I just finished listening to the 2016 game of the year podcast, where it came down to a choice between Doom and Hitman. Doom managed to get second place, but not before a few people wondered aloud, has there ever been a better fps campaign? I'll list a few, but before I do, let's go over quickly why I don't think it's all that great. First, the glory kills. If you don't share in the giddy thrill that most seem to get out of these over the top violent finishers, then a big part of the appeal is gone. Second, the Rune Challenges. You can ignore them I suppose, but these minigame challenges spinkled throughout the middle of the game don't do much for the atmosphere or pacing. Third, the Hell level. I admit I haven't finished the game yet, but I nearly quit playing once I got here and hope I don't have to go back to finish it - similarly, I never finished the original Half Life after reaching Xen. I'm not saying it's a bad game, and it's a good showcase for my new GTX 1060, however I don't think it is as good a campaign as:

• Rainbow Six Vegas 1 or 2
• Halo 1 or Halo 3
• F.E.A.R.
• Condemned: Criminal Origins
• Crysis
• Bioshock 1, 2 or Infinite
• Call of Duty: Black Ops
• Original Doom!

To name a few..

Man oh man, subjectivity is the name of the game.

I agree that Bioshock is good, and FEAR, but most of the other games I actively dislike.

And my list would include Metro 2033 and Last Light.

Also, I hate console shooters.

Yes, there are a lot of better fps campaigns out there.

There are better shooter campaigns. I don't think that any of those are.

I dont even think it was the best shooter campaign in 2016. Opinions!

I definitely enjoyed bioshock infinite and condemned more. Not sure condemned is an fps though, more of a first person horror melee game.

I would probably be enjoying Doom more if there was less 'first person horror melee', ha ha

Oh? Why not tell us which shooters are better than Doom and what I've listed?

Half Life 2 is for sure a better campaign, by miles, like not even close. Doom was fun for about 2 hours at most.

I guess you're referring to Titanfall 2? I might check it out later but dealing with Origin puts me off

Crysis/Crysis 3/Bulletstorm/Painkiller/Doom 2, that's about it. Debatable though except for Doom 2.

Bioshock 2? Lol.

Also, finish that game boii. Can't really judge a story without seeing it start to finish.

I half agreed/disagreed with the Bomb staff; I think it's the best shooter campaign since Half Life 2.

How much shooting is there in Condemned? I've only played the second game, but the shooting there was easily the worst part of the game. And as much as I love BioShock, it wasn't a great FPS from a mechanics standpoint.

I wonder how much of the crew's Doom love is based in nostalgia for how shooters used to be. I'm just a bit too young to have played Doom (old Doom? Doom '93?) when it was new, but I have fond memories of playing Duke Nukem 3D when it was relatively new. Doom '16 felt like a modernized version of those old games. It wasn't trying to tell a deep story (despite what the crew seemed to think), it was all about shooting the hell out of some demons. I enjoyed it, but not anywhere near as much as some people did.

Speculation about why some people loved Doom aside, I enjoyed Bioshock 1 and Infinite more. They aren't better shooters, but I think they have better campaigns. I'm going to throw Singularity in there as well. Again, not a better shooter, but a more interesting campaign. I'd say System Shock 2 as well, but that's pre-Half-Life 2.

On a related note, I don't think the campaign in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare got enough play last year. That was actually pretty good, and tried a few different things.

It's all subjective. I don't think F.E.A.R., Condemned, Crysis, Bioshock 1, 2 or Infinite and Black Ops had good campaign stories. And specially not better than DOOM's.

Bulletstorm needs more love. What a great bunch of tools that game gives you to create mayhem.

I'm one of the very few who didn't even enjoy the new DOOM, so to me a lot of the games mentioned here have more fun single player campaigns.

First Call of Duty and expansion, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Operation Flashpoint (plus two expansions), Quake 2 are some others that come to mind.

I have little nostalgia for the original DOOM games. I came to them super late (like four or five years ago late) and I like them a bunch but have no real deep love for them. I still entirely agree DOOM is the best shooter campaign in years. Bioshock and Half-Life 2 are the only ones I can think of that are also in that conversation and I'm fairly wishy-washy on Half-Life. It's all subjective in the end, but god damn I think DOOM is just the best.

This thread is full of objectively incorrect opinions.

