@bamcreeps you mentioned how stale FPS evolution has been and how excited you were for SoT to mix things up. I feel the same way and I'm curious if anyone else wants to highlight some gems from FPS history that tried innovating some interesting way.
Here are some stand outs for me that pushed the FPS genre into interesting directions:
Tribes1 (1998)
- Vehicles, large maps, flying, skiing, deployable structures
Battlezone2 (1999)
- RTS/FPS hybrid, base building with hover tanks, unit and resource management
Halo (2001)
- Refined the console FPS experience and added vehicles.
Wulfram 2 (2002)
- Large server hosted map, players deploy spawn points and turrets to expand control of map and could air drop deployable crates from a mothership. Motherships played a 3v3 game of chess in the sky against the enemy team, controlled by a single item on the ground, which could be captured. A game could last an hour to a day depending on how active people were.
10six (now called Project Visitor) (2002)
- RTS/FPS with unit/equipment management fighting for territory control over an entire planet, split into a grid. Each grid square was a large map containing 5 random spawns of ore nodes. Your task was to find a map that had ore nodes arranged in defensible locations, build turrets to defend them, and return periodically to harvest and expand your units. Use units to attack other bases in a persistent world. Clans help defend each other's territory.
Natural Selection (2002)
- experimented with asymmetrical teams aliens vs humans with one player playing the RTS overlord lead.
Splinter Cell (2002)
- asynchronous gameplay, spies vs security
Battlefield 1942 (2002)
- large maps and vehicles
Savage (2003)
- PVE/PVP hybrid, upgradable home base structures, starter character that leveled up during the match and was reset on the next match. Melee and ranged combat. Gold and exp system.
UT2004
- large variety of vehicles executed with a lot of polish
Novelty progression:
- better graphics
- vehicles
- destructible environments.
- agency over environment / customize the map
Growing up with these games that thing that always stood out was a new experience. Arena shooters were fun the first few times you played them, but when a new one came out it didn't really grab me. Better graphics were cool if you were the first game with better graphics, but then 5 games came out with great graphics, and the novelty wears off. Then vehicles were invented and that was mind blowing (1942, halo, ut2004). Now its just expected. Destructible environments became a thing, that was mind blowing and you chased games with it, now the novelty has worn off. I loved TF2 when it came out, but it didn't innovate in the way these others did, it was just a very polished culmination of experiments. Overwatch is great, its the pinnacle of polished class based shooter, but it doesn't grab me the way these old games grabbed me when they came out. The experience it offers isn't something new, but it's packaged better than anything else I've seen.
So this post is mainly to highlight some gems in game innovation that stood out to me personally and to appreciate SoT for the unique experience it gives. I'm also curious if there are other games out there that tried something interesting I should know about! Let me know!
