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Amongst the games I'm playing at any given time, I like to have one FPS that I can randomly jump onto and work my way through in short bursts. For the longest time, that shooter was the BF1942 mod, Desert Combat, then BF2 for awhile (but it's just not as good).

Currently, I'm nearing the end of Doom 3, which I discovered recently along with my 2-year-old save file, though I'm finding Doom 3 to be more like a painful grind than, you know, fun. Once I finish it, I'll either play Resurrection of Evil, or perhaps something enjoyable instead.

So I'm looking around for the next FPS. I've gotten a few others recently, Cold Winter, Riddick, Quake 4 and have read some nice reviews of Prey (thought, anyone?).

But really, I think I've had my fill of pulse rifles and plasma guns for the moment, and would much rather shoot various brown people with an M16 or FAMAS in various modern realistic settings. Aliens and mutants optional, but only if the game is otherwise a lot of fun anyway and still pretty grounded.

Ideally, something a little like Soldier of Fortune 2, or if mutants must be involved, then Far Cry.

I do have the first Ghost Recon and it's two expacks, but I think they may be a little too realistic for what I'm after right now. Also, so squadmate babysitting, for god's sake, noooo! And no WWII either. I'm as over that right now as Plasma Guns.

 

Prey is like, GOTY material if you're patient enough to deal with Doom 3.

Man, Doom 3 was shitty.

Doom 3 sucked.

Prey however, does not suck. It's a system killer though, bring a pretty good computer or go home. The gravity trick is well employed and employed often. You don't get enough ammo for any of your weapons though past the first couple IMO, so you use the generic laser rifle/sniper rifle for 90% of the game.

If you wanna blast mostly regular people with regular weapons, you should give FEAR a look. It deserves more sales, and the expansion (however much it pisses me off with its plot development) is pretty good. It'll ruin your life if you get tweaked out by Ringu-style scares with really good sound design. If you got Steam, Sin Episode One is pretty good too.

I'll second the recommendation for F.E.A.R. Prey I never managed to finish but F.E.A.R. I did.

A third voice for F.E.A.R. It creeped me out so badly that I had to stop for the night. More than once.

And not out of terror, but more because my hands wouldn't stop shaking and I couldn't aim.

F.E.A.R. unfortunately killed my computer. Then killed it again to be sure.

I intend to make that one of my first installs when I buy a new computer in a month or two, but right now it's unfortunately a bit over-specced.

And yeah, Doom 3 is shitty. I'm playing it much more out of a duty to the $90-odd I paid for it on release than out of fun...

Short version: After the genuinely cool setpiece scares in the first 30 minutes of the game, you get attacked by monsters that pop out of item-pickup activated closets for 2 more hours. Then you have 3-4 more hours of that, but now some dumb evil scientist guy is laughing at you every 5 minutes while you're doing it.

Yeah, I'm about halfway through Hell right now. But since I play FPS games as "dip in-dip out" I'd estimate I'm actually about 42 hours into the game. Or that's how it feels at this stage, anyway.

muahaha you'll never get the soul cube. and stuff.

Tangent, pigbacking on this topic:

I played F.E.A.R. and got about an hour or so in before I decided I hated it.  I hated Doom 3 (ooga booga ftl).  Didn't care all too much for Halo 2.  I really haven't been able to get into traditional single player FPSs in a long time.  The stuff I like is mostly hybrid RPG or heavily story driven ala Max Payne 1&2, SS2,  Splinter Cell series, and Deus Ex.  You know, games that don't take a ton of twitch skill.

So, my question for the audience here... would I like Half Life 2? It's cheap, and I hear good things.  And would I be OK playing it if I didn't finish HL1 (game gave me serious motion sickness)?

It's hard to not like Half-Life 2. I'm not a big fan of the original as I played it shortly after Deus Ex and thought it was total shit at the time (fast forward 5 years and I come to appreciate the level design in HL1). But Half-Life 2, particularly Ravenholm and Nova Prospekt, has enough setpieces that can be considered a masterpiece that you sorta have to play through it if you like games at all.

I thought HL2 was just okay. The engine is of course very shiny but the story is incredibly confusing from the get go since they took out the entire intro section where they explain what happened between the two so you have no fricking clue what you've been doing with your life post HL1 and what the hell is going on. You just suddenly reappear and are inexplicably expected to save the world again even though the first time around was totally accidental (you just happened to be one of the few survivors). HL2's definitely a shooter's shooter and there were annoying parts that I used various console commands to get past since I didn't feel like playing them over and over again.

