The Shooter Genre

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Avalach21 said:

thetonestarr said:

But, multiplayer does seem to be the deciding factor when considering games AS just FPS. If it's got good multiplayer, it's a good FPS. If it doesn't, well, then it's not.

I strongly disagree with this poster, and all of the others who shared this opinion.

Quite arguably the best FPS of all time is Half-Life 2. It had no multiplayer. Oh wait, it had Half-Life 2 deathmatch, I almost forgot! Oh I just logged in and there are like 12 people playing.

Half life 2 has terrible multiplayer yet it is regarded as one of the best FPS of all time.

Also, how good can Halo and Halo 2 really be. Howcome once they are ported to PC they get miserable ratings? Sure it's been out for a couple years, but true great games are timeless; True great games last the test of time. If anything, Halo should get better scores because its on a console with a superior control scheme for it's game mechanics. I guess once the hype has died down (after 3 years) people truly realize how mediocre and bland the game is.

^^ I just wanted to make a couple points that fit in with this discussion. Now I'm out.

 I completely agree with the HL2 point, it is still one of my favorite games in general let alone FPS's which I usually don't consider my favorite genre. As for Halo1/2 doing poorly on PC there is truth to that but the PC is a different beast than the console.  I wouldn't say Halo1/2 are bland, they were still fun games.  But I think in comparison to the FPS offerings on the PC Halo pales in comparison to the Multiplayer community of Unreal or the awesome single player of HL2 but these are just my opinions. And this is only true on the PC, things are much different on the consoles where Halo is a top notch FPS. Just to be clear I think a similar comparison with MP would yield pretty much an identically unfavorable result for MP.

More on topic, MP has always been an oddity in the shooter genre and I can definately agree it is hard to compare the two since they are so different. However, I think that games like MP are going to be the future of FPS single player modes.  To bring the immersion to the next level FPS's are going to start having increasingly interactive environments, and while MP is behind some of the current FPS now it was well ahead of its time in regards to its style and concepts when it was released.   I am hoping that the increased immersion spurred on by games like MP will carry over and help benefit the multiplayer as well, but time will tell...

At the same time I think Halo was lackluster (for me at least) in its single player but truly revolutionary in its multiplayer for consoles.  I could go into more detail on this point but as I have stated before in this thread I think the Halo effect is well documented whereas I think I had to explain myself a bit more on the MP point.

 Anyways, both of these games do different aspects of modern FPS very very well.  And I think ideally the pedigree of these games in the future will have a solid offerings in both categories.