Would Call of Duty be better as a rail shooter?

[dogman91]

I don't think it would be better off.

See, as little control as you're actually given in CoD, you still have the illusion of control. Take that control away from the player, they likely wont bother.

Then I would say let's basically have the inverse of what JT's saying with his other point: make modern day FPS games that have big Metroidvania-like mazes, no auto-health, and tons of treasure and dog food to collect... I would buy it. Of course, except with all of today's big cinematic flair (which I'm not sure is necessarily better or worse).

[Menegrothx]

That big cinematic flair just kills the flow of gameplay. None of the story&athmosphere wise best FPS games of all time relied on cutscenes as a story telling method anyways.

[o.pwuaioc]

Pft, rail shooter? No way. They should become shmups.

[Menegrothx]

Pft, rail shooter? No way. They should become shmups.

Would be intresting to see fan reactions

[jfrost]

The real difference between a rail shooter and an FPS is that with a rail shooter, your environment is pre-determined and you have control over your aiming reticule, while in an FPS your aiming reticule is fixed to the center of the screen, but you can control the aspect of the environment you look at. It's like the difference between pointing at something with a mouse on a computer, or sliding around the background like an old microfilm setup. Either way, the basics of the gameplay is that you point at something and click to shoot it.

We've found lots of ways to make the FPS version more interesting though, and there hasn't been as much development of the rail shooter. One of the things that made games like CoD and Gears of War famous though is that they allowed you to find cover. This idea is more rooted in Time Crisis (a rail shooter) than it is in Doom (an FPS). If FPS games can incorporate ideas from rail shooters, I don't see why rail shooters couldn't steal some ideas from FPS games.

For example, if you had a moving character running through an on-rails enivironment, you could still have the rush of dashing from cover to cover, or of gaining better positioning for a better shot. You could even amp up the realism. The scrolling environmental background could be pre-rendered or even film footage of the world you see. If you mapped on some polygonal frames to the video, it would allow for the false impression that your character is actually running around in that environment by blending film footage with 3D animation (sort of like a Roger Rabbit of the gaming world, or an updated version of Astron's Belt). This would allow for more strategic shooting that takes advantage of the passing bits of cover and powerups that scroll by on the rails.

What I like about this idea is that it brings back the importance of single screen gameplay. This was actually something that I really liked about Gears of War too. In my opinion, Gears of War is just Space Invaders made 3D with some clever design ideas. Most of the gameplay takes place from one vantage point of a room. You have a bunch of enemies approaching, you have cover to hide behind and take shots at them, and they become more dangerous as they advance, so you have to fend off the hoardes. Almost every vertical shmup out there is just Galaga with a scrolling background. What they have done to make things interesting is that what scrolls in becomes important for the gameplay and they've really amped up the challenge of what happens on screen as you move your pixels around to dodge and destroy other pixels. The rail shooter could develop similarly to the shmup. I think the rail shooter is an under-developed genre that could still accomplish a lot within a single screen as you scroll through 3D environments.

I see you haven't played 2Spicy:

[J T]

No, I haven't, but now I want to.

[t0yrobo]

Medal of Honor Heroes for Wii had a ok rail shooter mode. It wasn't super great, but still it's at least a decent proof of concept. I think it used the same locations as the normal game, but I can't recall for sure.

[Valkyrie-Favor]

Nope. How would you use melee attacks?

[CD AGES]

Publish it as an arcade exclusive and you'll see a revival of the arcades

You never know. Take Guitar Hero Arcade by Raw Thrills and Konami. The Cabinet did moderately well selling over 2000 units in a span as little as 3 months.

[BoneSnapDeez]

lol this thread is awesome.

So the Call of Duty games would be good if they were changed completely and became rail shooters? Well I guess I agree with that.

I also think Sonic would be a great game if it was designed to be more Mario-like. And the Persona games would be fun if they were 50 hours shorter. I could do this all day...