Working Title 09.06.06: Underrated/Overrated - First Person Shooter Games
Posted by Jordan Williams on 09.06.2006
Jordan's got a gun...Jordan Williams has got a gun... This week, Working Title looks at the most underrated and overrated First Person Shooters. BANG BANG!
Howdy! Another week, another batch of games. Last week we looked at the 2D and 3D platformers that got way too much respect and the ones who slipped under the radar. This week we are going to look at the First Person Shooters who needed a little bit more cover fire and ones who got more headshots than they deserved.
Before we get to it, I have gotten NUMEROUS requests to split this one into PC shooters and Console shooters. I'm not going to do that. The reason I split 2D and 3D platformers was simply beacause they gameplay style DOES change with the dimensions. The only real difference between PC and Console shooters are the extreme focus on multiplayer elements (more on that later) and other features like mods. The main focus is still to embed bullets into your prime target. So, like it or not, PC and Console shooters will be loped together.
Now, on with the show.
The Genre of the Bullet
Ah, FPS games. What better way to relieve some stress than shoving some bullets into the face of some aimless idiot on a video game screen? With games like Doom and Wolfenstein, gaming culture has been shaped around FPSs. Although most of them tend to get critically panned for being unoriginal and sometimes boring, it doesn't change the fact that it is one of the core genres in video games today.
With consoles like the Xbox 360 and the PC almost being exclusively about First (and Third) Person Shooters, the genre has grown to mythic proportions. With every console boasting a library of FPS games, it's very hard for a lot of them to slip just under the radar. It's also very easy for one game to be regarded as great. Now, I'm sure that everyone loves shooting a bitch in the face as much as I do, but let's face facts. Some of these FPS games we know and love simply didn't deserve all the respect they got.
So, I give you some of my picks for the most underrated and overrated First Person Shooter games.
....
BOOM!
HEADSHOT!
Underrated
Honorable Mentions: Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, Turok
Now, in a game of this genre, the story is NEVER a strong point (only a handfull of games like Half Life 1 and 2 base around the story) ; however, this game had story out the ASS. While most sci-fi shooters just reuse the same alien invasion plot line, Geist reused the OTHER FPS plot line...
Demons!
While it was demonic, it was still very much sci-fi, right down to the cheesy dialouge. You played as Raimi, an agent and scientist with a special force out to stop an evil corporation. This corporation is experimenting with some special gateway and creating invisible soldiers who can possess any host and make them do horrible things, a new breed of terrorists. Shit happens, and Raimi ends up smack-dab in the middle of this experiment. In fact, he ends up as one of the terrorists himself. Now, despite being temporarily removed from his body, Raimi is still a good guy. He is out to take these bastards down and get his body back.
But we all know that is never as easy as it sounds.
Where Geist differs from most FPS games is in its implementing of the story. Your character is literally a ghost. You float, you can walk through (some) walls, and most importantly, you can scare the shit out of people. Scaring people (and animals) is a good thing; it's the only way you can possess them.
Yes, you heard me. You can possess them.
You see, this isn't a normal shooter where you just find ammo laying on the ground at every corner, oh no. In Geist, if you want a gun, you don't simply pick up the gun; you pick up the person. As a ghost, you have no attacks whatsoever, but when you possess someone, you get their weapon, their looks, and any recent memories. This is good for finding out where you need to go next.
Now, Geist did have some other things besides the shooting. In order to scare a host into submission, you usually had to set off a trigger of events in order to freak them out enough. This was usually an easy task and was always quite funny. For instance, at one point in the game you need to possess a Lab Technician so you can gain access to a secret area. Only thing around is his laptop (yes, you can possess inanimate objects). You possess his little computer and begin to flood with porn, viruses, and pop-up windows.
Why this scares the poor guy, I'll never know.
It's things like that that made Geist great. Even the multiplayer element of the game was nice. In the standard Deathmatch mode, it implemented the ghost idea. There were no guns, just people. If you wanted the shotgun, you had to possess the soldier holding the shotgun. That added a bit of strategy to the run and gun. The other modes feature a standard CTF (but with hosts instead of a flag) and a Ghost vs Humans battle in which the humans must kill the ghosts and the ghosts must possess the humans and make them commit suicide. Lovely.
Now, Geist was plagued with the ever-common bad AI bug that plagues most FPS games, but the other elements of the game helped cover it up just enough to where the game had some decent difficulty with its shooting.
Now, why did this game go around relatively unnoticed? Simple: it was on the Gamecube. Let's face facts, the GCN isn't exactly the best console for first person shooters (or rated M games) by any stretch. The few it DID have outside of Metroid Prime 1 and 2 were so lackluster that gamers as a whole wrote off the whole genre for the console. So when a gem like Geist was released, no one cared about it, and whoever did care about it didn't care enough to give it a rental.
