At this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), hundreds of incredible, ground-breaking new titles were shown. Games spanned all platforms including Microsoft’s Xbox 360, the Nintendo Wii, and Sony’s Playstation 3, all unique to gaming in their own way. Games such as Epic Mickey introduce gamers into an unknown and imagination-laced world, while Portal 2 promises to once again blow the minds of everyone who tries their hand at the insanity. But despite titles like these, there were a few not so surprising stars of the show, and they just so happened to be holding automatic weapons.
Everyone loves a good FPS. There is no arguing the satisfying smush a bullet makes when lodging itself into the head of a zombie, and needless to say, taking down terrorists in this day and age has become quite popular. Through the years we’ve launched grenades in Nazi Germany, Mars, and even in the shoes of James Bond. Gamers have gone from cargo boots to full body shields and everything in between. Plasma rifles and Carbines have replaced sugar plums as the star of children’s dreams, and images of little green men have been replaced by hordes of drooling minions and waves of Nazis. I am officially bored.
E3 was quite fantastic this year. There were plenty of innovative games, exciting announcements, and all around awesome titles. In the end, however, I was left depressed. A few of the favorites of the show had me quite confused. While id Software’s new title Rage seemed to truly push the boundaries of what an FPS should be, games like Call of Duty: Black Ops still ruled the stage. I’m going to get blasted for this, I’m sure, but I am sick of Call of Duty. I’m not sick of the game itself, but what I am sick of is its dilution of first person shooters.
Every single game wants to be the new Call of Duty, right? Oh, I’m sorry. I’m clearly forgetting the new installation of the Medal of Honor series. Why is it different, you might ask? Well, obviously because the game (in which you play as a “modern soldier” in a middle east setting) is about “authenticity and respect for the soldiers,” according to the game’s executive producer Greg Goodrich. It should be noted that he said this while a demo of his game was playing behind him. The scene: a soldier strafing in between cars shooting an RPG at a group of terrorists who were showering him with flashbang grenades and jumping like an ADD child on red bull. Authentic.
Please don’t assume that I’m just picking on the games set with realistic weapons in a quasi-middle east setting. I would, however, like to remind these producers of what happened to games based in World War 2. Everyone got sick of them, and stopped buying them. Just saying. Let’s run through some of the other first person shooters at the conference, and see where a glimmer of hope may be.
Bulletstorm looked cool, but its innovation? You’re encouraged to kick guys (It’s completely different than the melee in most games!), and then shoot them in mid air. Yawn.
Crysis 2 and Killzone 3 are clearly technological achievements, and should be commended for their efforts. In reality, though, how have they changed the gaming landscape? What innovation does it create in the world of first person shooters? 3D does nothing but add another layer of “pretty” to the aesthetically pleasing blandness. And jet packs.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is going to be (let’s be serious) another excuse to throw the Tom Clancy name on the same game, only with a different, shinier setting. And people will buy it.
Halo: Reach is another Halo game. Woohoo.
I’m not suggesting that the FPS genre should leave the world of gaming, or even that there should be any less of them. All I’m asking, begging, of producers is to dare to be a little different. Stop making the same game. Stop doing to my first person shooters what you did to my Madden (Finally, EA seems to be learning their lesson and making each new game more than a roster update, and it’s clearly yielding success). The only way it can change is if we do to these games what we did to the thousands of World War 2 games. Quit buying them. Stop buying the same game every four months. Please. So the next time you find yourself staring down the barrel of your weapon of choice, ask yourself: haven’t I already done this?
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Watch out.
The difference is gonna come in their motion compatibility like the new SOCOM, instead of difference in battle mechanics and story.