I don't think its all microsoft fault, when they bought rare most of the staff already moved, mostly to retro or free radical, because of this, all the games didn´t receive the acclaimed reception like the predecessors, no wondcer why some people say that microsoft just bought the games trademarks rather than the real rare.
Prometheus hit the nail on the head. GoldenEye being pioneering had nothing to do with it being the first FPS, but had everything to do with it being the first four player FPS done well on a console. Doom looked like crap on the PC. On the SNES, it gave me a headache and made me want to throw up. And considering you basically had Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke Nukem and Quake on PC, GoldenEye really WAS a jump even in comparison to them. Henners, the majority of people in the 90s didn't have a gaming PC. They were well in excess of £1,000 when a Nintendo 64 was £250 at release. And £250 was expensive, so many people didn't have them, either! lol. Oh, and I didn't imply you were a teenager, I implied that you never got out of that stupid habit of putting xXusernameXx from AIM 10+ years ago. People often did it because the actual user name was taken - but I note there's nobody called Henners here. Oh, and it was usually teenage girls. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQNzT14U0EQ Check out about 4 minutes in
I don't see rare as dead merely only starting to catch up with the times. MS gave them too much freedom early on, the lackluster results (and sales) of everything they made after MS bought them out lead to them being in the situation where MS had to take more direct control and make them make Kinect Sports and its sequel which are their only profitable games since the old days. In many interviews and such things with former staff they've often spoken about Nintendo having very close control when they worked together, there being a very close level of publisher control which when MS took over didn't happen. They gave Rare free reign, gave them absurd budgets and trusted them to do their own thing. I see Rare as a company which very well may grow to be something impressive again but didn't graduate past working as a 90s style game studio for far too long and went through quite the rough patch. The overall design of their games and the insane development times they had really meant they were digging their own grave, however they were bought out before they reached the point of either adapting/changing or losing everything which merely delayed the awkward period. On a side note I seem to be one of the few people who at the time truly hated Goldeneye's multiplayer but rather liked its single player as the levels were (for the time) huge and different and the slow pace of the game really suited the design of the levels. I prefered the almost arcade simplicity, secrets and speed of Doom (which I unfortunately had the 32x version of) but Goldeneye was rather nice.
Yeah, that's what sucks. They were initially given freedom to do whatever the hell they wanted, and what's the first game they decide to make? Banjo Threeie? Conker 2? Killer Instinct 3? No, they make Grabbed by the Ghoulies. Because that's what every Rare fan wanted, right? As much as I hate to say it, I can't really blame Microsoft too much for their decision to have tighter control over Rare. Microsoft spent a lot of money on Rare and trusted them to make great, high selling games. Rare chose to make mediocre games that nobody wanted, or made changes to pre-existing IPs that nobody asked for. I still don't think Microsoft should be forcing Rare to make Kinect crap though. If you're going to force Rare to make something, at least force them to make something people want. I didn't play Goldeneye's multiplayer very much. I was more of a Turok kid back in the day. When other people were getting together with their friends and playing Goldeneye multiplayer, I was getting together with my friends and playing Turok 2 and Turok: Rage Wars multiplayer. The initial black cart copy of Turok 2 even had a cool design oversight where you use the level warping cheat to play the single player campaign while in multiplayer mode. It was glitchy, had awful frame rates in large levels, and froze whenever someone entered a portal, but it was still fun as hell. Old FPS' generally had great single player level design. Levels were mostly non-linear and there was a lot more variety in the weapon selection. Those games usually had tons of secrets and encouraged the player to explore the entire map to find hidden weapons and power ups. Basically:
If I'm missing the point, then why do I regularly play Doom II online and jumped through huge hoops to get Duke3D working online to play with PhrequencyVII? Yes, there is no one named Henners here...but this isn't the only place I use the name. Henners has been my nickname for 12 years now - and on the first forums where I tried to use "Henners" it was taken. Instead of meaningless numbers I just added Xx. But if we're going to play the "your user name is dumb" game. "retro" on a video game collecting forum? How original. But hey, heaven forbid someone have a different opinion than you. I wouldn't want to be called anymore names and be made fun of! I will sway my opinion to yours. I loved 007 as a child and would rather play it than other games on N64! Of course! -_- Honestly when my friends came over, Mario Kart 64 and a bunch of other n64 games ALWAYS came before Goldeneye. I loved the shit out of Perfect Dark though. It's hard to play now because the frame rate hurts my eyes :/
Plenty of people say this, but I say a lot of it is either due to rose-tinted glasses or those people being too young to remember 90s FPSs. Yeah, it was so much fun trying to find a red keycard in a giant maze. Trying to find hidden items wasn't that much fun either, since in most games, especially Doom and its clones, it just amounted to running into walls while tapping Space.
