FPS enjoyers, which was the greatest era? (and why)

[Spindel]

HoloDust said:

I'm partial to 90s, due to how FPS games had lot of exploration elements in their level designs, which started to disappear with later "cinematic" linear corridor shooter approach, which was, from my POV, very detrimental for the genre in the long run (luckily, there were still games in 00s that preserved that sense of exploration and later linear wide and open world FPS games made up for it to a degree).

SvennoJ said:

HoloDust said:

I'm partial to 90s, due to how FPS games had lot of exploration elements in their level designs, which started to disappear with later "cinematic" linear corridor shooter approach, which was, from my POV, very detrimental for the genre in the long run (luckily, there were still games in 00s that preserved that sense of exploration and later linear wide and open world FPS games made up for it to a degree).

Yeah, FPS started like maze shooters, find the exit to the next level. Then Half-Life pioneered the cinematic linear shooter which progressed into set piece and wave shooters. Far Cry was an exception making it all open world, followed by STALKER and Fallout 3.

But I'm more partial to the dumbing down of the speed and play those later FPS more like cinematic adventure games than enjoy the shooting mechanics, which just feel slow. Hiding behind a wall to recharge, cover shooters, is what killed my interest in the shooting part. Chest high walls everywhere. They also became very predictable, a wide open space with lots of chest high walls, I wonder what will happen... not. Exploration / surprise went out the window. And of course added RPG and survival elements also distracted from the shooter part.

I would like to add to SvennoJ. That after late 90’s early 00’s the first person shooter genre became kind of stagnant. No more real (or very small) innovations, what innovations there are are superficial, the innovations that we hoped for never really came to fruition (like fully destructible environments). 

This is why I and a fair share of people, that have been around since Wolf3D, consider late 90’s and early 00’s the golden age of FPS.