The History of Why I'm Tired of Your Modern Shooters

Warning: These articles are long, spanning over 20 years of gaming history. It took me about as much as 30-45 minutes.

I figured we'd discuss these articles, although these were wrote two years ago.

The History of Why I’m Tired of Your Modern Shooters – Introduction and Part One

The History of Why I’m Tired of Your Modern Shooters – Part Two

The History of Why I’m Tired of Your Modern Shooters – Part Three

The History of Why I’m Tired of Your Modern Shooters – Part Four

The History of Why I’m Tired of Your Modern Shooters – Epilogue

So that was a good read. I'm not sure what I can add to this discussion though, as I agree with pretty much everything in that...

Well, I do think that the modern shooter has a place; as the gaming equivalent of a popcorn-flick.

I think we call that a dudebro couch game.

And I suppose Spec Ops: The Line is suppose to be an attempt at Saving Private Ryan or any number of tragic war stories with less than happy endings?

edited 29th Apr '13 7:09:52 PM by Worlder

I'm not tired of modern shooters.

I'm tired of shitty modern shooters. Every now and again one with some imagination comes around. Like, FEAR, Resistance, Borderlands, etc.

@Zeke: It's the same damn thing with the most popular genre of the time. In the 8-bit era and early 16-bit era, the market was filled with Mario clone platformers. From the middle 16-bit era to Fifth Generation, the market was filled with Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat fighting game clones. Throughout the Fifth Generation, the market was filled with Final Fantasy VII RPG clones. I can't name a most popular genre for most of the Sixth Generation, since I believe that a diverse selection of genres was popular. And finally, from the late Sixth Generation to modern times, the market is filled with Halo and Call of Duty clones.

I'd say it was quirky platformers for the Sixth Generation.

But there were a lot of genres that were on equal footing in the Sixth Generation: Action Game thanks to God Of War and Devil May Cry, Third-Person Shooter thanks to Resident Evil 4 and its followers, Action-Adventure thanks to followers of Team ICO, and of course, 3D platformers.

I think there were more platformers than anything else.

Metroid Prime is awesome. Not sure if it counts as a "modern shooter" though.

It's not really modern or a shooter.

Not in the same sense anyway.

-Loves the controller and believes it to be better than a mouse and keyboard-

Ho boy. This is going to be a frustrating read.

I'd say the most popular genre in the sixth generation was street racing games (preferrably with tuning elements) and other trend whoring stuff like the n-th tired iteration of Tony Hawk's Pro Skateboarding.

edited 29th Apr '13 9:25:12 PM by TAPETRVE

I think that if there's no agreement as to what was the most popular genre of the Sixth Generation, there probably wasn't one.

6 posts hardly is enough to form a consensus.

I loved the Sixth Generation. Plenty of quality RPG, FPS, Action, Platformer games... No fighting games though. It also existed before the great divide between east and west and the drifting of all games into an M rating.

GTA-style Wide-Open Sandbox games seemed to be all the rage during that gen.

Huh? There were fighting games a-plenty around that time. Too many to count, actually - which may be why no one really remembers most of them. And I'm not talking about the slew of shitty Mortal Kombat sequels.

edited 29th Apr '13 9:41:28 PM by TAPETRVE

Why is everyone so against the M-rating? We're all adults here... presumably.

Well, I am, anyway.

A lot of them where shitty though.

I wonder if that's a plus or a minus on the idea that they're what defined that gen.

There was Tekken, Dead Or Alive and Soul Calibur but compared to the generations immediately preceding and following it it was pretty slim pickings. There's a reason that Street Fighter IV was said to kick off the genre's revival. For a long time the only fighting games we got where based on Anime.

An M rating for the sake of an M rating does nobody any favors.

edited 29th Apr '13 9:43:43 PM by ShirowShirow

Granted, many were ports from the generation before or spinoffs that never really caught on. Still, there were enough that had their merits. I don't particularly care for Soul Calibur, but it was pretty much part 2 and 3 that eventually launched the series into popularity. Personally, I'm far more sad over the fighting game subgenre that died out in that generation: Arena brawlers. We didn't have a decent one in over 10 years until Platinum brought us Anarchy Reigns.

edited 29th Apr '13 9:46:37 PM by TAPETRVE

there was also Virtual Fighter 4, which was arguably when the series was at its most popular.

edited 29th Apr '13 9:46:07 PM by Nettacki

As a lifelong fan of all things Gorn, I'm quite fond of the M-rating.

There's a time and a place for gore, and there's nothing inherently wrong with it. But countless games out there include giant blood spouts and dismemberments, not to mention Obligatory Swearing, not because it makes the game any better but because that's just what everyone else seems to be doing.

I mean take a random game. Any random M-rated game. And ask yourself why they decided to have blood and gore fly everywhere. Sometimes there's a decent reason. Dead Space wanted you to fight visceral space zombies filled with Body Horror and decaying flesh. Ninja Gaiden made it a gameplay mechanic. But you can't convince me Mass Effect needed bloody impalements. You can't tell me the use of the word "Fuck" made Deus Ex Human Revolution's dialogue better than its predecessors. And I honestly don't know how or why a game like Halo earned an M rating in the first place.

Swearing in games was basically unheard of until Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, and games never suffered for it. Timesplitters 3 added heaps of blood and body parts to Timesplitters 2 and it didn't become a better game for it. You can make an adult friendly game that has a T rating. You can make an adult friendly game that has an E rating. And sometimes I want a bit of a reprieve from all the flesh mutilation.

Don't forget, you can make a kid-friendly game with an M rating. :3