@stryker1121 said:

There was a little shooting in the first Condemned, you would pick up pistols and shotguns that had limited rounds and couldn't be reloaded. So you would pick up a gun, check the mag, and the next couple of guys you ran into you could shoot in the head to avoid a scuffle. I can't remember shooting in the second game at all but it worked well in the first one

I've always wondered if people are simply misremembering the Black Ops campaign as being good because the multiplayer was so cool. To me it was one of the weakest campaigns of the series; even Modern Warfare 3 for all its creative bankruptcy had smarter level design and more varied objectives. The sixties spy theme could have been so cool but the team showed no interest in capturing the esthetics and technology of the era or the dynamics of its historical conflicts. The whole thing felt utterly loveless. Blops II did the historical thing way better.

@sagalla: there are plenty of really great single player campaigns, some that are better than Doom.

FEAR is most definitely not one of them, unless you have an unhealthy fetish for warehouses and dilapidated office buildings.

@quarters said:

I will definitely check out Infinite Warfare when a Steam sale rolls around, I don't jump on the COD games early anymore because I think the Multiplayer isn't as good as it used to be

@johncallahan said:

I first saw DOOM on a large rear projection screen in a store in 1993. Just blew me away. I played it a little while later on a 486 with a sound blaster, nothing came close

@humanity said:

For me it was the firefights and creepiness in FEAR - So many people rave about Half Life 2, but I thought the enemy soldiers weren't as smart as the first game. Those antlions too, pretty stupid. A few great dramatic moments though.

Son of a...I haven't gotten to the GOTY podcasts yet and then you go and put that right in the first sentence of the first post.

I thought people liked Doom despite the glory kills? The fact that health/ammo are tied to them certainly adds to the combat (and a great idea), I still wished it was faster. The challenges I really liked. The pacing you want the game to have is not the pacing of the game. It's a lot more methodical and exploration heavy which the challenges fit in. I agree with Hell though, weakest and ugliest part of the game. Just didn't want to be there.

@voidoid said:

Yes the Multiplayer was great, I liked the story and atmosphere of Black Ops I guess. Reminded me of films like the Manchurian Candidate (1962) & Apocalypse Now, gritty stuff.

@humanity: Hah, I just came to post that FEAR is the one shooter on that list that's definitely better than Doom to me.

Comdemned is its own thing and I don't consider it primarily a shooter. It makes for a funny comparison for people disliking Doom's glory kills though. I, however, love them. Almost as much as ripping an Imps heart out in berserk mode.

@sagalla: there is a difference between an overall good campaign and simply above average AI in an otherwise unremarkable campaign.

FEAR is a concept that they stuck in boring levels and made into a game. Someone wrote "bullet time" on a chalkboard, someone else added "physics" and then some haphazardly added on "horror???" Then they made a good engine, decent AI and cool particle effects, sat down and mused "ok now we need to make a game out of these things."

The end result was FEAR.

You say 'boring' levels, I would say 'claustrophobic' levels. You didn't play this on a console did you? This is definitely a PC only game

DOOM is great, and I'm far more into the oldschool shooter than that CoD garbage, but I actually started and completed two run-throughs of Dishonored 2 (one without powers) before finishing DOOM. Hell I'm still not done with DOOM yet. I guess I think Dishonored 2 has a better campaign than DOOM on some gut level, and if properties like CoD and Titanfall are in the discussion then I don't see why Deus Ex-alikes can't be.

This thread is very funny. Good job internet.

If ya think Crysis has a better campaign, you're just looking for something else. I agreed with everything they said about Doom.

@fnrslvr: The action is the primary genre defining feature. Dishonored isn't much in the way of shooting. Deus Ex can actually be played as a shooter, Dishonored not so much.

The only game I would get behind on your list is Halo 1. But, that was a seminal game for me. I'm with you in saying Bioshock has a better story, but I wouldn't call it a better first person SHOOTER than Doom.

I have disagree. The shooting in FEAR really fun and the bullet time was well and a lot of stuff was built around it to make it even cooler. The weapons are also really awesome and are relly fun to shoot (the penetrator, that gun that turns people into skeletons). I actually like the weapons in FEAR more than the weapons in DOOM and really like the weapons in DOOM. And lastly FEAR also has some really fun combat encounter design.

The enviroments get boring and the horror aspect is take it or leave (I don`t really care about it), but overall I think FEAR is a really great package. The chalkboard analogy is pretty dismissive and can be used do dismiss pretty much anything. "The DOOM team wrote "metal, gore and demons" on a chalkboard and then made some good tech."

