooka we found in the air duct. ;)
In case anyone's wondering, I'm a semi-professional sound designer with enough industry experience to know what I'm talking about (one would hope).
Depending on the game engine, one of the following two Clichés will occur:
#1 All weapons, even pellet guns, blow limbs off with such alarming efficiency that it is near impossible for anyone (except the player) to enter a gunfight without spraying bodyparts everywhere.
Or
#2 Nobody ever loses a limb, a digit, a button on their shirt or anything else (except, on occasion, their headgear). This applies if shot, run over, thrown off a cliff or hit with a nuclear bunker-buster.
In theory, a game where you play a not-so-macho geek with no combat training at all would be pretty hilarious. Imagine sneaking up on an enemy with your shotgun, trying to shoot him and have the recoil knock you down. Then you try to run away from the backup only to get a stich and your leg cramps up. As the enemy surrounds you, you lose control over you bladder and cry for mercy as the soldiers laugh at you. Hey, I'd play it. I'd even get the sequel, which is a psychiatric simulator where you have to cure your post traumatic stress disorder.
Seriously though, there's only one FPS cliche that really bugs me, and that's the restrictive level design that's in every single FPS nowadays. You know, where you're in a tight, cramped corridor, one way in, one way out. You shoot enemies, move on. A door is closed, so you go into the only other corridor available and flick a switch, which opens the door... it's like this in 19 out of 20 FPS nowadays. It sort of defeats the purpose of having a 3D game if all the levels play like 2D platformers.
Half-Life. Question mark isn't even necessary in the slightest.
Yeah it is, Gordon Freeman is the badass space marine good guy. He just happens to be a theoretical physicist instead of a soldier. (which only makes him more badass as he slaughters his enemies with no combat training whatsoever)
That game in which Nazi Germany invades the US is closer to what he's looking for.
*loads Half Life*
*selects Hazard Course from the menu*
*completes course*
nope... no fire arms training at all....
Then excuse me for assuming that the first Half-Life had as much sense as the second and allow me to rephrase.
Gordon Freeman is basically the badass space marine in power armor that doesn't say much that all people seem to feel is among the worst FPS cliches. The fact that he is a theoretical physicist is irrelevant as he has power armor, doesn't say anything, and slaughters legions of enemies.
ZenMonkey47: It's great that people are standing up for FPS cliches, the RPG cliches get no love :p)
a) Not only has it been done enough times to wreck Vegeta's Scouter, b) but posting a thread about RPG cliches would result in people in here saying "COPY THREAD!".
- Your side will never take anyone prisoner, even if it's your full squad against one enemy your teammates will shoot to kill without question. - guards cannot remember seeing you 30 seconds after the warning goes off and will continue the pre-planned route as they were ordered no matter how many times they see you sneaking in
I take it you've not played Firearms, have you? You should look it up. It's damage system would be right up your alley.
Now, as for the "cliches" inu listed, many of those examples only pertain to a few games, thus destroying any way for them to actually be considered cliches. I'm not saying first person shooters are free from their fair share of cliched plot devices and gameplay gimmicks, hell they started the whole explosive barrel thing, but they're certainly not the worst in the gaming industry. Let's face it, most rpgs and sports titles especially, are the ones rife with standard, "cliche", mechanics.