How I Used to Kill Bad Guys and Monsters

So, the past few weeks I’ve been playing a lot of old-school first person shooters (Quake, Blood, Doom 2, among others) and I realized something – I discovered just how much first-person shooters games have changed over the years. Naturally, the act of shooting is still the focus of most modern shooters -the genre hasn’t changed that much- but while playing these older games I noticed that recent FPS games have lost their charm. Of course, whether or not shooting a big ugly monster in the head and causing its brains to splatter against the wall is actually charming is debatable, but if you ask me the appeal of shooters goes beyond the shooting itself.

Back in the day, while tossing pipe bombs at Pig Cops in Duke Nukem 3D, I’d hear some sort of cheesy one liner; “your ass, your face, what’s the difference?” Duke would say crazy stuff like that and I’d laugh -even the Pig Cops themselves are a joke. Duke Nukem is best known for its humor, but many other shooters had it too. Shadow Warrior, Redneck Rampage, Serious Sam, and even Blood flashed countless one-liners, Easter Eggs, and immature situations/implications. I used to kill bad guys, monsters, and zombies with a sense of humor, but these days I’m stuck with a bunch of games which take themselves way too seriously.

Shooters have morphed into a collection of wannabe Hollywood blockbusters. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just take a look at the trailer for any upcoming or recently-released first person shooter. What you’ll see is a bunch of nuclear explosions, countless terrorists, and some neat narration going on which highlights a sense of urgency and hopelessness. Either that or a bunch of aliens are invading the earth again, but instead of focusing on the one guy who has to kill them all, the focus is placed on the emotions of the invasion victims (Crysis 2: I’m thinking about you). Honestly, I don’t think anyone gives a damn about how all these fake pixelated people are suffering. People just want to blow **** up, at least I know I want to! So, if you ask me, FPS games have lost their edge. Many old shooters were about emulating the experience of ‘80s action movies, and they did this with great success. They were not about emotions: who has time for crying when you have to kill endless hordes of demons, aliens or whatever? Old shooters were about killing whatever got in your way with no remorse. They were about fun, and you didn’t have to feel any guilt for laughing at all the carnage since you knew it was a videogame -something not meant to be taken seriously.

Speaking of killing whatever gets in my way… I can’t really accomplish this in these new shooters, at least not at the rate I’d prefer. Instead of barreling headfirst into the action, I strangely find myself hiding behind a wall waiting for my health to regenerate for no apparent reason. There are countless debates about what system is more realistic, but I’m not going to get into that – if you get hit by a bunch of bullets a med-kit won’t save you nor will your wounds magically heal; you need to get to the hospital ASAP. There is also an argument claiming health regeneration is tactical since it forces you to take cover, but to this I would counter by saying that you could always find cover without health regen and so it doesn’t really add anything to the experience. Regardless of what you think in terms of realism or tactics I feel that reliance on health-kits can make the shooting more intense compared to a life system which relies on regeneration. There were countless instances in my recent play through of Quake where I found myself at low health, and instead of cowering behind a wall waiting for my health to regenerate I’d feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins as I was forced to blast my way to the next health pack. The challenge of surviving with low health can be intense as it is far more difficult, and so the experience is more exciting than this newfangled regen.

Another thing I noticed while playing through the old FPS games is the ability to carry an entire arsenal of weaponry. For some strange reason, your guy is strong enough to carry rocket launchers, laser blasters, machine guns, and even a Big ****ing Gun simultaneously. Some might say this is “unrealistic,” but really, what’s realistic about a bunch of robotic aliens invading earth? Nothing. I mean, sure, it is possible, but so far we haven’t met any aliens so we exercise our imagination to create these things; likewise, people should use their imagination while playing GAMES, since they are about having fun. And so, they should forgive little inconsistencies such as this.

Perhaps the only downfall to old-school first-person shooters is the level design. My assumption is that hardware was not powerful enough to handle extensive environments and advanced AI. So, instead of playing in large landscapes, the player is typically confined to corridors with a few exceptionally-large areas. In order to create non-linear levels, designers made them extremely complicated and relied on a key-card system for progression. Playing through these levels can be fun, but sometimes it becomes overly-frustrating. The times are countless where I got lost in Blood, Duke Nukem, and even Unreal. Moreover, to compensate for the lack of artificial intelligence in your foes, designers created hordes of them to assault you, whereas modern FPSs rely on the tactics of the AI rather than a pack mentality to challenge the player. However, these attributes are not entirely negative. As I mentioned earlier, playing through these levels can be fun. The fact that there are generally an abundance of “secret places” scattered throughout the area adds some depth and exploration to the experience, and it is a feature that we never see in modern FPS games. Also, I can’t honestly complain about the fact that I have to kill hordes of enemies rather than a few intelligent bad guys.

When speaking of older games the issue of nostalgia always arises. So naturally, I’m sure some of you might be thinking that my recent enjoyment of these older FPS games must be just that. For example, I’ll say Doom is a great game, then someone will follow up by saying “sure, that game was good twenty years ago, but today it doesn’t hold up… just look at the graphics.” If you ask me, this “it’s just nostalgia” criticism is a baseless argument. I say this because, just like great movies, great games can be enjoyed again and again. Sure, the special effects -or in this case, graphics- may be outdated, but as long as they were high-class back in the day, you should still be capable of respecting them for what they were. Another reason why I feel that this “it’s just nostalgia” thing is irrelevant is that when I played Unreal for the first time in 2008, I enjoyed that experience more than any game released that year. You might be thinking that I was “nostalgic” for old-school first person shooters, but I know what nostalgia is and it never lasts for fifteen hours. Nostalgia is when I replayed Syphon Filter 2; I enjoyed it for a while, but eventually I realized how this wasn’t the game I used to love. Each encounter used to feel seamless, but as I played through the game in 2009, everything felt scripted. Sure, I could still beat the game, but I could no longer enjoy it the way I used to when I first played it.

In my opinion, nostalgia results in an unhappy ending, at least when it comes to games. You remember the good times you had playing that game, but soon reality strikes and you find yourself criticizing the experience rather than enjoying it. Games which make you nostalgic were good back then, but they were never great enough to be timeless.

However, I feel that most of the shooters I have reminisced are in fact timeless, and that is why I feel it necessary to create a distinction between nostalgia and true enjoyment. This does not mean that these shooters are without flaw, but it means that I can still legitimately enjoy them to this day without being under the veil of nostalgia.

Not all hope is lost for old-school shooter junkies like me. Although few and far between, there are some games on the horizon which embrace the old school just blow **** up mentality, such as Singularity and Bullet Storm. Singularity is developed by Raven, known for their work on Heretic, Hexen, and Soldier of Fortune, and Bullet Storm which is developed by People Can Fly (Painkiller) with the help of Epic (Unreal, Unreal Tournament). With bloodlines like these, we are guaranteed to get some sort of old school first person shooting experience in the next couple of months. There is also Serious Sam 3, which will be “eventually” released; although little is known about this title, Croteam has embraced the charm of old school first-person shooters with Serious Sam’s cheesy one-liners, “kill everything that moves” gameplay mechanics, all while applying modern level designs with their huge, open levels and gorgeous graphics. So, although I have not been satisfied with many shooters in the past few years, I’m sure there will be something that gets my adrenaline pumping again.