Retro is where it's at.

Scrounge up those old DOOM .wads and grab jDOOM. 3D DOOM with partical effects, all sorts of eye-candy and it runs on older machines just fine. Megawads like Momento Mori, Eternal DOOM, and Hell Revealed add just that much more gameplay. If you have Heretic and Hexen .wads as well, the DOOMsday engine can handle those, too (though, good luck with the model packs).

Need some 3D pseudo-Lovecraft? Find those old Quake disks (especially Scourge of Armagon) and fire them up with the Darkplaces engine. DOOM3 caliber lighting effects and all the old-school weirdness of the original Quake.

Another oldie but goodie (and it'll learn you heathens about why Halo was a GOOD fps, and it's not because of multiplayer) are the Aleph-engined Marathon games. Bungie released the source code to all three back in '05 and they're available with a bit of searching. There's a project to convert all three to a true 3D via the Unreal engine, but so far it's not that far along. Still, the Marathon games were seriously good stuff and Halo picks up where they left off (sorta). Plus, I suspect Infinity has more than a few hints where Halo 3 is going...

There have been a couple of projects to get Quake2 and it's expansions updated and running under XP, but none are release material yet. Still, from what I've seen of the retexturing, they're pretty impressive looking.

Anyway, there's a bevy of FPS retro-gaming options that can keep you busy for some time to come...and for cheap.

 

You could try to find the Cthulu game. People say it was fairly good.

Also, I want to give the Sin games a shot at some point.

You mean SiN. There are no SiN games. It failed, badly. Apparently.

Retro FPS stuff is ugly as hell. Makes it hard to play. I'm still waiting for the Deus Ex texture upconversion to finally be finished. Then I'll get around to playing that another 10 times.

I'll agree on HL2. It was a solid and fun experience all the way through for me. And the nice thing was that it felt like every half-hour or so there was either a "holy shit!" moment or a "oh cool!" moment. Haven't gotten the episode for it yet, as I'm not yet sold on microtransactions/episodic content. I'm half-tempted to order SiN through Steam, since it's bloody cheap and also comes with the original, though I also suspect I'll never play through the original, since I never managed to make myself play HL1 or even Quake 2 for that matter.

Also, that HD partition only has 300mb left on it, with the Steam family, Doom3 and UT2k4 on it..  :|    I may have to move my UT install.

No One Lives Forever was fun, but I never finished it. The stealth just didn't work for me, when there were the exposed backs of people's heards to shoot. Also the whole security camera thing just didn't work well for me with those graphics, and they kinda hurt to look at now. Good Humour in the game though. Anyone played NOLF2 or Contract JACK?

I've been thinking of giving AVP1/2 another try, as I never got far with either, and I could likely run either at max or near-max settings now. I gave Deus Ex a go a long time ago, but it crashed on me in the training level. I lost my save of XIII a few years ago, as well as my dodgy discs. Worth picking up originals on the cheap and playing it through? Red Faction 1 was ok, but 2 seems a bit retarded somehow.

Seems there's quite a lot of good FPS around, many of which I actually have.

Dunno, I think I'm going to end up playing through SOF2 and the Max Payne games again at this rate. Probably before I finish my grind through Doom 3.

NOLF2 was Fucking Awesome. Probably one of the better looking FPSs in recent years.

Also had style in spades. I guess it helped that it came out during the Austin Powers craze.

Not sure if you said you played Riddick or if you were considering it.  It's awesome.  Best FPS melee, no question.  Health system was a groundbreaker.  Stealth was well-done and meaningful.  Being unarmed and taking a guard's rifle has to be in my top five action-game moments, and the final "office" level was hugely satisfying.  Also: NO FUCKING IN THE COURTYARD

Ep 1 of HL2 is worth it, to me, just for the "get out of the dark basement" section.  It's like a miniature "this is how you should have done Doom 3".  It has a nice fun-to-price-to-length relation.

I would recommend AvP, but AvP2 cannot hold the jock strap of the first one... unless you want to play the predator instead of the xenomorph.  OK, I will take that back; AvP2 is a decent game but I was terribly let down by the xenomorph experience.  The level design was not conducive to being a predatory xenomorph like in the first one, and after playing as the victimish marine and the kickass predator it was sad to be a weak hunted bug with few places to hide and a gimpy leap attack.  I'd suggest playing as the marine for the scares and as the predator for some cool hunting, and just stop playing when you become the adult xenomorph.

