What I Miss In My Shooters

I’ve played first person shooters for a very long time; since Faceball and the likes of Castle Wolfenstein 3D that had no multiplayer and then all the way to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare that did.  Lately I’ve played a few shooters.  From the latest CoD’s, to your revamp of Goldeneye that was on the Wii (which was actually quite awesome really) and none have really grabbed me.  Even Ghost Recon Online, while still awesome, has lost a bit of luster.  You can dress them up as mech shooters or zombie kill-a-thons, but I feel they are all missing something.  Let me tell you what I think it is.

Let’s go back to a simpler time.  A time when Goldeneye was one of the only options you really had and it was awesome.

Looking back is tough, but she had it where it counted when it launched.
Looking back is tough, but she had it where it counted when it launched.

I still look back fondly on those days of just endless Goldeneye with my homies.  We’d all go to someone’s house or the church and team up for some Goldeneye themed carnage (sans proxy mines because one could be too much of a jerk with those).  You would get together and play, poke fun, eat pizza, laugh, then wake up in the morning and do it all again if it was summer break.  (Man I want a summer break from work lol.)

The replacement Goldeneye.
The replacement Goldeneye.

Then Perfect Dark came out on the N64 and took over as king.  It was supposed to be a sequel, but Sony was too busy owning the rights to Bond games and crapping out terrible games on the PS2 at the time.  If I stepped on anyone’s toes, good.  You try and defend any of the PS2 Bond games to either Goldeneye or Perfect Dark… yeh, I thought so!

A little while later my foray into computers came around and I started playing them on the PC instead.

If you played this, didn't the axis flag cap sound like "Coke spotted owl butt!"  It was weird, but made me giggle every time.
If you played this, didn’t the axis flag cap sound like “Coke spotted owl butt!” It was weird, but made me giggle every time.

Day of Defeat is what sold me on PC shooters.  Sure the controls drive me crazy now, but that’s what I had and what I worked with.  After a while, most control setups become workable if not preferable.

I played on a few servers until I settled on one: Frenchy’s Pit.  This server was awesome.  You could get on and join up with the same group of guys or just a few and have a few melee only matches and everyone would be on board.  If the mods had a problem with someone, they would be able to rebind their shoot button to a kill command so whenever they went to shoot their gun, they would just die.  Or if they were just spouting nonsense and wouldn’t listen to the mods, they would put them in llama mode where anything they typed would come out as a “Bleat!” or “Braahhh!”  Ah moderators, I miss them so.

PS: Cyborg009, if you’re out there, I’m only kind of sorry I tk’d you a lot.  On the other hand, I hope you have since learned that when people don’t want you singing or nonstop talking over team chat, you listen now.  Life lessons were learned at Frenchy’s Pit where you got in the pit and tried to love someone.

I can remember this map.  Right around that far left corner you'd probably get shot by some camper crouched behind some barrels on the other side of the map.  Campers are why 1-hit kill knives were awesome!
I can remember this map. Right around that far right corner you’d probably get shot by some camper crouched behind some barrels on the other side of the map. Campers are why 1-hit kill knives were awesome!

Technology and progress and blah blah blah Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare came out.  Minus the ability to rebind people’s keys, open people’s disc drives, or turn them into llamas, I found a server I liked and stuck with it.  It changed over time, but most of my buds moved with me until we found a server that suited our style.  No constant running, only cover to cover or from nades and choppers, and you had to have a UAV before chucking nades into rooms unless you were going to follow it in, were common rules on the server I played.

Were those a lot of rules to follow, not to us.  We sought this out, server names were labeled as such so when people came in and complained about not running and gunning we collectively sighed.  They would eventually leave or learn that there was an alternative way to play or got the boot.  There were plenty of other servers out there with different rules, but we welcomed all that were willing to try.

Now I feel PC FPS’s have evolved with consoles and MMO’s.  It’s a lobby based system where a machine tells you who to play with.  The MMO example is where they implemented cross server play and people stopped talking to each other (not the only reason WoW went south in my opinion).  One could argue it’s a good thing, but meh.  With the bunch of randoms you’d be playing with, the only rule is there are no rules.  It’s not really a community anymore; it’s an arena.  That may be why I’m ok with the randoms in Monster Hunter because we’re on the same team, but in FPS’s we’re not.  Sure you can game with your buds, but if you’ve even remember when servers were the thing and someone decided that you should do melee only and everyone agreed, I’m sure you miss that.  I even miss Ghost Recon Online’s earlier Beta when we’d always melee pregame because it was fun and pregame didn’t matter.  You don’t even see that anymore.  There is no close nit community, but a massive pool of gamers with which to pull from any of whom could be the next Cyborg009… and that makes me sad.

3 thoughts on “What I Miss In My Shooters

  • April 12, 2013 at 10:06
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    Loved the nostalgia of thinking back on my history of gaming with fps’s too. Thanks for this.

    A group of us hooked up an old 64 to my 73″ and played some mad Goldeneye a couple months ago. It turned out to be a great time.

    I will say this, games like TF2 still keep my attention after other games lose their appeal (that is to say: CoD, Halo, etc). This game still encapsulates fun and simple.

    Reply
  • April 12, 2013 at 14:53
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    Got reminded of CS as well on FB. I love Steam games for keeping servers. TF2 is an awesome game. Heavies fo-life!

    Reply
  • May 15, 2013 at 16:49
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    Man, I miss the days of getting kicked out of servers for “Hacking” when I wasn’t in Unreal Turny… I was just that good~
    Or flying threw the air as a pred-alien in AVP. to land by a Certain someone that would nade themselves~ good days… good days..

    Now a days, everyone Really does hack… so playing some of the online FPS, such as Black Light, makes it hard to have fun when you die threw a wall, shot by some kid half the map away with a hand pistol..

    Reply

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