>Wolfenstein and Doom were simple, playful, colorful.
You were in middle school when Halo came out, so I can be fairly certain you were too young to remember Wolfenstein and Doom being released. And you're completely wrong. Those games were not simple and playful and colorful. They were gory, and violent, and brutal and complex. I had to play them when my parents weren't paying attention because of the excessive gore and satanic overtones. Doom was not some simple little game, it introduced the concept of circle strafing and multi-level enemies in FPS.
>The jittery feeling of older games, where every shot counts and you always have to be on the lookout for your opponent
Ha, really? Quake introduced the term run-and-gun. You didn't make every shot count, you just fired a barrage of rockets and bullets all towards your enemies.
>Halo was "grittier" and less silly than previous shooters had been
Yeah, demons from hell with miniguns for arms and blood dripping off their fangs are super silly. And the those Covenant grunts run around comically when you throw a sticky grenade to them... so gritty.
I think the OPs objections is that older games don't look grittier, but these days they don't because it's hard to look past just how bad the graphics are by todays standards. However back when they were released, Wolf3d and Doom had my heart racing and even made me jump -frequently- because picking up a red key opened a secret room filled with hell demon. Doom and Doom 2 were terrifying at times.
Then you have games like Resident Evil, Silent Hill and even (albeit to a less extent) System Shock 2 which all predate the Xbox and were all pretty scary.
As much as I hate to bring age into the debate, I think the OP is too young to remember or too young to buy such games.
You know what, it's totally possible! I've studied games from a critical perspective, but never a historical one; while my criticisms of Xbox's marketing make sense from the games that I know, it may be that I have completely misinterpreted what the games that game before it were like. Age is a factor when we're talking about the change of games over time.
I still think that there's been an unfortunate shift in games over the last decade or so, and that Halo exists along the spectrum of that shift. This guy's essay made a lot of sense in the context of what criticisms I have of games in general, but I might be giving it more credit than it's worth. Sorry for being so annoyingly wrong about things; I'll try to understand this better for future discussions!
I may be wrong, but I think the parent's point is that nitty gritty realism/brutal/gory/violent games were niche before the advent of halo/xbox.
What would really be helpful is a sales chart for FPS games between 1990 and present, but I'm not sure where we could go to obtain such information. I suspect that there would be a burst in the popularity in FPS games from niche to mainstream status around the release of either halo, counterstrike, call of duty 4, or one of the quakes, but I'm not sure which one.
Halo (and really, Rare's FPS platform) brought the FPS niche from PC+keyboard+mouse to console and controller. This introduced casual gamers to the world of the hardcore competitive nature of Doom/Quake/Unreal Tournament, a multiplayer environment where winning meant shooting your friend in the face.
You didn't have to maintain a massive gaming rig or be committed to computing in order to get into FPS now. All you needed was an xbox.
That signals the divide. What PC games were cute in the 90s? If one removes the 'educational' ones like treasure <x>, it's always been one of grittiness and machismo. Halo bridged the gap and let that scheme flow into consoles. And its clear that it is more successful with the consumer.
> Halo (and really, Rare's FPS platform) brought the FPS niche from PC+keyboard+mouse to console and controller. This introduced casual gamers to the world of the hardcore competitive nature of Doom/Quake/Unreal Tournament, a multiplayer environment where winning meant shooting your friend in the face. You didn't have to maintain a massive gaming rig or be committed to computing in order to get into FPS now. All you needed was an xbox.
Quake III was released on the Dreamcast. Duke Nukem 3D was released on the Saturn and Playstation. Doom was released on the Megadrive/Genesis. Halo wasn't the first FPS to be released on the console. Not by a long shot.
I certainly agree that those games appeared earlier on the timeline. But Halo/Rare FPSs were the first to be outstandingly successful in their control and playability scheme. The console versions of those games you list were hampered by their platforms and would all likely be considered less playable than their PC counterparts. Thus the genre could not break in as it could with Goldeneye or Halo.
Westwood Studios' Legend of Kyrandia series arguably although it's themes were somewhat darker, the overall style was definitely more light-hearted than today's visceral FPS.
Even before the Quakes you had Duke Nukem 3D, Wolfenstine, Doom I and II. Then you have the dozens of games that used Doom's engine (Hexen and Heretic being the big two that I remember, but there were others).
The reason why FPS might seem more popular now is likely just because graphics have advanced so much that it's hard for big game studios to justify releasing a 2D platformer. And you see this with all of the old third person 2D games that have been updated to 3D (Sonic Adventure and later games, Mario 64 / Super Mario Galaxies, Zelda, Final Fantasy, etc).
to remember Wolfenstein and Doom being released. And you're completely wrong. Those games were not simple and playful and colorful. They were gory, and violent, and brutal and complex. I had to play them when my parents weren't paying attention because of the excessive gore and satanic overtones.
I was early 20's when Wolf 3D came out. It was shockingly graphic, but like everyone else at work I played it all the way through.
Doom on the other hand... just too gory and satanic. No thanks.
Fast forward to the present, I've played all the Halos. They're completely mainstream and not very gory.
Currently playing Borderlands 2. I dislike the constant theme of sadism and torture, but it's fun game and I manage to get past it.
I bought an Xbox magazine the other day. Literally 80%+ of the games involved shooting rotting-corpse zombies. I really don't get why people like that stuff.
You were in middle school when Halo came out, so I can be fairly certain you were too young to remember Wolfenstein and Doom being released. And you're completely wrong. Those games were not simple and playful and colorful. They were gory, and violent, and brutal and complex. I had to play them when my parents weren't paying attention because of the excessive gore and satanic overtones. Doom was not some simple little game, it introduced the concept of circle strafing and multi-level enemies in FPS.
>The jittery feeling of older games, where every shot counts and you always have to be on the lookout for your opponent
Ha, really? Quake introduced the term run-and-gun. You didn't make every shot count, you just fired a barrage of rockets and bullets all towards your enemies.
>Halo was "grittier" and less silly than previous shooters had been
Yeah, demons from hell with miniguns for arms and blood dripping off their fangs are super silly. And the those Covenant grunts run around comically when you throw a sticky grenade to them... so gritty.