Yeah, it was fun. As I said before, I didn't really like first person shooters even back then, with Turok being one of the few exceptions. Why is looking for keycards/secrets in a large non-linear area so bad? Is it because it makes the game feel and play like an actual video game and not some Hollywood movie directed by a certain infamous director? I don't want to go down a straight line, center the crosshair at the thing I want to die, and press a button. Any idiot can do that. I want to a vast open area to explore, I want to find hidden treasures and secrets, I want creative weapon selection, and I want to have a challenge.
Because it's really not fun, it's just padding. The point of a first-person shooter is to shoot people and things, not hunt for crap. Not that I like the things plaguing today's FPS games either (regenerating health, limited weapons, total linearity), but there's a way to do non-linearity right in FPS games: just look at both Half-Life games. Saying that 90s FPS games were soooo much better than current ones while completely ignoring that they had their problems too is, to me, just another way of the popular "this shit they have now sucks, the old shit was much better!" fallacy. Besides, there are some pretty good things done with FPS games today that even manage to be somewhat innovative: Vanquish and Binary Domain are pretty damn good (OK, they're third person shooters, but there's basically no difference between FPS and TPS games). BTW, Michael Bay bashing became old hat in like 2009. Nobody will think you're cool on the Internet for daring to think he makes bad movies anymore.
The point of a flying game is to fly. The point of a racing game is to race. The point of a fighting game is fight. See how redundant that is? What, does collecting items and exploring require too much brain activity or something? Why wouldn't you want more things to do in shooters besides "center screen, push button, make thing die". In my opinion, that is far more boring than "hunting for crap". Funny you say that, because I honestly don't like Half-Life that much (or Valve, for that matter), but I can admit it's a well designed single player FPS. Of course older games had their flaws, all games from all generations do. Many genres have improved since the 90's and 00's, but first person shooters are not one of them. Seems to me like you're guilty of the "You just hate it because it's popular, you damn hipster!" fallacy. See, I can do that too. Um, there's a huge difference. That's like saying flying simulators have innovated and improved while using Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport as examples since they're both simulators, or saying that ME2 is essentially the same as CoD4 since there is basically no difference between TPS and FPS. Not exactly doing your argument any favors. Who said Michael Bay? I sure didn't. I could've been referring to Uwe Boll or M. Night Shyamalan for all you know. Funny how you link my comment straight to Michael Bay...
I wouldn't like it very much either if in Street Fighter IV between every match you had to scour for a small bauble in a city to fight another match. Keycard hunting is just busywork to make the FPS games of the time longer instead of focusing on what's important. There have been some improvements to the genre as well, it'd be just blind nostalgia to not acknowledge that, although I do prefer older FPS games as whole, but the genre had different serious problems back then. Your argument is the one that doesn't really make sense. The only real difference between first person and third person shooters is where the camera is, while flying and racing games are two distinctly different types of game. You can play Doom or Duke 3D in third person, does that mean they're magically in a different genre? Oh come on, it's pretty obvious who you meant. A lot of people have compared the single player of the MW games to Michael Bay, Shyamalan doesn't really make action movies, and a reference to Uwe Boll would be even worse since those became tired at least 6 years ago.
Regarding the whole FPS and TPS thing, my example was extreme, but there is still a difference. They are both shooters and they have their similarities, but they are not nearly identical. Sure, the same basic function exists (shoot things with weapons), but they have vastly different gameplay styles due to how the game is designed around the camera. I'll try to use a more reasonable example. Compare a first person stealth game like Thief with a third person stealth game like Metal Gear Solid. In Metal Gear Solid, the camera is far behind Snake and adjusts whenever he hides behind cover (similar to many TPS with a cover system) to help see what's ahead. In Thief, the sneaking is much more challenging since you are limited to what you can see in first person. So if you want to look for enemies in the area, you can't just hide behind a wall and let the camera do all the work. You have to expose yourself for a brief moment and hope someone isn't looking in your direction when you do it. Some games such as Duke Nukem 3d or The Elder Scrolls series allow you to switch between third person and first person, but playing in third person (especially in Elder Scrolls) generally sucks since the game is designed with first person in mind. There's a reason so many people compare modern games with his movies...
