Shooters, Consoles and Destiny – Oh My!

I have a long love of First Person Shooters and much like the MMO genre it has pretty much left me behind. The FPS experience wanted today and how they are programmed are very much not the kind of FPS I enjoy. I cut my teeth on shooters with Rainbow Six multi-player ladder. Rainbow Six was a crazy concept in shooters – bullets hurt! So if you got shot, you died. This made you play a certain way that had a lot of sense to it – be careful, check your corners, rely on teammates. There wasn’t even bunny hopping. The cool thing about that time in gaming is that there was no matchmaking so you had to go to a forum to set up your matches, and after both sides would report back the score, and the ladder would move. It was awesome.

From there I did the Battlefield series and spent a LOT of time with Battlefield 2142. The vehicular components and 64 v 64 was just epic and while there were some elements I didn’t enjoy (radar, revive) I spent years playing that game in a clan with our own servers. FLOT (Forward Line of Own Troops) is still on my gamer tag in steam. Near the end of my run with BF2142 I discovered Project Reality and that is the perfect FPS experience for my taste. Strategy, building, one shot deaths – no bunny hopping commandos. No squad? good luck living. Medics were limited (dead you are dead) and they could sometimes stop bleeding, but only in limited amounts. The key in this game was that you never wanted to get shot and you played that way. I still consider it the best First Person Shooter experience on the market – as long as you have the patience to learn the ropes. They are working on a standalone product (it is currently a mod) and I have a few posts tagged with them if you want to read more.

I still enjoyed some parts of the Call of Duty series but it was just the solo experience. The stories were okay to play through. The multi-player I just couldn’t get into – too twitchy and I was really looking for the thrill and experience of surviving a gunfight. It became far too arcade-y for my preference.  Much like my patience for the future MMO that immerses, I am waiting for the day the FPS does as well. They just aren’t my style anymore.

I haven’t jumped into the new console era yet. My X-Box 360 plays all the new titles just fine and besides, I have a PC for “serious” gaming. Consoles are for “social” gaming on premise – to have a bunch of friends over playing Madden, or other games with 2+ people. Of course that is a great way to play on a console. My kid and his friends are not going near my PC, but their grimy little paws can manhandle an X-Box controller all day without  my worry. And have you ever played a FPS on a console? It pales in comparison to PC gaming. I think my principled stance on the new consoles (and much to the failure of the way X-Box One is trending) is the lack of backward compatibility. Surely on a $500 rig based on computer technology they could sort that out. I guarantee I would have bought an X-Box ONE if they could – now I am toying with a PS4. Either way, now I have to have two units hooked up to enjoy my back catalog – something the PC completely avoids. I just don’t see the point of upgrading for better graphics when my computer already outperforms both.

The new way I started using my console this year is for exercise. I have a nice 60″ LED in the basement that the X-Box is hooked up to, and my elliptical just happens to be facing that TV (albeit pretty far back). I have a personal commitment to health and do 3 or 4 nights a week (I said commitment – not crazy passion!) in one hour chunks. Diablo 3 has been a blast to play that way and I think Skyrim is next (I bought it but barely played it).  The controller is a huge help here as mouse and keyboard would be impossible while on the machine and the multitasking is awesome. The X-Eliptical 360 is a great way for combining gaming and health. Anyone out there get current gen with the X-Box ONE or PS4? Was it worth the pickup?

All the above being said I would be lying if I didn’t say I was interested in Destiny, the hot and upcoming shooter from Activision and of course you already know of this. There are some compelling elements – The setting itself looks fantastic and the opportunity for a story play through with MMO elements and persistent character growth is hard to turn down. My main concern when researching the title is the shooter on console experience. I know a ton of people do it and I am sure with practice it is something I can get used to – but that is a big departure from any way I have played FPS’s. Go check out some of their media (if you haven’t) and the character development assets looks like the meld of an FPS with the single player MMO experience of today. And because it is a meld, and not either/or, that seems really attractive to me.

Are you going to Destiny? And if you are, and on the X-Box 360, want to run with me? Literally (elliptical gaming) and figuratively (saving the universe).