Most other FPS bore me these days.  I could not get far in SiN, new or old.  Did not get too far in NOLF, but I played that in like 2004 or something.  I got tired of Far Cry once the mutants showed up.  I am going to check out F.E.A.R. soon based on numerous trustworthy recommendations.

I just picked up Riddick like 2 days ago. Had a little PC game buying spree this week. No fucking in the courtyard? que?

SiN is bloody cheap to buy through steam. Like ridiculously so. I think that's going to be the dealmaker for me on that one, though I don't think it's likely I'll play through the first one.

Seems though, like there's a few good options for things to play come from this thread. None are quite what I was after initially, but good games are good games, after all.

You'll see.  It's a small thing but I love details.

I always liked me some Serious Samage. Good mindless carnage. And the original UT still is the best.

Edit: For single player FPS, NOTHING touches Unreal IMO. That was the first game that made me shit my digital shorts. Always wanted to get Unreal 2 (demo was good) but never got around to it.

This thread is strange.  I have recently taken up AvP2 again (without reading here, co-incidence and whatnot) and I think you may not have played in a while.  I remembered the same thing as you, but on second run through recently, I found the Alien campaign a lot better than I remembered.  I was still a little let down that they nerfed the Alien speed from the first game - as you were lightning fast - but the Leap Attack, when timed right and aimed properly, just kills in one-shot.  I'm not  sure what problems you are having with the Alien.  I also found the wallwalking easy and it was immensely satisfying to drop onto a marine from above him.

The only slightly annoying thing was how very much on rails all 3 of the campaigns were.  Not a lot of deviation allowed.

However, I find the Predator totally, totally boring on my run-through.  Sure, you're invisible and invincible and you can heal yourself and recharge yourself and....er, it's boring as fuck.  The only saving grace is the sound effects when you spear someone through the head.  Nothing more satisfying than the Predator Laugh.

Expectations and whatnot.  I expected the xenomorph play to be at least as fun as in the first.  I don't think it was my imagination that there were fewer hiding places, air ducts and such.  I also had no idea that people had a hard time with the leap attack in the first one and I did not see the need for a change; add to it that somehow I was worse at it in #2.  Maybe I will pop that in and give it another try.  Having since played as badasses such as Riddick and Kratos, the predator could very well be boring now.  Hopefully the marine levels are still scary.

Oh yeah.  They're still scary.

FEAR is a splendid game. A bit shallow, but so are most fps. I was a bit underwhelmed by HL2, but it was a fun enough ride.

I really enjoyed NOLF2, even if they tried a bit too hard in come areas. Fighting a female ninja in a trailer in a tornado just seemed a bit contrived, nowhere near as cool as the moment in NOLF (one of my favorite gaming moments of all time (which would be a good thread topic!)) when you have to jump out of the broken airplane and steal an enemy's parachute. Style in spades in both games. Gotta reinstall them after I find some free time (working on my plan to convince NASA to move the earth further out in orbit to balance global warming and give us more days, also slow rotation for longer days and nights!).

Yeah, I could go for a 30-hour day. Not enough time to play games. Or do other things. :evil:

(http://youturd.com/temp/arma_screenshot_2006_37.jpg) (http://www.armedassault.com/)

Dude, lie down, you're way to exposed up on that hill.

Is that a screenshot or a photo from your last vacation?

That sounds almost as cool as fighting Icarus in midair and ripping his wings off before you let him plummet to the ground.

That's a seducing screenshot.  I even clicked the link!

Same people that did Operation Flashpoint?

God damn that game was tough.

Vacation version!

(http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/6148/armascreenshot200637vaclg5.th.jpg) (http://img510.imageshack.us/my.php?image=armascreenshot200637vaclg5.jpg)

Mmm...Armed Assault. I vaccilate between 'hell yeah' and 'fuck yeah'.

Ya, seriously, where did this come from all of a sudden?

That Armed Assault looks shit hot.

I loled.  Gratz.

Contract mercenary work is the newest extreme sport.

You're pretty close to the truth.

Looks very nice, visually. I also just checked and the place that's 15 minutes away and sells on eBay has it (http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ARMA-Armed-Assault-PC-DVD-Game-INSTOCK-NEW-SEALED_W0QQitemZ190097483915QQcategoryZ27234QQcmdZViewItem) pretty cheap. For Australia anyway. (I use their eBay store as an online catalogue, then just drop past and pick up whatever.

Two things scare me though...

1) It looks like it will hurt my PC, so I'd have to buy it after getting a new gaming rig.

