My favorite FPS type games are still the Fallout 3/Fallout New Vegas games and their DLCs. They are a blast to play (IMHO), you can play fully FPS or use VATS (which I heavily rely on since my reflexes aren’t what they used to be), and there are metric boatloads of mod content for both. Plus, it’s just really satisfying to shoot a bandit in the head and see them flying backwards, in slow motion, while their head comes apart while listening to snazzy swing type psudo-50’s music (I’m less thrilled with the New Vegas country stuff, but I modded that away almost immediately).
I wouldn’t say the SP sucks balls. I think the dissapointment factor is that it just tries to copy Call of Duty - it’s an on-rails, highly scripted campaign. BF3 should use more of what it does well (vehicle missions, wide open maps, etc) instead of just trying to do a COD clone.
That doesn’t mean it’s actually bad - if you like that sort of thing, BF3 so far seems to do it well - it’s just dissapointing relative to what it could’ve been.
But otherwise, get the game. It’s awesome. I don’t even know why people care about SP - you play that for 4 hours and then you go play the multiplayer for a hundred hours, but people seem to weight them equally or even weight SP more.
If you’re into atmospheric post-apocalyptic shooters give Metro 2033 a whirl - it’s similar in tone to the *STALKER *games (in fact I think a few of the same guys worked on it). If you have a beefy rig the graphics look gorgeous. Great music too.
Red Faction: Armageddon: The magnet gun was hands-down the best gun I’ve seen in awhile. Infinite ammo, and you could send baddies/crates/boulders/bombs across the map or into other baddies. Awesome.
-I had a great experience with Fear 3.
-I loved Crysis 2
-Bulletstorm was a blast once I got the hang of it
-The Battlefield Bad Company(s) were both great
-Just Cause 2 is still awesome.
I have the first Modern Warfare for PC, and still boot that up from time to time for some slow-mo killing action. I played MW2 briefly on PS3 when my friend brought it over. I just rented MW3 on my lunch break and will be loading it up tonight. Normally I’d get a supposedly “good game” for PC, but I’m not sure my GTS 250 would be up to the task.
These are all for the PS3 console single player as my Internet connection blows and can’t play online.
I played Far Cry 2 recently and enjoyed it. It had its annoying points (Hi, near-insta-respawn checkpoint I cleared not five minutes ago) but I enjoyed the missions and overall plot. And even the gameplay aside from the checkpoint respawn times. Looked fairly pretty as well.
My fave over the last few years was the original Crysis (and its add on, Warhead). Great for sneaking around and taking guys out with a single well placed shot to the head.
Crysis 2 was also good, but had unfortunately “gone console”
I finished Stalker: SOC and, while I still recommend it, the ending took a bit of luster off for me.
[spoiler]Reaching the core, gave me a “Rocks fall, everyone dies” ending. I understand there’s multiple endings but it was really abrupt and lame and pretty much without warning.
I did a little Free Play afterward but, once you clear an area, the fun to fight human opponents are largely replaced by incredibly tedious to fight packs of mutant dogs with the occasional bloodsucker or snork. So Free Play wasn’t nearly as fun as I’d hoped.
Shame because nearly everything up to that point was stellar.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]In case you didn’t know, the alternate endings in STALKER: SOC aren’t merely cosmetic. The “Wish Granter” endings at the core finish the game, but the story is quite different - and more satisfying - with the alternate endings possible if you took the time to find out more about your and the zone’s history. Without spoiling the story, just note that before you enter the Red Forest (I think) with your tinfoil hat, you have a quest to talk to Guide, IIRC. He’ll give you a lead that, if followed, can change the story markedly.
The canon ending (as suggested by Call of Pripyat) is one of the alternate endings. Call of Pripyat is a great game incidentally, IMO - I found it more polished than SOC, though of course SOC had more “impact” from being first.[/spoiler]
Anyway, I’m not generally much of an FPS player, but I loved the STALKER games, Metro 2033, and Far Cry 2. Far Cry 2 does have bullet-sponge enemies, though.
For a slightly different suggestion, how about Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood? One of the few western-themed FPSs, with a well-told story and slightly different gameplay. Short, but if you find it cheap (it was on sale on Steam a while back - and I’m already on my third playthrough, which is highly unusual) it might be worth it to you.
I can accept that there’s alternate endings. But the ending I got was the ending they gave me after however many hours of game play and it was a disappointing pile of suck. Hearing that I must not have played the game right to get an ending worth a crap doesn’t make it any better.
Yeah, I’m sure I’d feel exactly the same in your position. Still, I like the idea of the thing from a design perspective – in that it allows for a different interpretation or different view on the story from a second playthrough, and rewards exploration. Metro 2033 is similar in that respect, though the path to an alternate ending is much less clear. You have to demonstrate Artyom’s humanity throughout the game, by avoiding killing, helping people, taking the time to play guitar or chat to your stepdad, always try to investigate the creatures in your dreams, and so on. Then you can shoot the laser targeting system in the end, if you prefer. Then there’s Max Payne 2 Mona Sax survives if you beat the game on the hardest difficulty setting and Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within You can only get the canon ending, where you save Monica Bellucci and kill the Dahaka, if you found all the secrets (upgrades and fancy sword) in the game. All have different endings without just boiling down to a simple, often binary, player choice at the very end. I admit that *both *of these approaches have some positive aspects and seriously negative aspects. I suppose only RPGs really have the resources to commit to plot development to allow you to shape the story, and consequent ending, across the entire game without anyone necessarily feeling they lost out - RPGs such as the Witcher games and Dragon Age. Also in general it’s only with RPGs that the developers can reasonably count on the player wanting to experience as much of the plot as possible and wanting to play through it again differently.
Haven’t seen it mentioned yet ITT, and I haven’t played it, but Red Dead Redemption is supposed to be one of the best of the FPS/RPG hybrids. People whose opinion I trust have raved about the story as fantastic and gripping, when they weren’t bitching about how overpowered the mountain lions were.
Now, about how well the FPS parts of it work…? I couldn’t tell you. FWIW, I really enjoyed Stalker of Chernobyl (installed, but haven’t played Clear Sky yet.) and Fallout New Vegas. Just found a cheap copy of Fallout 3, so that’s going to be next.
for some alternate ending goodness so it’s less annoying that I felt a couple nights ago but I still think that feeling cheated was a valid response to the original ending I had.
Agreed that Dragon Age, for instance, handled the alternate ending thing much better and I’m not against the concept on a lesser scale than DA but I do feel that it’s “unfair” to give an abrupt and cheesy ending for simply following a mission objective.
Anyway… Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. Good game. People should go play it (get the Complete mod). Just be ready for a less than stellar ending depending on what you do
I got it with a bundle with Stalker: Call of Pripyat but haven’t started that one yet. Clear Sky wasn’t included so it’ll have to wait.
If you don’t mind a game that’s all multi-player all the time (unless you go against AI-controlled “bots”), I recommend Team Fortress 2. As someone whose last First Person Shooter was Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64, I found the game to be easy to learn, hard to master, but tons of fun along the way.
The aesthetic of the game is probably a lot sillier than you may be used to–it’s set in a very cartoony 1960s world–but the gameplay is surprisingly deep and there are players at all skill levels.
It’s funny so many people recomended Metro 2033. I just finished it and it is the very definition of what I describe in my OP about ineffective guns. Even the reviewer in Ars Technica agrees: Metro 2033 review on PC: inching towards sunlight | Ars Technica