Not very good examples, since neither of those games are shooters. Yes, that reason being that so many people on the Internet like to perceive themselves as being smarter than others, so they take an easy target to dogpile on, even if their own tastes are really not that much better than the target. "Heh, Michael Bay movies are so bad and stupid. I like much better movies like The Avengers "
Both have ranged weapons. Both have shooting elements, whether it be a pistol or a crossbow. Both play very differently despite both being stealth games, one being in first person and the other being in third. Alright, if that doesn't work for you, then how's this. Compare Mass Effect 1 to whatever FPS you want, good or bad, I don't care which. They'll both have shooting elements, but they won't play exactly the same. Besides, my initial point wasn't that FPS and TPS aren't identical, it was that you claiming FPS games have evolved and using TPS games as an example was an incredibly weak argument. They're not the same thing. You seem to think people hate on that stuff because they want to look cool or look superior. That usually isn't the case, and it annoys me when people think that.
Yeah, but I was talking about shooters, so how can you use a completely different genre to talk about differences between shooters? But Mass Effect is an RPG with combat elements, not a third person shooter. You might as well compare New Vegas to Gears of War. Meh, they're close enough that they can easily be lumped into one genre. Makes a lot more sense to me than having two genres of nigh-identical games separated by minute differences. No, I just hate when people lazily parrot Internet talking points and always reference the popular stuff to dogpile on.
Um, yes, ME1 is a third person shooter. It focused much more on the RPG elements than it's quality declining sequels and I'd classify it as a RPG, but it's still technically a third person shooter. But fine, replace what I said with ME3 and my point still stands. I never directly referenced anything besides the brief and harmless ME2 and CoD4 comparison. I knew if I did, someone would pull out the "hipster" card, or the "you're trying to look and feel superior to others" argument. You can't blame me for thinking of Bay and CoD MW when I only mentioned dumbed down Hollywood action and an infamous director. That's the industry's fault. But whatever, I've already made my point. I preferred the level design and gameplay of older games, and that's not because of nostalgia. If you think I'm just copying what the "cool kids" do, then do ahead. I know I'm not, and I'm done trying to make that point clear.
I've sure as hell never played a third person shooter where you go around having conversations with people and get to explore the game world in a non-linear way... You could've just said "stupid Hollywood action movies" and avoided using a tired-ass, played out Internet coolness dogpile reference.
Methinks the angry old school FPS vs new school FPS debate that can be found all over the net on every gaming forum may want to be taken elsewhere as some of the posts above are rather off topic and really are reading like angry personal attacks rather than a discussion anyway... I feel part of the problem with what people want from Rare is that people ask and expect things that would not actually be good or things purely based on nostalgia rather than quality, many of their products and IPs are truly products of their time that no reboot or sequel could make relevant. Even if they released their best new game many people would not accept it, its almost become fashionable to dislike them, people seem to want them to follow the Nintendo school of IP regurgitation. In other cases people ask for games which couldn't be good such as Killer Instinct which would need a specialised staff and pool of talent that they just do not have to stand a chance of matching the fighters of today, I really thought and hoped Kameo would be amazing, I had followed that game since its original Gamecube announcement, unfortunately it didn't live up to some of the hopes and was certainly a victim of their corporate restructure and change in workflow but it was certainly something new and interesting for the time of its announcement. I'd much rather have a brand new game than a sequel to any of their older franchises, it wouldn't limit them, their older franchises are mostly unrecognisable to the majority of the gaming public and would only serve to alienate newcomers and the angry people on the net would not cry for the loss of their beloved objects of affection. If they did resurrect an older game a less well known one such as battletoads or blast corps would be the way to go.
Sorry for getting off topic. I wasn't angry, just a little annoyed. I don't recall making any personal attacks though. Current Rare made Grabbed by the Ghoulies. I have absolutely zero confidence in them making a good IP from scratch. Plus, I don't think all of their franchises are unrecognizable to the masses. The general gaming public probably doesn't remember games like Blast Corps or Jet Force Gemini, but I still hear games like Banjo Kazooie, Killer Instinct, and Battletoads being talked about all the time, and not just online either.