It's a shame, really. A boost in sales would've given this game one kickass sequel.
Verdict: Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters! (Underrated)
Now, for the next game, I'm sure you all saw it a mile away. But MAN, did I have a hard time getting there. With so many first person shooters out there, it's really hard to find one that is truly overrated. Most of them simply exist, but this game got so much praise above the others that it just begged to be overrated. I still don't see WHY this game is so great, but hey, it's my opinion. Anyway...
Overrated
Honorable Mentions: Prey, Quake III, Perfect Dark Zero
Seriously, if you didn't see this coming, you must be blind. And for those of you that are blind, I apo...how are you reading this? Anyway, Halo, Xbox's little map marker. Before everyone twists my words here, Halo was/is a GREAT game. It has GREAT controls, GREAT AI, and GREAT graphics.
So...how come the story wasn't so hot?
Seriously, for all the things this game did differently, it did almost everything else exactly the same. The story was the same alien invasion countless other games have gone over, and while it made the game have a more epic feel by adding a military presence to it, there still wasn't much to go on unless you read the books...and I don't want to read paperbacks in order to understand my game.
You took control of quite possibly the laziest-named hero of all time, Master Chief, who, despite the opinions of various Xbox fanboys, has ZERO
personality. NONE. NADA. He simply is that same badass military dude you see in EVERY. GAME. EVER. Regardless of genre, you have seen five million Master Chiefs already. Hell, two of them are in Contra!
Now, now. Like I said, the game wasn't bad, but it wasn't nearly as great as everyone led it on to be. The single player was a bit lacking. Every mission pretty much just dissolved into run-and-guns with little need for real objectives since most of them were handled for you, and most of the harder ones were just solved with a little bit more shooting.
The main reason this game got all of its praise was for the multiplayer and the beast that is Xbox live. It was one of the first consoles to feature real intense multiplayer on the Internet or just system linking to various TVs in a room for a LAN party. But this was great, I have no problems with this...but this shouldn't be the sole factor of why a game is great. I mean, it should factor, but what about the single player?
Given, most FPS games (especially PC ones) ride on multiplayer to keep it going, a console game shouldn't have to solely rely on multiplayer to sustain its popularity unless it's a sports, party, or fighting game. It's a fun thing, but there ARE people out there without Xbox Live or nearby friends.
If you can't stand on your own two legs, there's a big problem.
And that is my problem with Halo. While it was a great game, its single player was so glaringly lacking (even with co-op) that it just didn't do it for me. It's a wonderful testament to the Xbox's power and a great way to show how the far the genre has come in years, but it's just a PC game on a console to me. If I wanted to play a PC shooter, I'd play it on a PC.
Not much else to say outside of that.
Verdict: Sadly Overrated
Agree? Disagree? Drop me a line and let me know!
MAAAAAIL TIIIIME!
Time for some mail! First up is a bit of respect from fellow 411 Writer Andrew Mellick:
Hey man,
I'm another writer in the game zone section. Just wanted to let ya know that I just read your article. Props on Tomba, that game kicked ass and it was a ton of fun. I'm glad you gave that game some respect.
Andrew
Thanks! Tomba! really was a great game, and I didn't notice until now that Over/Under and Underrated/Overrated are really similar...
Next up is an e-mail from a now OFFICIAL Working Title regular, Doug Bernard:
If you wanna hear something really freaky I was going to put Castlevania 64 as one of my underrated games as well, I never played Legacy of Darkness because I heard it was just an expanded remake of 64, but I always loved Castlevania 64 and never understood why people hated it.
So you want FPS do you? You might want to break that one up as well between Story/Gameplay modes and Multiplayer modes. And you better specify if you are talking about console or PC FPS's because people will go nuts over this fact. I'll break it down by that as well.
Here we go again:
Story:
Underrated:
Console: Metroid Prime: mainly because HALO was all the talk at the time and anyone that didn't own a GC missed out on his game, yes good reviews all around but I don't think FPS fans give this one the credit it deserves
Chronicles of Riddick: same thing as Metroid, popular with critics, and sold a lot, but I just don't really hear about it in conversations and think people have forgotten it
Medal of Honor (original game): to me they all sucked after this one, but I have hopes for Airborne
PC: Star Trek Elite Forces: mainly because I'm a Trekkie, the gameplay was nothing new but it had a great story which made you feel like you were in an episode of the show, and it was just fun
Overrated:
Console: HALO: when I played through it and I just wanted to get through it, I could have cared less what was going on in the cut scenes and that's never a good thing
PC: FarCry: I didn't play through much of the game, and I think it was sold on its graphics at the time but I could be wrong
Multiplayer: (I refuse to give an opinion on PC multiplayer as I probably played an online session once in my life)
Underrated:
Console: Time Splitters: really just for character variety as it was really just an updated Goldeneye multiplayer session, come on running after a magnum toting monkey was one of the funniest things ever
Overrated:
Console: HALO: see a pattern? fun, yes. hectic, yes. bland, yes. character variety, none.
