10 ways to tell if your 'next-gen' shooter is 'current-gen'

Hey guys!

For my first post to GiantBomb I've been thinking about all the marketing that we hear about games and shooters in general and came up with these 10 ways to tell that its not "next-gen".

1) On rails - one route through a building or environment? Hedges and concrete barriers or locked doors bar your way? Tisk, Tisk.

2) Dropped weapons can't be picked up. Dangerous enemy with a decent gun... you killed him but where'd that gun go?

3) Enemy fire 30 sniper round at you and never run out but when you pick it up you only get 15 shots.

4) Any kind of heavy weapons fire or explosives leave no discernable deformation of the landscape and you can't shoot down helicopters even if you shoot the pilot or the engine.

5) You play an ex-military guy who is in the wrong place at the wrong time or a military guy who somehow is selected to be in an elite task-force for no particular reasons.

6) Gore is so gory - Designers think that GORE = Next-Gen. It doesn't. Who needs to see someone's head come off and the body fall down like some kind of rag-doll physics experiment conducted in slow motion. Yea people die but do we need to see peoples eyes rolling up into their heads or hear them choke every last gasp of blood from their throat? Probably not.

7) Loading time takes longer than playing the level.

8) Enemies are in the same place as they were the last time you played the game - because to be a bad guy, you need the ability to spend large amounts of time waiting in a particular spot to be taken out by the protagonist.

9) You have team mates that hold your hand and walk you through the level the way they want you to, praising you for doing what they say or for standing behind them when you actually could do the job better.

10) You finally get to a choice in the game, only for the choice to be taken away by a cut scene or you have to reload from the last checkpoint because the choice you made was not the one that the game required.

Feel free to suggest additions or corrections!

I don't understand the existence of this

None of these apply to Unreal Tournament. The true next gen is last gen! Mind blown.

What is this?

So hey guys cherry pie is pretty good eh?

I see one of the writers for David Letterman has decided to join us.

@cannonballBAM said:

Well this made my day. Thank you good sir.

If it comes out - It's current gen...

@laserbolts said:

What is this?

Utterly generic bitching? Is it ironic that a criticism of adhering too closely to tropes itself adheres too closely to tropes?

@Demoskinos said:

So hey guys cherry pie is pretty good eh?

Fuck yes. I could use some cherry pie right about now.

Your game looks brown and terrible
Almost like it has a built in Instagram filter 
 
No wait, that's just most of my 360 games. 
 
I got nothing

I guess my humour gets a little lost when its read, do you not notice a lot of this stuff when you play modern shooters? I was thinking for all of the fanfare of the modern military shooters, they still have at least some of the elements that restrict the player to a boring, hand-holding style game.

Guess I've missed the mark with you guys.... ah well.

Prolly should have just said Hi and wasn't actively trying to bitch.

Wait... are we talking about the next next gen or this current gen which is considered the next gen of our current generation. Gehhhhhh!!! I confused myself.

While I understand that this is meant to be a joke, I don't think designers think that gore equates to next-gen. It just makes sense that enemies would bleed quite a bit when you pour bullets into their fleshy bodies.

@Linkster7 said:

@cannonballBAM said:

Well this made my day. Thank you good sir.

Yup. Successful thread in my opinion.

@Video_Game_King said:

@laserbolts said:

What is this?

Utterly generic bitching? Is it ironic that a criticism of adhering too closely to tropes itself adheres too closely to tropes?

I thought utterly generic bitching was most of the posts after the first and before yours truly.

Anyway, 1 and 5 are the most overused of the bunch and maybe worth complaining about. But 6...nooo...lately it's a nicety to say violence is overdone, but we are talking about shooters (and cherry pie), which entails shooting, and usually you're shooting things that can shoot back and therefor said things are generally alive, making a shooter a killer. And killer-ing without organic damage kind of falls under complaint number 4 doesn't it? As in you just shot that duder with a .50 caliber and left "no discernable deformation of the landscape", which landscape, in this case, is his face.

"Next-gen" isn't going to be about anything in the OP. "Next-gen" is going to mean more sequels, with slightly better framerate and maybe some more antialiasing.

I don't believe the hypothetical next-gen the OP envisions will exist on consoles for at least another iteration.

@intrepidfoxx said:

I guess my humour gets a little lost when its read, do you not notice a lot of this stuff when you play modern shooters? I was thinking for all of the fanfare of the modern military shooters, they still have at least some of the elements that restrict the player to a boring, hand-holding style game.

