dsheinem wrote:Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Halo 3: ODST
Wolfenstein
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
Killzone 2
F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin
You left out some of the lesser known games like Section 8 and Cryostasis, and while the North American release date of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat was in 2010, it originally was released in Russia in 2009. That said, I hardly saw advertising for any of these three games. And I hardly saw advertising for F.E.A.R. 2 and Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood.
That said, arguing that there's been no real development or growth in the genre simply isn't true(this isn't pointed towards Dsheinem, I very much agree with his points). There have been several sub-categories developed for FPS, ranging from WW2 shooters to Tactical FPS, to Six Degree of Freedom FPS, to horror FPS(which technically fall under survival horror) and beyond. And let's face it, does Serious Sam play like Unreal or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or Deus Ex? Not really, beyond the perspective and the fact that you have a gun.
And if anybody thinks that FPS lack innovation because they have stuck with a first person perspective and guns, then they must also think that racing games should not involve races, puzzle games should not feature puzzles, platformers ought to not include platforms and jumping, fighting games shouldn't have fighting, and sports games ought not to include sports.
But perhaps some proof that the genre has evolved is required, so let's focus on health systems: in early FPS, there was no health. If you were hit once, you died. Eventually that evolved into multiple hits with a counter to show how many were remaining, which eventually changed to a numeric value, generally based on 100. Medkits could be grabbed to raise it back to 100 if you were hit, and other items could sometimes raise it beyond that to 200. After that it evolved again into a health bar, still with medkits or other methods of healing, and then into the regenerating systems we have today.
But even the regenerating systems have differences. Consider Halo's method of regenerating shields. Run out of shields and you can then lose health, which could be regained by grabbing medkits. Compare this to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's total lack of shields or health packs: if you were shot, you could hide around the corner until you completely regenerated. And then there was Far Cry 2's approach, where you could regenerate sections of your health bar, but syringes had to be used once you were below a bar to fill yourself back up to full. Get to the last one, and the animation became significantly longer, and therefore more dangerous to perform.
FPS has featured innovation, but it's also experiencing the limelight for this generation, and has been doing to since HALO began the current trend...though it could be argued that the popularity of GoldenEye(and before it Turok: Dinosaur Hunter) really paved the way for it. And before them, Doom and Wolfenstein 3D were being ported to bloody near everything, but they were preceded by Faceball 2000, a console remake of an old computer game MIDI Maze, which was merely building on the first FPS, Maze War. The overall effect has built up slowly into the massive wave we're currently experiencing, where many FPS receive large budgets and pick up large sales numbers.
But eventually it will lose popularity(and I feel it's already starting to), just as it happened to JRPGs, fighting games, platformers, and shmups. Yes, there is a very dedicated crowd of fans for each, and every now and again there is a major release in each of these genres that just about everybody seems to look into, but none are receiving the popularity they used to receive in their respective time periods.