2) More pertinent:

I hate games that force you to micromanage a team of retarded-stupid AI teammates. I realise it's more realistic than the lone Rambo, but unless they're scripted/near invulnerable like the ones in CoD, they're just a massive, massive pain in the arse.

I don't know I thought they managed it tolerably in Flashpoint, hell I actually quite liked being able to order the AI to do some of the killing for me every now and again.

Except of course for the fantastic second to last mission that involved stealthing with a squad. That fucker meant that I either tried to take them with me and got caught because 1)they got seen or 2)they opened fire on the enemy or I went solo and died from lack of covering fire and decoys.

I just read the full review from IGN.uk.. dodgy interface choices, long and tedious travel times. Harsh death. It sounds a little Vanguard-ish. Or to be less flippant, it sounds like it's a little "realistic" yet unweildy for what I'm after in a FPS. Combine that with retarded teammates (they're always retarded, you know it as well as I do), and I'm thinking a little more Meh..

 

I third or fourth Riddick. It's one of the best FPS I have ever played. Go for it. As a bonus, it'll run like silk on mediocre hardware and still look decent.

Can't believe no one has mentioned Stalker. I don't usually like fps games, but I loved System Shock 1,2 and Deus Ex and I am hooked on Stalker big time. Other than a very short thread on new releases this title has got very little attention on this board compared to others I read.

What's so good about it?

Stalker is very Deus Exy from what I played. Unfortunately, it wrecked my computer. I now can't run half the programs on my machine - including mIRC. This isn't actually Stalker's fault. It's just the straw that broke the camel's back. I could pretty easily recommend this game to people even having only played an hour though. It's pretty damn solid.

Edit: Oh, right. Why? Solid dialogue, solid action, and a robust character development system. Oh, and a setting that rocks more ass than a porn star.

It's got a middling, and limited response here (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=9646.0).

I'm also wondering, WTF happened with Stalker and your PC? I don't want to give my machine the AIDS.

My PC was dogshit before. Now it's Totally Dogshit.

Still not following you. Installing the game fucked your PC even more? WTF?

Maybe it pushed his clunker over the edge. Perhaps it was in no condition to be stressed, and Stalker did?

Correct. It was like my tires were being held on by string and I decided to do 90 over some speed bumps.

I never did get why you hold on to that PC of yours like you do.

I build PCs on newegg wishlists when I get particularly bored and you can build a needlessly good system for ~$1400-1500 right now (ASUS mobo, E6600 Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM with decent timings, 8800GTX, X-Fi, 250+GB HD, DL DVD Burner, Nice Case). If you went with the GeForce 8800GTS model with the 640MB of RAM (and not the "uber" version with 720MB, or the even cheaper one with 320MB), stuck with on-board sound, and yanked HDs out of previous systems you can get it down to like $1100 or so.  Not bad for a system that will bend over any game released before this date.

And this is just newegg. They got some good deals but I bet with some shopping around you could maybe shave another $100 or so off that.

Holy hell, they make 640MB video cards now? Or 720?

This is getting nuts. I can just imagine some day in the future where you have your Main PC, and then your Video Processing PC, and you have to run them in parallel to get good performance and shit.

Though I'm sure some of this ballooning of VRAM is due to the overhead inflicted by Vista.

Eh, it's NVidia. They tend to go a bit over the top whenever they move to a new chipset.

To be honest I don't think it's a good idea to grab an 8000-series anything right now since the first string of cards to any new series they make are incredibly power inefficient and generate too much heat. The first 6000-series ubercard was the 6800 Ultra, which required 2 dedicated rails and was a heat cannon with a half pound heatsink. I have a last-gen 6800GT OC'd to Ultra levels in an old rig, and it uses one dedicated rail, has a much smaller HSF, and generates very little heat.

768MB

(http://www.f13.net/images/necropost.gif)


OK, since my new box is gong to be ready for pickup in either 15 hours from now (YAY), or after the weekend (BOO, HISS, CRY), I've Necro'ed this thread. (despite there being another FPS thread ~ that one is about team-based MP/PVP shooters to play with the wife. This one is about SP mode.

Based on the suggestions above, with my next pay I'll pick up: Prey, HL2: Ep1, SiN Episodes: 1. I've picked up Riddick, FEAR in the interim, and will be working my way through NOLF2, AVP1/2, etc as well, but I also want to get something with lots of shiny which there's no way my current box could have run.


