Realistic shooters... what's the appeal?

[Penguin FTW]

As for halo itself, it did more than any other game did to encourage the "who cares about aim, just use something that explodes" style of gameplay.

This is so backwards, in Halo you actually have to follow somebody and keep a steady aim because you don't kill them instantly. In Call of Duty/Battlefield I can run around with a gun that has 120 bullets in a magazine, and it takes like 4 bullets to kill someone.

[kckttk]

why i play it is the fallowing, they are more fun playing then arcade-ish type of games such as black ops or mw2 when u can run and gun a whole team if you are lucky, while in bf2 its harder and the maps are huge compared to bo, i wont even put halo in to this arguement since i find it a joke

[Laughriot]

And how is getting the occasional headshot not luck? The point is over time, over the course of a game or a week or whatever period of time you care to look at, consistancy and all that. Faster reflexes are indeed a skill, but they're not the only ones. You act as though the only thing that can ever constitute "skill" is tracking some hyped up kid that's bunnyhopping all over the place, which I find amusing considering that's where you're most likely to run into latency issues actually interfering.

Anyhoo, if you're getting one-hit kills on extremity shots in call of duty games, perhaps you should stop playing hardcore mode with high calibur weapons, since that's about the only way it's gonna happen.

As for halo itself, it did more than any other game did to encourage the "who cares about aim, just use something that explodes" style of gameplay. Also, look at every game made these days. How are the maps designed? Small enclosed arenas. This in itself does a lot to stifle the approach of simply outmaneuvering an opponent, with the only games getting anywhere close being the battlefield games. If you say halo is what caused most of the games these days to turn into twitch shooting galleries with no tactics and no skill, perhaps you should rethink my opinion that it's the worst thing to ever happen to the fps genre.

And, for all of your mentioning of different things you consider skillful, you are still, in essence, acting like being able to squeeze a trigger twice and get a kill on someone as long as you can point your gun in their general direction is what you consider skill.

I'm going to return to my earlier comparison to WoW PvP. CoD is 85 PvP where both people are in raid gear. The first person to get their abilities off wins, pretty much regardless. The Halo games (yes, all the way back to the original) are like WoW PvP where both people are stacked with resilience. A rogue might completely surprise you, and you still have the ability to recover and turn the encounter into a win because at max level, with resilience in the mix, the rogue is unlikely to score a kill simply because he got the drop on you.

I won't argue with you about whether or not reflexes are a skill. I don't see how you can say they are, but again, I defer to your right to have an opinion. That being said... do you honestly believe that maintaining aim on a fast-moving target isn't the definition of FPS skill? I don't even know how to respond to that. Was Goldeneye 64 with License to Kill enabled skill, in your opinion? The first person who squeezed the trigger won, every time.

You still haven't even come close to defending your assertion about Halo establishing the "who cares about aim?" style of gameplay. As I said, headshots are infinitely more important in Halo because of the comparative durability of the toons. I've played games against people who repeatedly one-shotted me with a pistol because they took my shield off with a charged plasma and then headshotted me on the first try. That's not random. That's careful aim, and it requires skill. As for your point about grenades... the explosives on CoD have a FAR larger kill radius than the grenades from any of the Halo games, and if they don't automatically kill you, they snare you, blur your screen, and leave you a sitting duck. How exactly is it not preferable to use "something that explodes" in these games, to an even greater extent than the Halos?

Small maps...? Every Halo game has had a double fistful of tiny maps. Outmaneuvering your opponent was still an extremely necessary skill.

Lastly, about the "twitch shooting galleries with no tactics and no skill" comment... that's exactly what I feel the CoD games are. Which is why I started this post asking what the appeal of them is.

[Zeta333]

ahahahaha no

Have to agree, he knows nothing about how halo was played at higher levels. Go back in time play halo 2 with the everyday kids and baddies from work, then go into the high tier MLG games and Gamebattles scene and its not even close to the same game.

[Event Horizon]

I play my single player games with as much realism as possible, hardcore mode etc because it adds to the emersion of the game. Multiplayer I like going all Rambo style, taking as much damage as I can while jumping around like an idiot. How I miss the days of rocket jumping in TF 1

It's all about what you find fun in the end

[Blznsmri]

I've always preferred the Halo series over twitch shooters because it's not "who pulls the trigger first" (unless you're playing swat, shotty's or snipers).

[Kwickslash]

All I remember from Halo 3 was;

Step 1. Charge at each other.
Step 2. Unload entire assualt rifle clip into each other whilst charging.
Step 3. Finish with bash, hope that you hit first.