Guess I've missed the mark with you guys.... ah well.

Prolly should have just said Hi and wasn't actively trying to bitch.

That's exactly what you should have done.

Fortunately, you can move on from this silly thread and just say hello. You can even edit the original post to say "I should have rethought this. Hi guys!" :)

@Demoskinos said:

So hey guys cherry pie is pretty good eh?

I love pie! Apple pie that is.

What the hell does next-gen and current-gen even mean anymore? Christ it's 2012, the term was a bit stupid 5 years ago and is even more so now.

It's just a joke guys, no need to flame the dude.

@TruthTellah said:

@intrepidfoxx said:

I guess my humour gets a little lost when its read, do you not notice a lot of this stuff when you play modern shooters? I was thinking for all of the fanfare of the modern military shooters, they still have at least some of the elements that restrict the player to a boring, hand-holding style game.

Guess I've missed the mark with you guys.... ah well.

Prolly should have just said Hi and wasn't actively trying to bitch.

That's exactly what you should have done.

Fortunately, you can move on from this silly thread and just say hello. You can even edit the original post to say "I should have rethought this. Hi guys!" :)

No. You should just do exactly what you wanted to do and keep on.

The first rule of the internet is that everybody is smarter and cooler than you.

The second rule is they want to make sure you know it.

The third rule is that rules one and two are lies these people learned in high school.

This is not the place to give a crap if your thread does not go as planned.

If you want acceptance, buy a yearly subscription to get a gold medallion under your avatar, reach 10,000 posts, and suddenly every obvious cliche, naive opinion, or occasional wellspring of insightful truth you write here becomes scripture...

I guess my humour gets a little lost when its read, do you not notice a lot of this stuff when you play modern shooters? I was thinking for all of the fanfare of the modern military shooters, they still have at least some of the elements that restrict the player to a boring, hand-holding style game.

Guess I've missed the mark with you guys.... ah well.

Prolly should have just said Hi and wasn't actively trying to bitch.

@Demoskinos said:

So hey guys cherry pie is pretty good eh?

I personally like Pumpkin pie, I like my pie before it got all linear and fruity, when you could MOD it with whip cream and shit, you put whip cream on a cherry pie it's gonna break it.

@plaintomato said:

@TruthTellah said:

@intrepidfoxx said:

I guess my humour gets a little lost when its read, do you not notice a lot of this stuff when you play modern shooters? I was thinking for all of the fanfare of the modern military shooters, they still have at least some of the elements that restrict the player to a boring, hand-holding style game.

Guess I've missed the mark with you guys.... ah well.

Prolly should have just said Hi and wasn't actively trying to bitch.

That's exactly what you should have done.

Fortunately, you can move on from this silly thread and just say hello. You can even edit the original post to say "I should have rethought this. Hi guys!" :)

No. You should just do exactly what you wanted to do and keep on.

The first rule of the internet is that everybody is smarter and cooler than you.

The second rule is they want to make sure you know it.

The third rule is that rules one and two are lies these people learned in high school.

This is not the place to give a crap if your thread does not go as planned.

If you want acceptance, buy a yearly subscription to get a gold medallion under your avatar, reach 10,000 posts, and suddenly every obvious cliche, naive opinion, or occasional wellspring of insightful truth you write here becomes scripture...

Hey, intrepidfoxx was cool and understood why this post seemed a bit off. Don't shame him for being reasonable and listening to people. I appreciate someone who can see a misstep when they make it and suggest improvement in the future. If only more people were so mature with themselves.

Cut him some slack. I'm sure he'll do fine around here.

One cannot escape the fact that if they release a game now it is current generation. Regardless of how you make the game aesthetically or otherwise you can not escape the passage of time. And by default if a next-gen shooter is released it is then current gen. Time is a bitch ain't it?

This list will be interesting when PS4 gen launches, and we can see how much so-called improvement it brings.

That said I disagree with the 5th one because it has nothing to do with whether a game is next gen or not. Possibly 6 as well.

More Nintendo denial.

I'm a next gen/mid-core gamer.

@intrepidfoxx: My guess is that this is satire and that 99% of the duder's here don't realize it. Careful with your opinions here, OP. Nearly all of us have sticks up our asses and no way to get them removed.