That screenshot of ARMA calls to me whenever I look at it, but the reviews of it make it look like a painful, grindy game.
Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter also seems like a beautiful-looking, but unfortunately AI-tarded with the typical suicidal squadmates who fail you the mission when they kamikaze. I herd cats for a living at work without having to do the same at home for fun.
STALKER seems to be pretty good. Very purty, and potentially fun with a bit of creepy. Definately considering getting this next week - any thoughts beyond those given so far or in the quite-old weekly-releases thread?

But I love that realistic-feeling outdoors in the sun feel which that ARMA and many GR:AW screenies have. BF2 also has a bit of it. Maybe it's the bloom, but I like the feel it gives.


Also, someone mentioned the Cthulhu game - this one (http://au.pc.ign.com/objects/013/013731.html#reviews)? And what are our thoughts on it?

Cthluhu game was an Xbox port, right down to the complete lack of configuration and the basic menus. The viewbob was so severe it gave me motion sickness and couldn't play much further than the first level. Pity though, it had the right atmosphere, and good reviews.

STALKER I have just finished, what a superb game. Toughest AI I've come across yet.

Heh, I felt the STALKER AI just cheated a lot.

As for Cthulhu - it's more fun on the PC solely due to the WASD movement for the Inn Chase Scene (you know the one) and man, is it hectic. It's possibly the single best set piece in a game. Ever. It's really fucking well done. It's more nerve wracking than some of the horror in the game. Cthulhu brings with the horror though. There are some parts where you totally expect something utterly disturbed to happen - and then nothing. It's evil like that. Fuck man, that game was good. It's going to be one of the first things installed on my new PC.

I liked FarCry a lot until the mutants showed up.  The Japanese ship still impresses me.

I used godmode in Far Cry when the trigens show up. It's actually a well done godmode, all shooters should do it that way. Rather then be invulnerable, you take damage to armor and health as normal. You just don't die, rather instead of dying, you increment a death counter (so you can keep track of how much you'd have been pwned) and reset your health/armor. So you can play normally, finding armor and healing up, trying to stay alive, you just don't get punished with the reload dance every time they ambush you. Loved it, made the game way more fun. I did a lot of reloads just to attempt taking bases different ways or using different weapons and whatnot. Hey, let's try running everyone over this time. Etc. Whatnot.

The controls in the Cthulhu game really turned me off, I need to go back and finish it at some point...

 Someone mentioned playing Stalker with a bunch of mods and it sounds pretty cool. GRAW came with my cpu (?) but I have no urge to install it, I hate the cat-herding stupidity. Not gonna do it. Got Dark Messiah with the gpu, still not installed, either. Definitely want to check out ARMA, too, I love OpFlash. I sucked at OpFlash, but it was such a great game to just keep trying different tactics in. Hey, let's steal this transport truck and try to run everyone over.

There may be a pattern to my love of freeform games.

If you want to see shiny graphics that'll make your brand new computers fall to its knees, load up EQ2 and crank up textures, lighting and shadows. Looks great...can kill modern computers.

Anyone play Red Orchestra, that thing I keep seeing on Steam?

When it was a UT2k4 mod it was a shitty WWII mod that focused exclusively on the Russian front. It was boring, had bad hitboxes, and proved that too much realism is a terrible thing in FPS titles.

Then it won the "make something unreal" contest over the absolutely brilliant Alien Swarm and other better mods. Blech.

Yeah, Far Cry was a great game to play, even on the current box. I used godmode for that sector after the cold reset, when you're dumped on the mountaintop and need to run through the jungle towards the ship or whatever it was, stopping in a crashed blackhawk just before the river. The rest of the game I played through normally. I am considering installing FC on the new box just to see how it looks and maybe give it one more go for old times' sake.

I picked up Dark Messiah CE a few weeks ago (it was cheap) in anticipation of the new box so I'll check it soonish I guess. Check the reviews of ARMA before you buy though, to me the interface, Vanguard-Travel and cat-herding issues sound like they'll outweigh the shiny.

And EQ2, heh. I'd have to want to play it to do that.   :wink:

QFT

I played it on the X-Box and it was great. Buggy a bit, but great. I'd say it would be good on the PC. I only took about 10 tries to get through that Inn Chase Scene on the gamepad, but there were a few FAQ hints I had to take just to know which damn way to go. I'd recommend that game, though it's really not what I'd consider a shooter. It's full of shooty but I don't consider it a run-n-gun type of shooter. Lack of ammo and assloads of creepy make it much more of a sneaky shooter, IMO.