alexdakid6:

Grimm91:
People say that and I don't know why. To me it was hard but not revolutionary in any way.

Three things: 1) Weapon design and balance (besides the damned pistol, everything allowed for a great deal of).

2) AI- not since Half-Life's marines had there been such an engaging computer control enemy to fight in the Covenant (especially Elites).

3)The regenerative health system.

Weapon design blew, and was very unbalanced. I can kill you with a shotgun from 30 feet away
and a sniper was God who rained unmerciful death. The regenerative health system has tainted the genre making the games far too easy. Lastly The Elites were not that smart or even fun to fight. They just kinda ran after you and grunted yelling "I'm going to kill you". Besides if they could not even comprehend that I was behind a wall lobbing grenades they were not very engaging.

raxiv:

Grimm91:

l Ancient l:
Halo 1 was definitly revolutionary, it completely changed FPS`s forever

People say that and I don't know why. To me it was hard but not revolutionary in any way.

Me neither. It's a standard SHOOT EVERYONE ON YOUR WAY Fps. And yes, You always go the way where the enemies appear.

It also proved that FPS's could be done well on a console, started the whole "You can only carry two weapons" and "You don't need to select your melee weapon to thwack something, you just thwack it" thing. There's also the cool, mysterious storyline, sensible regenerating health system, and vehicle sections that are actually fun.

Personally, I'd suggest Marathon. First game to ever allow dual-wielding, have a story on par with something along the lines of House Of Leaves, very interesting literary references, and mysteries that were, well, mysterious.

And while yes, it's a "Here be enemies, kill they ass until you get to level exit, stopping only to get ammo, use a recharger, or solve a puzzle/complete an objective", that's what a lot of FPS are like.

blackcherry:
Doom and Wolfenstein. They were the first to get massive recognition and kick start interest in the genre.

This!

zen5887:

blackcherry:
Doom and Wolfenstein. They were the first to get massive recognition and kick start interest in the genre.

This!

True!

And even if Halo started the kill everything part, why do we celebrate that...it seems kinda "mediocre" to me.

zen5887:

blackcherry:
Doom and Wolfenstein. They were the first to get massive recognition and kick start interest in the genre.

This!

only problem is that they were the first technical FPSs created though

alexdakid6:

Grimm91:
People say that and I don't know why. To me it was hard but not revolutionary in any way.

Three things: 1) Weapon design and balance (besides the damned pistol, everything allowed for a great deal of combat variety).

2) AI- not since Half-Life's marines had there been such an engaging computer control enemy to fight in the Covenant (especially Elites).

3)The regenerative health system.

the regenerative health system wasn't 'revolutionary' it was in-fact ripped off from Jurassic Park: Trespasser. But I guess only someone that bought that underrated game (that tried too many new things) would know that.

EDIT: And can someone explain to me why a guy thinks Halo revolutionized 'kill everything in sight'? the first two FPS's ever made (Wolfenstien and Doom) were nothing BUT that. Not to mention every single FPS made from then until Rainbow Six games came along actually changed that.

meatloaf231:
Actually, the fact that they could be called RPGs or shooters is precisely why they are innovative. They didn't stick to the formula.

Yes, but what school of thought does that innovation apply to? Is it an innovative RPG or an innovative FPS? Is it either?

When I think 'shooter' I think 'action-game' along side it. Neither Deus Ex or System Shock we focused on innovating on action tropes, they amalgamated a first person viewpoint and hybrid (because shooting relied on stats) combat systems into the context of a roleplaying game.

A first person shooter is more than just the viewpoint or the number of guns it offers- the depth of combat mechanics (weapon balance, movement rules, etc.) are what make a straight shooter innovative. Deus Ex's and System Shock's shooting mechanics are even simpler than 'rock-paper-siscors'ideas- in DX all you do is aim and shoot with different weapons fitting in to traditional FPS conventions (melee, rocket launchers, pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles)
No alternate firing modes, and the damage boxes are simple. Headshot means instant death.
Innovative FPS mechanics from an action standpoint? Nope. In the wider context of the game it's just one of the pieces that make it interesting, but it isn't necessarily great by itself.

alexdakid6:

meatloaf231:
Actually, the fact that they could be called RPGs or shooters is precisely why they are innovative. They didn't stick to the formula.