So apart from being "claustrophobic" how is the campaign of FEAR better than that of Doom exactly? What are some examples where one is clearly superior to the other? The AI in most modern shooters has caught up with the flanking and maneuvering that could be glimpsed at times in FEAR. Imps are especially representative of this as they're able to follow you wherever you go and pose an unrelenting threat that doesn't give you a single moment to breathe. They swarm you from all sides and flank you when you're not looking, and when you start mixing in other enemy types that all have their own specific behaviors it all becomes this frantic dance of bullets and fireballs. Level design ranges from the "claustrophobic" variety found in the facilities to wide open spaces in the hell levels, but unlike FEAR every arena in Doom has added verticality to it. The levels themselves could be an entirely subjective matter I guess - if you don't like sci-fi space facilities and such then I guess you just don't like it, but I'd still argue that they were visually more interesting than the drab, brown levels you ran through in FEAR.

Of course this is all a matter of opinion I suppose. You can just answer "NAH I liked FEAR better just because" and I'd be hard pressed to argue otherwise, but hopefully you can rationalize your line of thinking a little more eloquently than that.

@odinsmana you actually can't use the chalkboard analogy to Doom so easily because you can see a very comprehensive beginning, middle and end to that game. There aren't parts of it that are "take it or leave it" territory. It's all a very tight package - it's focused and honed in a way that FEAR simply isn't. You want fun combat encounter then go fight some imps, a baron and a bunch of pinkies in a room that lets you clamber up onto ledges and bounce off pads while raining down missiles and plasma left and right. There are plenty of fun combat encounter in Doom, like basically the entire game.

Yes. Although, of course, it is a subjective opinion. The action and map design in the campaign are really good, no doubt about it, but the breaking point, for me, is about characters. I couldn't get behind the idea that the story and characters in DOOM (including DOOM Guy) are something memorable or even fleshed out. If anything, I think the attractive part of the characters is that they are exaggerated and barely defined: evil old lady is mustache twirling evil, corporate representative hologram guy just spur nonsensical PR representative speech, and DOOM Guy actively challenges any attempt of the game to deepen his character.

For example, 2014's Wolfenstein has a better campaign than 2016's DOOM, the setting is better defined and the characters are miles better than in DOOM. Bioshock too, if we rule out everything after you turning into a Big Daddy.

I noticed you dodged my question about whether you played on a console. If I was to point to a shooter that benefits a lot from a mouse & keyboard setup, you've got games like Unreal Tournament, and on the single player side, you've got FEAR. I just can't imagine having fun in this game with a controller. Of course having fun in a game is subjective but with Doom I can only play in short bursts - encounters feel a bit like a chore when you have to worry about ammo levels for so many different guns and weapons all the time

@sagalla: I played it on PC ages ago. I really don't see how playing FEAR on mouse and keyboard as opposed to a controller changes anything about the actual structure of the game itself. I couldn't help but noticed you dodged my entire question as well, you know about what makes FEAR a better campaign than Doom in your opinion?

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Battlefield: Bad Company is single handily the best shooter campaign I have ever played.

I'd give Bulletstorm an honorable mention.

I agree about the characters, the story is 'barely there', and it would of been nice if the logs you found played audio instead of diving into menu text. Now you've got me wondering about Portal 2. Would you call that a fps campaign? That was better too :)

I feel like Half-Life 2 is the only other game I'm comfortable considering in the discussion. Other shooters have had greater impact for the totality of their offerings/innovations, but few shooters have campaigns capable of going toe-to-toe with Doom '16.

For the record, last year I preferred Titanfall 2's campaign to Doom's, but that is entirely subjective. And even I can look at Doom and point to the things it does to reframe the standards and norms of the first-person shooter.

@humanity: I played FEAR on both console and PC, I also don't see how one or the other changes anything about the sub-par game that it is.

If it was so bad, why did you play it on two platforms?

You don't think Bioshock 1 or Infinite had good stories? Sure, Infinite goes a little off the rails near the end, but even with that, both of those games' stories are excellent.

@sagalla: I didn't say I finished it on two platforms! When you are young and bored and a buddy says "here is this console version of this game you played and didn't like", you put it in, play the first chapter, then take it out and remember "oh yeah, this game kinda sucked"