OP. I think you need to watch a truly skilled person play COD. It's one of those easy to play, hard to master games.

On an off note, Reach was a damn side better than Halo 3 in MP.

Also, are you comparing the console versions of COD or the PC version? Console versions suck.

[Laughriot]

Have to agree, he knows nothing about how halo was played at higher levels. Go back in time play halo 2 with the everyday kids and baddies from work, then go into the high tier MLG games and Gamebattles scene and its not even close to the same game.

Even at lower levels, he doesn't seem to know what he's talking about. You stopped running into "spray and pray" baddies at like... what, rank 6 or 7, on Halo 2? I remember playing Team Slayer in the high 20s and low 30s, and every single person you ran into was headshotting you more often than not, and knew every map like the back of their hand. The number of times I got Plasma/BR combo'd to death in one burst from far enough away that I didn't even see the person ahead of time was... staggering...

---------- Post added 2011-06-20 at 02:41 AM ----------

All I remember from Halo 3 was;

Step 1. Charge at each other.
Step 2. Unload entire assualt rifle clip into each other whilst charging.
Step 3. Finish with bash, hope that you hit first.

OP. I think you need to watch a truly skilled person play COD. It's one of those easy to play, hard to master games.

On an off note, Reach was a damn side better than Halo 3 in MP.

Also, are you comparing the console versions of COD or the PC version? Console versions suck.

1. Yep, console. The last few years, I've only played console shooters because the only time I have people to play with, it is a room full of people with a 360. I don't doubt that the PC versions are better.

2. I mean absolutely no offense, but the way you describe Halo 3 is the reason why I said that my initial gut reaction to Black Ops was that it was a shooter designed for people who were bad at shooters. What I should have said is "people who were bad at Halo" because that would have probably been more accurate.

[Magellann]

I play WoW to escape, I play CoD to enjoy shooting at people without the real world consequences of felony charges. Catharsis, if you will.

[Zeta333]

All I remember from Halo 3 was;

Step 1. Charge at each other.
Step 2. Unload entire assualt rifle clip into each other whilst charging.
Step 3. Finish with bash, hope that you hit first.

OP. I think you need to watch a truly skilled person play COD. It's one of those easy to play, hard to master games.

On an off note, Reach was a damn side better than Halo 3 in MP.

Also, are you comparing the console versions of COD or the PC version? Console versions suck.

Halo 3's MP didnt have shit on Halo 2's. The Halo MP experience has been in decline since 2. They keep trying to add things but all they do is get further from the core of what made it awsome.

[Laughriot]

Halo 3's MP didnt have shit on Halo 2's. The Halo MP experience has been in decline since 2. They keep trying to add things but all they do is get further from the core of what made it awsome.

I can agree with this. As much as I ***LOVED*** that ridiculous hammer from Halo 3, the stupid power ups (bubble shields, the chafe bomb thing that knocked off the other person's energy shield, I think there was a flare in there) really hurt it for me. I also disliked the insanely pointless vehicles they added, like the mongoose and... whatever the thing was called that had the two huge grinding wheels on the front, and looked like an over-sized speeder bike from Star Wars.

I was quite a Halo 2 multiplayer aficionado. I enjoyed Halo 3's multiplayer experience, but... I honestly didn't give the game a lot of love after I beat the campaign mode.

[Blznsmri]

whatever the thing was called that had the two huge grinding wheels on the front, and looked like an over-sized speeder bike from Star Wars.

Chopper and I fucking loved it in big team battles.

[Laughriot]

Chopper and I fucking loved it in big team battles.

It was just such a pain to control... and the guns did so little damage, I found myself using it to ram other vehicles (which it was surprisingly effective at) instead of shooting at things, a lot of the time.

[Britannia]

2. I mean absolutely no offense, but the way you describe Halo 3 is the reason why I said that my initial gut reaction to Black Ops was that it was a shooter designed for people who were bad at shooters. What I should have said is "people who were bad at Halo" because that would have probably been more accurate.

By that argument though, could you not say Halo was designed for people who were bad at shooters? Counter Strike took a hell of a lot more skill than Halo did, at both lower and professional skill levels.
Admittedly, I've never played Reach, so perhaps the MP did improve with that release, but I can't see the skill requirement being that much higher than it's predecessors.

[Kwickslash]

1. Yep, console. The last few years, I've only played console shooters because the only time I have people to play with, it is a room full of people with a 360. I don't doubt that the PC versions are better.

2. I mean absolutely no offense, but the way you describe Halo 3 is the reason why I said that my initial gut reaction to Black Ops was that it was a shooter designed for people who were bad at shooters. What I should have said is "people who were bad at Halo" because that would have probably been more accurate.