Yes, but what school of thought does that innovation apply to? Is it an innovative RPG or an innovative FPS? Is it either?

When I think 'shooter' I think 'action-game' along side it. Neither Deus Ex or System Shock we focused on innovating on action tropes, they amalgamated a first person viewpoint and hybrid (because shooting relied on stats) combat systems into the context of a roleplaying game.

A first person shooter is more than just the viewpoint or the number of guns it offers- the depth of combat mechanics (weapon balance, movement rules, etc.) are what make a straight shooter innovative. Deus Ex's and System Shock's shooting mechanics are even simpler than 'rock-paper-siscors'ideas- in DX all you do is aim and shoot with different weapons fitting in to traditional FPS conventions (melee, rocket launchers, pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles)
No alternate firing modes, and the damage boxes are simple. Headshot means instant death.
Innovative FPS mechanics from an action standpoint? Nope. In the wider context of the game it's just one of the pieces that make it interesting, but it isn't necessarily great by itself.

Conceded. I suppose my idea of innovation for FPS differs from yours. Mine is simply "an FPS that is innovative." It doesn't have to have wonderful, complex, detailed shooter-bits, it just has to be innovative. Yours seems to be "an FPS that innovates in FPS categories."

Honestly I'd say your arguments make more sense than mine.

Syphonz:
the regenerative health system wasn't 'revolutionary' it was in-fact ripped off from Jurassic Park: Trespasser. But I guess only someone that bought that underrated game (that tried too many new things) would know that.

So you have nothing to say to the other two points? OK.

Tresspasser- ah yes. Poor thing. The fact that the player had to stare at their avatar's enormous boobs to check their health had nothing to do with the failure of this concept in said game? Not to mention the bugs, horrific performance and bizarre interaction issues (the 'Rubber Arm')?

alexdakid6:

Grimm91:
People say that and I don't know why. To me it was hard but not revolutionary in any way.

Three things: 1) Weapon design and balance (besides the damned pistol, everything allowed for a great deal of combat variety).

2) AI- not since Half-Life's marines had there been such an engaging computer control enemy to fight in the Covenant (especially Elites).

3)The regenerative health system.

It also featured vehicles that actually controoled well, as well as an easy-to-use interface and relatively precise controls as far as console shooters went. The way the grenades functioned was also refreshing, though I wouldn't call that aspect innovative so much as pleasant.

Im going to say halo 1 but Ive been shot for that before. Reasons I think it is original being.
-The mix or regenerating shields and normal med-pack style health. Here we had one of the first regenerating health bars but it made sense and you still had a health bar that followed the normal rules.

-Mapping of grenade, shoot and punch to three different buttons. I know it doesnt sound like much, but it gave the game much better "flow". Kind of hard to describe, but it fits the game very well.

-Also the controls actually worked well for the console. Sure it ran at slow speed, but you could still do awesome stuff and there was always lots of things going on at the screen. The maps were pretty big for a console game that time btw, and had impressive lighting and shadow effects.

-Only being able to carry two weapons, and how they managed to make it so that players didnt always carry the same weapon (read next line).

-Every weapon being balanced and good at something and bad at something else. In other shooters one would just use the best weapon until one would use up the ammo and then use the strongest after that. Here we had these weapons:

- Grenades that are easy to see and avoid for once 1, only downside is that the splashdamage is so high that it will often take out your human friends even though they dodged it and stand two meters away. You can of course stuck with the plasma. Perfect usage is to stuck a grunt who will run in panic at his friends screaming at them to take it off. Also you can trigger detonations if there lies some already on the ground when you throw.

- A fantastic AI that makes the game extremely replayable. Its not so much that the enemy are incredibly clever, its that its varied. Another thing that helps the replayability is that the enemy respans change everytime you die. You never know when a flood person will come holding a rocket launcher in your face.

- Perfect implementation of checkpoint system. 1

- Original Wehicles. And you were never forced to use a specific wehicle in a level (except when you had to fly). Also this was great in coop.

