I should begin this by saying that while I've played plenty of shooters in my time, I no longer consider myself much of a fan of them for plenty of reasons (which are of course outlined below) and it took until this console generation before I finally gave up on the notion that the genre could be a source of entertainment AND good storytelling; that it could be more akin to The Matrix instead of Transformers, if you will. I began finding this sort of fulfillment with the Uncharted's, the GTA's/Red Dead's/LA Noire's and the Arkham Asylum's of the world. However, there have always been exceptions to the rule (usually at least one per year) that manage to intrigue me with their premises, settings, levels of immersion or, dare I say something pretentious (who, ME?), innovation. These have included Half-Life 2 and its Episodes, BioShock, The Darkness, and some more hybrid titles with FPS mechanics such as Mirror's Edge and Fallout 3.
Most recently, I purchased Crysis 2, sequel to a game I was (and still am) unable to play, since I apparently didn't (and still don't) own a quantum fiber-optic artificial-intelligence-core desktop from the year 2067. That mattered little since the story was simple enough to digest, but as I went through its campaign I realized with a satisfied grin that I had found yet another entry into my FPS Exceptions Collection. Why is it an exception to my rule that most FPS's suck? Well, since you asked...
1. It actually takes more than 5 hours to finish
I realize that as game budgets increase, the amount of game you can decrease. Remember in the days of yore (1998) when there were publications complaining that the original Metal Gear Solid took ONLY 15 HOURS? Yeah, sorry, you're LUCKY to get even half that in today's games (I hear tell a certain Medal of Honor modern reboot can be beaten in less time it takes to do two loads of laundry). Crysis 2 managed to take up about 11 hours of my time (on normal difficulty!) and since I liked its story enough to play it again, I'd say that's a good investment.
This is more of a nitpick, I admit, but I HATE this in most shooters (it still happens today). The only evidence that you are actually a human being are the fingerless-gloved hands gripping the barrel for dear life. I do realize that some of my "Exception" games listed above are guilty of this, but they have enough other features to keep me distracted from this neurosis I possess. Now in Crysis 2, you get that nifty detail where if you walk under a light source you see your shadow and if you look down, you can actually see your legs moving beneath you. Whoda thunk it? In a scene where your character, Alcatraz (okay yeah I know that's a pretty damn stupid name), enters a quarantine zone, a marine stares at you (you're completely encased in the star of the show, the Nanosuit) and asks "Wow...is there a man in there?" This made me laugh since I find myself always asking that very question whenever I've played Halo.
3. You're not led by the nose from one set-piece moment to another
Yes, Crysis 2 is linear. It's not as open as the first one. Et cetera. And yes, there ARE set-piece moments, some of which are truly jaw-dropping, like this one from Grand Central Station (sorry for the narration but it emphasizes my point even further):
But it's also not a corridor shooter. You can tackle every scenario in any way you want with the tools given to you by CryTek. Each scenario can be played in multiple ways with different weapons and different tactics. There is the stealthy approach where you can pick off each enemy one-by-one with CQC. There is the guns-blazing approach (I doubt you need a description for that one). There is the acrobatic approach. There is the hit-and-run approach. There is no being-led-through-a-battle-to-battle-corridor-slog-with-no-real-room-for-maneuvering-that-pretends-to-have-more-options-available-beyond-simply-changing-weapons approach.
4. You can actually control the cool moves your character performs
Speaking of slogs, don't you just hate it when there's a cutscene in the FPS you're playing where your character does something super-cool like, oh I dunno, fly a Blackbird...?
You're, like, playing this whole part, right? It's not just moving the dinky joystick and marking targets for the guys on the ground as part of something that's little more than an elaborate quick time event, right? Oh...it is just that...that sucks...
Other examples exist, and yes Crysis 2 has some moments where your character is not in control of what's going on. But the coolest moves you have, such as an overhead stomp move or grabbing any appropriately-sized enemy nearby by the throat and throwing his dangling corpse fifteen feet away, are the ones you control. And that's the key word here: control. YOU are in control of this guy, not the pre-determined script set up by the developers.
5. Your superhuman alter-ego actually IS superhuman (unlike the mystically superhuman military men of certain franchises)
Haven't you always wondered how it is that by crouching down behind a barricade or metal crate, your character seems to magically squeeze the bullets with which he's been shot right out of his torso? The recharging health concept has long since rendered the health bar obsolete, and possibly for the better for some people, but for me it has always presented a problem of believability. Again, this is something of a nitpick, but it has always made me say aloud "Whaaaaaaat?" when I've been getting pummeled by a mounted machine gun manned by terrorists of vague ethnic origin (another cliche of modern shooters, I might add) for minutes on end and I'm still standing because I've managed to wait it out behind some type of cover.
Crysis 2 solves this problem by simply making up the technology that is the solution. Bullets that have penetrated your body are broken down by the nanomachines in your blood. There. Problem solved. And if that's not enough, the Nanosuit has the ability to REPEL bullets with one of the abilities it grants. While this technology may sound patently ridiculous, it's nowhere near as ridiculous as imagining a world where you can be shot hundreds of times and still win World War III.
6. It's not Call of Duty for once
I had to name names eventually. And while I must admit that the perverse overabundance of modern military FPS's is understandably due to competing companies attempting to capture a share of the astronomical Call of Duty market, it has absolutely FLOODED said market with modern military clones that, when stood next to each other, cannot be told apart from one another, short of the graphical engine being used. In effect, every major FPS franchise, from Battlefield to Medal of Honor, from Tom Clancy games (which started us down this goddamn path to begin with) to even Killzone, HAS BECOME CALL OF DUTY.
The cynic in me says "What else can they do? It's Activision's playground; they all just live in it." But then games like Crysis 2 come along and manage to make damn good money (it was the best-selling game of 2011 as of March 28, according to UK sales figures as reported here) . Yes, money talks and it talks loudest when it's at the tune of 55 million units in a franchise sold, but that doesn't make modern military shooters any better, or interesting for that matter. And while Crysis 2 has its own shades of modern military FPS-isms, it at least TRIES to do something unique with its story.
7. It takes the sour taste of Duke Nukem Forever out of your mouth
Now to be fair, Duke Nukem Forever isn't ALL bad (okay it's pretty damn close), but when it comes right down to it, the Duke's newest outing is basically that person who shows up at the party intending to be "fashionably late" but the party's been over for hours. And while I'll take the puns delivered so perfectly and hilariously by Jon St. Jon over the cool robotic growl of the Nanosuit any day, not much can make me like the pile of dated shit that is Duke Nukem Forever. In fact the only thing that was able to remind me that there were good games was Crysis 2. So I gotta give it credit there.
In closing I should say that I'm not saying FPS's are bad or flawed by their nature or that anyone who plays them is a piddling, pathetic philistine; they just don't typically offer what I'm looking for in a video game. At their core, they're made for entertainment and most people who play them are playing them for their competitive multiplayer and don't even touch the single player campaign, thus returning us to the same sort of mentality of games of years gone by where you simply try to attain the most points. It's steps backward, not forward, if you ask me and other video game snobs. Not like I'm a snob or anything...ahem...
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