Ah, I see. I'm a PC shooter gamer so I suck at console shooters (Though I was alright at Reach for some reason :S). The only time I buy shooters on my Xbox is when my friends own it and are going to play it at an upcoming LAN party. I've also played CoD4 and (own *shudder*) MW2 on Xbox and couldn't stand them. I would agree that there is more skill in Reach compared to the CoD series on consoles.

[Penguin FTW]

It was just such a pain to control... and the guns did so little damage, I found myself using it to ram other vehicles (which it was surprisingly effective at) instead of shooting at things, a lot of the time.

>.<

It's not surprisingly effective, that was the entire point of the vehicle lol

[Laughriot]

By that argument though, could you not say Halo was designed for people who were bad at shooters? Counter Strike took a hell of a lot more skill than Halo did, at both lower and professional skill levels.
Admittedly, I've never played Reach, so perhaps the MP did improve with that release, but I can't see the skill requirement being that much higher than it's predecessors.

I'm not even going to pretend to speak about Counterstrike. I played so little of it that it could hardly be said I played it. I picked it up from the video game store I worked at because some friends of mine wanted to LAN it up (I believe it was on the old Xbox) and we played it for a few hours. It seemed like a fun game, but I tend to make kneejerk negative judgments about FPS games that allow players to earn perks for advantages. I'm not even really okay with having a PvP advantage because of gear in completely gear-based games, although I understand it because the game is completely gear-based. FPS games are where I go when I want my own input to be what allows me to kill or be killed. Because of that, I never invested any real time into online Counterstrike.

---------- Post added 2011-06-20 at 03:02 AM ----------

>.<

It's not surprisingly effective, that was the entire point of the vehicle lol

Eh, poorly worded on my part :P I just meant that it was really good for that, and... not much else...

[The Ogdru Jahad]

I define skill as being able to get the drop on someone before they know you're there to begin with. Superior positioning, predicting where the enemy will go, using terrain, vantage points, etc etc etc. How does getting off the first shot and losing a fight anyway require more skill?

For clarity's sake, halo is terrible and the entire franchise as a whole is the worst thing to ever happen to fps gaming, and in fact helped bring in the age of "spray and pray, or just use explosives, who cares about skill" gaming.

I hope this is a joke. You do realize Halo ushered in and was the ENTIRE reason the xbox itself became so popular...FPS games became so popular...VIDEOGAMES became so popular on consoles. I would honestly say, because of Halo video gaming has gotten to the point of where it is. The only thing cod contributed to FPS gaming was "perks" and build your own class loadouts...nothing special.

[PBitt]

Well, when an FPS is well made, they are easy (for me at least) to get really involved in to the point where you actually feel like you are there (talking about single player, for the record). Both CoD 2 and Modern Warfare 1 gave me this feeling, at least at times, as have a few other shooters but I don't buy a new game every other week like most gamers seem to. And playing them on veteran also makes it more realistic and forces you to be 100% aware of your surroundings vs going in there like Rambo which you can't do IRL, as if you get shot at for more than a second in veteran mode you are dead as hell which is indeed 'fairly' realistic. The newest installments are not as good because they focus on mainstream/mutiplayer...which I don't really like in CoD because there are too many ways to cheesily kill people...helicopters, air strikes, etc.

I always enjoyed Halo more for the vehicles and creative maps than anything else...the combat is not my favorite and doesn't feel very fluid in some situations, so I can see why people wouldn't like it too much.

[Thunderbleem]

First, both Halo and CoD are, imo, terrible. Battlefield Bad Company 2, however, is awesome.

As for the OP: What you say of others as being opinion that you see as "clearly wrong," I say the same to you. To say that CoD or BF or whatever don't require skill is silly. A lot of skill? Perhaps not. I don't think any FPS really does. Once you learn the maps, learn how to use each gun properly, there's not much room for extra skill. Except for reflexes and situational awareness. Imo, reflexes and situational awareness are two of the most important skill factors in any PvP game. If, say, Bad Company takes no skill to play, why am I usually so far and away ahead of everyone else in the game in terms of kills, kill/death ration, and/or score? Am I just getting lucky most of the time? It's really not any different from Halo. If you think getting 1 shot kills is the norm in these games, you obviously have not played them enough or have played hardcore modes.

Also, your comparison to playing a rogue in PvP is a poor one. In shooters, you aren't invisible until you shoot at someone. You can compare it to no-resilience PvP if you want, but I guarantee you that, just like in CoD or BF, the better player will still usually win.