- Original soundtrack: Who would have thought that river dance music would fit in an epic sci-fi shooter? Not to mention the songs that play when you fight the flood. The song probably is only made of drum-sounds and an alarm-clock. 1

- Thousands of recorded audio clips for both the enemy and the humans, so that they will say something appropriately for every occasion (jump of with a warthong and the humas will go "wo-hooo", jump of a cliff and they will go "idiot!". 1

- No invisible walls at all. You could do a lot of fun stuff, but you still didnt "break the game". 1

- An refreshing change of how you'd play. Because of the regeneration system you could be rambo for a little while, but when your shield is down you have to take cover. And the elites is actually so smart that they try to hunt you down then So you have this sort of cat and mouse gameplay, where you are the role changes constantly. Of course you cant complain about the difficulty if you havent tried the harder difficulty settings. The difficulty settings is very nicely done. As you ramp up the difficulty, you will have more enemies, be weaker and do weaker damage, and the enemy behavior will actually change (for example the grunts will throw a lot more grenades). Also the enemies would run and shoot at the same time... I found half life (1 at least, not 2, even though I liked 2 better overall) to be pretty challenging, but the enemy AI was pretty bland. They swat team your battling would often run against you when you're firing at them, and start to shoot only when they have stopped running and have already sucked up quite a few bullets. But I guess other games were better at this.

1 means not necessarily revolutionary.

Other than that I would say that Oddworld: strangers wrath had some really cool and refreshing gameplay elements, but then again it was both a third person action game and an fps.

When it comes to the cinematic experience I would say half life were pretty revolutionary.
When it comes to great story telling, atmosphere and presentation I would say half life 2.
Also I would mention max payne for its awesome slow motion and great graphics.

edit: sorry for writing bad its late, and I realize much I wrote was pretty unnecessary to put up here. W/E

alexdakid6:
you have nothing to say to the other two points? OK.

Nope, the I found the AI quite decent at the time. And weapon balance, well, other than Halo, I can't even name that many games that had good weapon balance to begin with. And Let's not get started on BF2... PKM = 100 clip sized sniper rifle.

I say the original System Shock for the ability to fly in the cyberspace stages and the addition of an inventory screen.

Grimm91:
Weapon design blew, and was very unbalanced. I can kill you with a shotgun from 30 feet away and a sniper was God who rained unmerciful death. The regenerative health system has tainted the genre making the games far too easy. Lastly The Elites were not that smart or even fun to fight. They just kinda ran after you and grunted yelling "I'm going to kill you". Besides if they could not even comprehend that I was behind a wall lobbing grenades they were not very engaging.

Sure.

Played it on legendary? Nope? Yes?

Take a close look next time-

The weapon balance sucked yes, IN MULTIPLAYER.
In the context of the single player game it worked effectively in the mode of all other linear shooters that had come before it- the player is facing of against multiple adversaries at all times, and as such the advantage in numbers concedes that the design must allow something for players to make up for this- wide open spaces with high perches incidentally have Sniper rifles placed conveniently nearby, but the player can't take out all the approaching enemies so has to be economic and precise with his shots. The rocky hills part in the first game typifies this best- the situation changes once the enemies move into the covered position in between rocks in the hills. The battle changes to a close quarter once the remaining foes move into the hills near the player's position- AND THE WEAPON BALANCE SUPPORTS THIS CONTEXT.

I can understand how one would be frustrated in the context of blood gulch.
But fuck multiplayer.

tsaweeos:
Half-Life. It pretty much recreated the FPS genre and is one of the most respected first-person shooters ever.

I would completely agree. Doom and Quake laid a lot of things out for the PC FPS experience, but Half-Life is what really set FPS on fire. To date it still holds the record for the most copies of a PC FPS ever sold (Behind only The Sims, L2, Sims2, Starcraft, and WoW) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games#PC

Halo did introduce some pretty awesome innovations (correct me if I'm wrong) like the limited supply of weapons, each of which was useful, the seamless integration of Vehicles and normal FPS gameplay and the recharging health/shield system were all pretty clever innovations at the time. And believe me, I'm no Fanboy, I had to think pretty hard about this.

Half Life was more innovative from a storytelling and straight game design standpoint. The actual "gameplay" was pretty standard though it was all utilized very well.

Good point Pedro-

An interesting thought- to what extent can level design be considered part of the gameplay?
The MacGuyver-esque boss battles are good example of this. The design of the 'levels' forced the player to use conventional tools in unusual ways in familar situations (blast pit).

Syphonz:
And Let's not get started on BF2... PKM = 100 clip sized sniper rifle.