I know I put down HALO twice, but know I bought 1 and 2, played through them, and played many a multiplayer matches, I just think people think to much of the game. Same as Goldeneye, I had a ton of fun witht hat game but I knew there were things ont he PC that blew it away. I think it was overrated by people that only played console FPS at the time because they had never seen anything like it before.
Damn, Doug. You sure know how to outline. Anyway, as you can see. I kept everything fairly simple this time around. I didn't split everything up like that because it'd add a lot of needless complexity to it. And I sortof agree with most of the picks, although I don't think Time Splitters was that overrated. Hell, I don't think it got most of the respect it deserved.
Next up is another one from a fellow 411 Staff Member, Sean McCabe.
Sean from the Retrospective here. I have feedback for the last two columns because I did mean to send in something about the fighting games column, being the hardcore fighting game fan that I am, but I forgot. Anyway, first, here's mine -
Underrated
Honorable mentions: Samurai Showdown, Darkstalkers, Tobal, Bushido Blade, Dead Or Alive (Yes, you just read that)
Winner: The King of Fighters.
The King of Fighters is just an awesome series of games. The recent 3D
incarnations have been very good, and KoF XI is like Street Fighter 3 all over again, a true evolution of the series. I would also point out that it's deeper than Street Fighter generally is, and higher level tournament fighting is a lot more interesting to watch in a KoF game than any Street Fighter game.
Overrated
Honorable mentions: Mortal Kombat, Virtua Fighter
Winner: Tekken
I am a big fan of fighting games so I can't say I even hate these three, but nonetheless Tekken is hella overrated. This ties in with how Tekken fans look down on other 3D fighting games. I still take pleasure in what I
did in one arcade, with a DOA2 and and a Tekken 3 machines. I'm playing DOA 2 and kicking ass, then a guy comes up and says
"Why are you playing that shit, you should play a real beat em up like
Tekken 3." Rather than get annoyed, I said "Well, why don't I play you on
it." He of course assumed he'd kick the crap out of me, a lowly Dead or
Alive player. But I proceeded to win very, very cheaply on Tekken, quite deliberately. He was annoyed, so he said he could do the same thing to me on DOA2. So we played that and well... I kicked his ass right out of the arcade. Was very funny.
Anyway, onto platformers
Underrated: Mischief Makers (fantastic game), Vectorman, Megaman X
Winner: Psychonauts
Overrated: Just about everything else
Not much of a platformer fan am I, those games above are literally the only platform games I seriously enjoyed... and Super Mario 64, but that's neither under nor overrated.
...If you were a chick and I didn't fear Jis, I would KISS you. You named Bushido Blade, the one game I COMPLETELY forgot about. If I could, I'd go back and make it tie for Rival Schools as underrated. That alone has upped your stock in my eyes, sir.
Ironically, I don't see any of the KoF games being too underrated, for a long time they went toe and toe with the Street Fighter and Capcom vs Games. And yes, I can actually see your point behind DOA being underrated...but not too much. As far as platformers go, Psychonauts is another case of me not playing it, so I can't really define it.
And last, but not least, is a short and sweet little diddy from John Bryant (assuming name from e-mail because writer didn't list one):
Shadow Hearts. I mean that is without a doubt one of the Best series I've ever played and I've played mostly FF and I've also beaten Legend of Dragoon and all kinds of things.
Hm, I've never played (or heard of) Shadow Hearts, so it might be under the radar, but until I play it, I can't really judge it. Thanks for the e-mail!
Only YOU can prevent empty space! Send feedback!
[Pimpy Pimpy Pimpy]
So, for those who read the Wrestling Zone, you will know that JT, friend of my arch-nemesis JP, pimped the everloving HELL out of me this week. So, I can only repay them by counter-pimping. So, you know. GO READ HIDDEN HIGHLIGHTS. This message was brought to you by Ogre Springs Water: 100% Awesome. (Jis the Editor's Note: That's his way of saying "thank you.")
Now, next week draws an end to Underrated/Overrated (at least for now) with the granddaddy of them all, RPGs. If there is a better way to stir the pot, it's to badmouth everyone's favorite RPG. So, get ready because all the quiet, boring, cowardly, long-haired, personality-lacking villains in the world won't save you from next week's Working Title.
Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams...and this column's lack of a name is a HIDDEN HIGHLIGHT!
