You could do it either way. But either way, you still had to fight monsters, and that just ain’t right.
Absolutely, the game is geared towards exploring the environment, not clearing rooms. There are too many puzzles and different paths for it to be a straight forward FPS. It was spoiled in as much as Mario 64 was “spoiled” i.e. not at all.
Eh. Count me as one who wasn’t impressed by Mario 64.
Of course, part of it was that I was brand-loyal to Nintendo before the N64, and I was really disillusioned when they kept pushing the release date back further and further and further…and then it finally came out and it used archaic, expensive cartridges, and for a while only seemed to offer remakes and games for little kids. Maybe I would’ve liked Mario 64 better if I hadn’t been so bitter about Nintendo’s fall from grace as the world leader in game consoles.
I agree. I haven’t really been interested in any FPS since Wolfenstein - and then only because it was a bit of a novelty. But yes, all games must go this way, if for no other reason than the high-end graphics capabilities originally demanded by the FPS games and gamers aren’t much use for anything else. Even the latest version of Windows wants to be a bloody FPS.
Be fair, people. Not all games will be FPS. Some will become RTS instead!
… except for those that are FPSRTS. Like Battlezone! (Technically not a FPS, but awesome)
It’s not the perspective that ruins the game for me. The addition of a damn flight sequence stops me dead. I hate the mixing of an unrelated game play in the middle of a game, which you can’t opt out of. They started adding first person shooters to adventure games, and that left a product that neither group of players liked. I prefer RTS, They blew it on the Myst series later on. They added in an interactive online community that they thought would be popular. I would have been in testing had I not gotten sick. I did fill out a form saying what was the top features and what were the worst. The players of the Myst series were not the group of persons to gather in a virtual room and pretend to do do stuff like at a real gathering.
Many games offer the perspective of choice for those that read the instructions.
I think it depends. I tend to prefer using controllers when possible, but for a game designed for a PC they don’t work so well.
I don’t really like FP-anything games. They destroy my sense of the environment around me, and I have some of my mother’s jumpiness–suddenly being attacked from behind is decidedly Not Fun. FPS games are too immersive for me, I get freaked out. For the most part I prefer games that are more strategy than killing hordes of enemies. Give me a good RPG, like FFIII. And maybe a couple more phoenix downs, I ran out.
Heh. I’m gonna start calling soft drinks “beer”. I mean, they’re all liquid, right? And to me, anything that’s liquidy and carbonated is “beer”, no matter how much Coke window dressing you hang on it. To hell with what other people call things, I’m defining my own genres. 
Role Playing Games are games where you play a role. When you only have 2 or 3 in-character quote options rather than a free-form, not to mention 2 or 3 strategic options in any given quest, your ability to roleplay is nearly non-existent.
So to call adventure games “RPGs” is inaccurate, as well.
I’m a very avid PC RPG gamer, and can never understand how people can play first person either! Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I used the first person view in Oblivion when I was sneaking, that’s about it. Any RPG’s I’ve played have the option to be in first or third person, and I always switch to third there too. First person makes me lose too much of my field of vision. I’m all for immersion in RPG’s but I’d rather stay alive too. 
FPS’s as a genre don’t appeal to me at all though. I lack the twitch reflex to make me good at them, first off. I don’t enjoy shoot 'em up or killing games, and don’t enjoy violence for violence’s sake in games either. The violence in EQ2, DAOC, LOTRO, WOW is stylized, so it’s not bothersome to me. Oblivion got a tad too realistic for me, but it was bearable.
Oblivion isn’t a FPS. It’s an RPG that you can play in first person mode.
Yeah, RPG isn’t a good name for a game like Oblivion, I agree, actually.
I’m almost totally with you on hating FPS’s, but I have a condition on which I enjoy them. They have to be linear. I have to be able to know my whereabouts at any given time and there can’t be too many ways to progress through the game. I like the Half Life series because that’s pretty much how it is in those games. One goal, one way to get there.
I just get so disoriented if there’s so many ways to get lost. I hate it when I have to back track or memorize maps and it’s worse when the game is in first-person. Metroid Prime is a good example of this. Overall an excellent game, but I had to use a guide and check the damn map in every room just to get through the game.
I pretty much hate all FPS, and many other FP perspective games. I have a theory on why this is. If a game has clearly stylized graphics and / or a third-person perspective, my evolution-built intuition about how to interact with the world doesn’t get triggered. I’m able to construct an artificial method of interaction with what I see.
But if a game is first-person and / or has very photo-realistic graphics, then I keep trying to interact with the environment in ways that my intuition tells me should work, but which the game does not allow. For example, I might see a slope in front of me in a first-person view. In real life, I know very damn well I can get up that slope easily. Even if it’s too steep to run up, I can walk up, or crawl up, or climb up. But in many cases my character is unable to do so because the slope is 1-degree too steep or something.
Also, doorways give me trouble. In real life, I rarely have trouble getting through a door. Yet, in FPS I have to thread the needle just right (or hope the designers have created an absurdly oversized doorway) in order to get through. Plus, the physics systems tend to be very realistic in some ways and very unrealistic in others. Grenades made fly and explode with superb accuracy, yet jumping and falling never work the way I’d expect.
Not to mention the number of times I’ve managed to get stuck walking perpetually forward with 1 cubic centimeter of my mass caught on the tiniest edge of a tree branch or decorative doodad.
That was sort of the point though I feel, onus on exploration than point and shoot.
Well, I hate to be Captain Contrary, but I really don’t like 3rd-Person Views in my games. I find them to be disorientating and completely detracting from the immersiveness of the game- I just don’t feel like I’m “there” in a 3PV game, the way I do in a First-Person one.
The major exceptions are the Fallout games and Arcanum, as well as anything else with an isometric view- that’s an entirely different kettle of fish though, IMHO.
Lets talk Metroid Prime again! When you walk past a steam vent you get condensation on your visor, through water you get rivulettes of water and nearby explosions make your face reflect briefly in the visor. All increases the immersiveness of the game.
I don’t really like first person view in games either, not limited to just FPS. I think the point of first person is to make you feel like you’re the character. It doesn’t really work for me because in real life I have peripheral vision and the ability to move my head around to keep track of what’s going on.
For me, seeing the character in a 3rd person view doesn’t ruin my immersion, so I prefer that, especially for action games, since it helps prevent unrealistic surprises, like zombies coming up on my right side without me seeing them.
The MGS games really got the perspective right.