First person shooters never had deep single player gameplay. The one exception being maybe Half-Life.

I guess you missed out on the original Deus Ex. It's still one of the deepest story-driven games ever made, let alone first person shooters. Every situation in that game had multiple, radically different approaches. The story had some significant branches based on your decisions, too.

The AI was a joke, though, but that now seems to add to the charm. It goes really well with the campy voice acting and over-the-top characters.

It's a game I'll keep recommending over and over again. The sheer amount of player choice, customization, and environmental openness and interactivity is tough to beat, even today.

Why are you saying this? We're talking about good AI and you say yourself

>The AI was a joke

I don't understand how I should take your comment here? Are you agreeing that other than half life, there are no good single player AIs?

Go back and read the GP. That comment was about FPSes not having "deep single player gameplay". Deus Ex most definitely had deep single player gameplay. Its AI was easy to game in hilarious ways (i.e. a joke) but that didn't take away from the gameplay depth. On Realistic difficulty level JC often died in one headshot so you still had to be careful not to draw too much attention.

Right, I see.

Did you ever play CoD (the original) singleplayer campaign? It was magnificent for its time, gritty like Saving Private Ryan, epic scores composed by Michael Giaccino, and full of historic flavor (ex: WW2 quotes upon death). You didn't play the CoD campaign and simply forget about Pegasus Bridge, or everyone getting mowed down in Stalingrad.

Once CoD:UO (and 2, and so on) came out, they began killing off the great historical single player experience they had.

Deus ex was spectacular for this. There were so many ways to do each thing. Imo it is the best game ever made (for its time period).

Bioshock comes to mind

Yeah, maybe S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as well. I don't really think Fallout counts, but it could if you really stretch what you consider an FPS.

No idea why I'm getting downvoted. There are literally only a handful of first person shooters that are story-driven given the great majority that aren't: Quake, Doom, Duke Nukem, Sin, Wolfenstein, etc.

Saying that you miss the "old days" when first person shooters had stories makes no sense other than stirring some misguided Southpark-esque "'member when..." nostalgia.

It sounds like you simply don't consider non-shallow games to be FPSes.

I mean, if "FPS" means "a first-person game where you often shoot things", then Deus Ex, Bioshock, Half-Life, Thief, Fallout 3/4, Skyrim, etc., can all qualify. Hell, throw in Dungeon Master, and maybe even Portal and Minecraft. Of course one can argue where to draw the line based on how much "shooting" takes place.

But people often say "FPS" to mean specifically "games like Quake and whatnot". Under that definition, shallow gameplay is part of what makes a game an FPS.

> But people often say "FPS" to mean specifically "games like Quake and whatnot". Under that definition, shallow gameplay is part of what makes a game an FPS.

That seems to be unfair to Quake - there's a fair amount of depth and strategy involved, mostly with the hogging of powerups. I thought Quake 3 was just a game about two guys bumblebee dancing while trying to shoot the other, until my mind was expanded by a top Quake 3 player explaining his thought processes in the below video - the vast bulk of the talk is about map control, not reflexes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdkDjsBiO58

In context, I just meant shallow in the sense of not having the things that the person I was replying to suggested FPSes lack - compelling stories, etc.

Well game genres are rarely defined by the strict definition of their name. Role-playing games rarely have you actually play a role, they're defined as levels and stats and items you can pick up from loot crates. You can play an arcade game on a home console or PC, no quarters required. I play card games on my phone without actually owning a deck of cards.

An FPS has to be a shooter that's in first-person view, but does that make every game where you shoot something with a first-person camera view an FPS? What if the game has other elements? Which definition wins out? Is Fallout more RPG, or is it more FPS? Or is it a turn-based strategy game? Most people would say it's an RPG that happens to have guns and is played in first-person mode and part of the game mechanics is reminiscent of turn-based games.

When you say "FPS", it's a pretty strict definition, because if it's an RPG that happens to be played in first-person with a gun, it's going to be called an RPG first. Maybe RPG-FPS. But FPS really means "run around with a gun and your main interaction with the world is shooting it". There is an entire world of games that do exactly that, and we call them FPS games. Borderlands is an FPS with hints of MMO, dungeon crawler, and RPG, but since the main interaction with the world is running around with a gun and shooting things, it's an FPS. I don't think that's a bad thing.

Sure. Isn't that what I just said? That people tend to use "FPS" to mean a genre rather than just a description of mechanics.

(The point being, it doesn't mean much to say that few FPSes have deep stories, because if a game has a deep story then people tend not to consider it an FPS.)

FPS-RPG is generally used to describe some of the games you mentioned.

> But people often say "FPS" to mean specifically "games like Quake and whatnot". Under that definition, shallow gameplay is part of what makes a game an FPS.

You can still have deep games that are Quake-like, Half-Life being the canonical example. Deus Ex can be played, like Fallout, in third-person so I'd say it's disqualified.

Why is HN turning into reddit with random downvotes and no discussion? Must be the weird gaming crowd.

> You can still have deep games that are Quake-like, Half-Life being the canonical example.

Again, you're talking about the definition, not the thing. Half-life is very Quake-like in its mechanics (camera and controls), and not very Quake-like in its gameplay (exploration, puzzles, etc).

As such, saying something like "FPSes aren't deep" is more about terms than games. Whether you agree with it depends on whether you take "FPS" to mean Quake-like mechanics or Quake-like gameplay.

(Incidentally Deus Ex is first person. The newest ones have a hide-behind-cover feature that temporarily shows you in 3rd-person.)

> Deus Ex can be played, like Fallout, in third-person so I'd say it's disqualified

We're talking about the original Deus Ex which is first-person only.

The element people are missing is deep gameplay, not stories. After all, CoD does have a story.

Bioshock was such a step down in many respects compared to System Shock though. I wouldn't say it was deep at all.

The most interesting part of that game is Rapture itself, the mnechanics and general gunplay just sucked honestly.

I don't mean in terms of story and plot, but in terms of actual game mechanics.

Look at the old Rainbow Six games against the new ones, same for Ghost Recon. Hidden and Dangerous was a great game too.

Those games are actually hard, and have gameplay that isn't just "watch explosions, shoot some enemies, get shot, sit behind wall to recover HP".

Just look at Rainbow Six 3 against Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, the second one was about as linear as you could make a game, the first one gave you a lot of options in how you would achieve a mission.

Clive Barker´s Undying had a pretty good background story. But sure, gameplay was mostly same old kill monsters and solve some puzzles.

Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep. Resident Evil 7 in VR. Bioshock. The Wheel of Time (yes, really). Thief: The Dark Project.

If you're saying that these games are shallow, I will fight you irl.

BL2 was fun and I sunk 100+ hours into it and enjoyed it a lot, the writing was good other than Tiny Tina who was just annoying. There was nothing complex it about it though, the weapon tiers were well defined and the gameplay boiled down to "farm for better guns" after awhile.

I'm talking about the DLC. And you're conflating complexity with creativity and narrative depth.