Oh god, don't remind me...

Gormers1:
Im going to say halo 1 but Ive been shot for that before. Reasons I think it is original being.
-The mix or regenerating shields and normal med-pack style health. Here we had one of the first regenerating health bars but it made sense and you still had a health bar that followed the normal rules.

-Mapping of grenade, shoot and punch to three different buttons. I know it doesnt sound like much, but it gave the game much better "flow". Kind of hard to describe, but it fits the game very well.

-Also the controls actually worked well for the console. Sure it ran at slow speed, but you could still do awesome stuff and there was always lots of things going on at the screen. The maps were pretty big for a console game that time btw, and had impressive lighting and shadow effects.

-Only being able to carry two weapons, and how they managed to make it so that players didnt always carry the same weapon (read next line).

-Every weapon being balanced and good at something and bad at something else. In other shooters one would just use the best weapon until one would use up the ammo and then use the strongest after that. Here we had these weapons:

Spoiler: Click to View

- Grenades that are easy to see and avoid for once 1, only downside is that the splashdamage is so high that it will often take out your human friends even though they dodged it and stand two meters away. You can of course stuck with the plasma. Perfect usage is to stuck a grunt who will run in panic at his friends screaming at them to take it off. Also you can trigger detonations if there lies some already on the ground when you throw.

- A fantastic AI that makes the game extremely replayable. Its so much that the enemy are incredibly clever, its that its varied. Another thing that helps the replayability is that the enemy respans change everytime you die. You never know when a flood person will come holding a rocket launcher in your face.

- Perfect implementation of checkpoint system. 1

- Original Wehicles. And you were never forced to use a specific wehicle in a level (except when you had to fly). Also this was great in coop.

- Original soundtrack: Who would have thought that river dance music would fit in an epic sci-fi shooter? Not to mention the songs that play when you fight the flood. The song probably is only made of drum-sounds and an alarm-clock. 1

- Thousands of recorded audio clips for both the enemy and the humans, so that they will say something appropriately for every occasion (jump of with a warthong and the humas will go "wo-hooo", jump of a cliff and they will go "idiot!". 1

- No invisible walls at all. You could do a lot of fun stuff, but you still didnt "break the game". 1

- An refreshing change of how you'd play. Because of the regeneration system you could be rambo for a little while, but when your shield is down you have to take cover. And the elites is actually so smart that they try to hunt you down then So you have this sort of cat and mouse gameplay, where you are the role changes constantly. Of course you cant complain about the difficulty if you havent tried the harder difficulty settings. The difficulty settings is very nicely done. As you ramp up the difficulty, you will have more enemies, be weaker and do weaker damage, and the enemy behavior will actually change (for example the grunts will throw a lot more grenades). Also the enemies would run and shoot at the same time... I found half life (1 at least, not 2, even though I liked 2 better overall) to be pretty challenging, but the enemy AI was pretty bland. They swat team your battling would often run against you when you're firing at them, and start to shoot only when they have stopped running and have already sucked up quite a few bullets. But I guess other games were better at this.

1 means not necessarily revolutionary.

Other than that I would say that Oddworld: strangers wrath had some really cool and refreshing gameplay elements, but then again it was both a third person action game and an fps.

When it comes to the cinematic experience I would say half life were pretty revolutionary.
When it comes to great story telling, atmosphere and presentation I would say half life 2.
Also I would mention max payne for its awesome slow motion and great graphics.

edit: sorry for writing bad its late, and I realize much I wrote was pretty unnecessary to put up here. W/E

Excellent analysis.

Maze War invented it, Wolfenstein furthered it, Doom popularized it, Duke Nukem satirised it, Quake made it prettier, Goldeneye brought it to TV's everywhere, Rainbow Six brought in tactics, Half Life told a story, Halo further perfected many elements (including vehicles), Portal added puzzles, and Mirrors Edge stylized the whole thing. It's hard to say which is most innovative really, I suppose I'd say Doom, because without that, who knows where we'd be now?

innovative

adjective
1. ahead of the times; had advanced views on the subject
2. being or producing something like nothing done or experienced or created before

I think there are some people who don't know what innovative means.

l Ancient l:

raxiv:

Grimm91:

l Ancient l:
Halo 1 was definitly revolutionary, it completely changed FPS`s forever

People say that and I don't know why. To me it was hard but not revolutionary in any way.

