FPS Used To Be Better

FPS is one of the biggest genres in the industry and always kind of has been.  A long long time ago we had Wolfenstien 3D, Doom, Rise of the Triad, Duke Nukem 3D among many many others and now the big players in the genre are things like CoD, Battlefield and other more realistic military type shooters.

But that's kind of my problem with the modern FPS game.  Most of them are sort of realistic type military shooters like Call of Duty.  The only other thing we have aside from that are things like Halo but that's just a military shooter with a sci-fi coat of paint.  These games aren't bad by any stretch but they don't come nearly as close to the thrill of the old school FPS.  The fast paced, acrobatic, labyrinthine and colorful shooters of days passed has been replaced with gritty, realistic yet unchallenging games and I can't help but feel things are significantly worse off as a result.

Most people who hold this kind of opinion of older games are accused of having rose tinted nostalgia goggles but this is one of those cases where those games were just better.  I've recently been playing Serious Sam HD: First Encounter off Steam and I'm having so much more fun with this than I have with any other modern FPS title.  I can have more than two weapons, my health doesn't regenerate for free, equipment and enemies are colourful and interesting, there are secrets everywhere and so much more.  I felt a similar thing when playing Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition a few months ago too.

Even multiplayer FPS was better back then.  It used to be all about speed, skill, knowledge of the map both for layouts and pick ups and that was just the tip of the iceberg.  Things like Quake which used a lot of rocket jumping had all sorts of weird shit in play that I can't even begin to wrap my head around.  Granted things are a lot more accessible now but it's a damn shame that the games just aren't quite as fun.

Still, this is just me and I don't want to completely disregard modern FPS games just because I feel the old ones are more fun.  I have a lot of fond memories playing Modern Warfare 1 and 2 online with buddies and sometimes I find myself getting tempted to try out  the latest version of Call of Duty.  Let's not forget the new Star Wars Battlefront which looks cool as shit.  That said, I'd much rather play some Doom, Serious Sam or Quake than CoD or Battlefield.  Luckily the genre isn't completely devoid of old style games and things like Painkiller and that new Rise of the Triad game are keeping things geared more towards fun than realism and prestige bragging.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive First Impressions

Before I start talking about this game lets have a BIG FUCKING DISCLAIMER!  I was never really all that good at Counter-Strike: Source and even less skilled at 1.6, so if your looking for someone to give you the ins and outs of this game from a competitive standpoint, I'm not your man!  Also, there are going to be pretty much no pictures in this post because I was having so much fun I forgot to take some, and I'm too lazy to load it back up.

Anyway, with that out of the way, I can finally start talking about CS:GO.  If you're not sure what it is, then you're either too young or you have been living under the rock your whole life.  CS:GO is the newest game in the long standing Counter-Strike series of games, basically the big grand daddy of team based online shooting.

It's actually refreshing to play a realistic style shooting game where my decisions actually fucking matter for once.  Health doesn't regenerate, at all, so if you go and make a stupid move in a fire fight, you're going to be punished for it, HARD.  Also you're limited to what you can take into each round by how much money you have, so in the early rounds or when you are losing, you really have to make careful, planned, intelligent decisions for what guns and gear you are going to buy.  So take all your Call of Duty pre-set load outs and regenerating health and fuck off, this is a real mans game.  I don't hate Call of Duty but the difference in skill required to play this, and to play CoD is astounding, so you best be willing to put in some practice hours in order to get good here.

Before CS:GO came out, I found that I was actually rather bored of CS: Source, I just didn't have the urge to find a mix or play in a public or anything like that, but when I fired up Global Offensive, holy shit was I pumped.  The menus are so sleek looking, the reticule is cool as fuck and best of all, the sound design is top notch.  Seriously, I have never heard guns sound this good in games before, it was giving me a fucking rush just hearing the effects.

The best feature I thought after playing it for about an hour was the match making.  You can very quickly find a casual or competitive game, and on top of that you can even play the much loved Gun Game mode through the matchmaking.  It just speeds everything up and makes the whole thing more accessible to those who don't want to trawl through server lists.  But I'm from a generation where server lists were the only thing around, and Valve made the correct decision not to remove the feature.  Custom games, custom maps and everything else are all still available through the games server list feature, so this game really does feel like a complete package.

Basically, the game is fucking awesome and you should play it.   Sure, there might be debates around the competitive nature of this game that I'm not aware of, but if you're looking for a fresh change of pace from all the Call of Duty and Battlefield type games, then this is for you.