Me neither. It's a standard SHOOT EVERYONE ON YOUR WAY Fps. And yes, You always go the way where the enemies appear.

halo 1 pretty much started that

You are not very old, are you?

I played games almost identical to Halo, but with a bit more dated graphics 5 or even 10 years before Halo was released. It wasn't revolutionary, or innovative in any way. It was a success, that's all it has going for it. Everything in Halo has been done before, and most likely better, but those games just weren't as well known or as well recieved.

alexdakid6:
Good point Pedro-

An interesting thought- to what extent can level design be considered part of the gameplay?
The MacGuyver-esque boss battles are good example of this. The design of the 'levels' forced the player to use conventional tools in unusual ways in familar situations (blast pit).

That's a good point to make about Half Life and is definitely in it's favor towards "most innovative". I forgot how "problem solving" oriented most of the action and gameplay was in both Half Life 1 and 2.

Half Life introduces innovative Game Design and associated Gameplay whereas Halo introduced innovative mechanics.

I KNOW
COUNTER STRIKE KEKEKEKEE
KOREAN HEAVEN
but seriously i hate FPS's

Hmm...Don't suppose Portal counts hu?

Actually, Valve make a really great job of making every game as different and intresting as possible. Half-Life 2 with the gravity gun, TF2 with the graphics, L4D with co-op that actually matters.

Silver:

l Ancient l:

raxiv:

Grimm91:

l Ancient l:
Halo 1 was definitly revolutionary, it completely changed FPS`s forever

People say that and I don't know why. To me it was hard but not revolutionary in any way.

Me neither. It's a standard SHOOT EVERYONE ON YOUR WAY Fps. And yes, You always go the way where the enemies appear.

halo 1 pretty much started that

You are not very old, are you?

I played games almost identical to Halo, but with a bit more dated graphics 5 or even 10 years before Halo was released. It wasn't revolutionary, or innovative in any way. It was a success, that's all it has going for it. Everything in Halo has been done before, and most likely better, but those games just weren't as well known or as well recieved.

i didnt mean it was the first to do it but made it very popular and made people more aware of it

Uncompetative:

Gormers1:
SNIP*

Excellent analysis.

Y thank you.

Wolfenstein 3D basically innovated FPS's. Doom took the genre to a whole new level, and basically invented LAN gaming.

Timesplitters. Lots of laughs, huge variety of weapons (the injector was, until recently replaced by the MIRV from Fallout, my favorite videogame weapon ever), tons of maps and characters, a great mapmaker on a console that allowed you to make objective-based missions AND multiplayer maps, lots of fun single player content via challenges and a story mode that pokes fun at movies and games of all kinds, and the great fun of multiplayer with bots.

Give me a game made earlier that does all that.

I'll quietly add Hexen (character classes!) and Heretic to the list.

I would say Metroid Prime was pretty innovative, though I have yet to play it so don't take my word for it.

The original Thief game was pretty innovative, though it kind of broke off and created the first person sneaker genre.

Fanboy:
I would say Metroid Prime was pretty innovative, though I have yet to play it so don't take my word for it.

Havent played either but I think a agree with you.

Half-Life 2

If we're gonna count FPAdventure games like Prime, then I have to say, despite the execution being a bit linear..sadly, Geist.

Really, my only real complaints with Geist are its linearity, the controls (GC exclusive), and lack of online multiplayer.

The whole possession aspect was a fun idea, and had a lot of potential, which is why it's a damn shame that the game was so linear with its puzzles, you don't really get to experiment, there's only 1 way to go about doing things. The multiplayer was also really fun, and again the possession gimmick really made it something different. They took the standard deathmatch and managed to give it an interesting twist, host bodies scattered around each with their own weapon, you possess the one you want to use, and can depossess him at any time, but if the body is killed within a certain amount of time after you leave it, it counts as a kill for your opponent. Or the various objects you could posses, from exploding crates you could take control of and wait for someone to cross you and detonate, or the ability to possess a guided missle, or even animals you could use to access secret areas. Then you have things like Host vs Ghost where the ghosts had to possess a human host and try and force them into various death traps, whilst the hosts would fight against the possession and had anti-ghost weaponry designed to kill you. A damn shame it didn't have online.