Finding the Fun in FPS Campaigns

Hey. Hi. Hello. Mark here, with Game Maker's Toolkit. You know, I used to love first person shooters. I grew up playing games like Doom, Half Life, Blood, No One Lives Forever, and Duke Nukem 3D. I used to adore this genre, but, more recently, I've become pretty bored with these shooter campaigns. We see the same game mechanics and the same combat loops and the same level design over and over again, just with slightly different hats. And maybe a flying section, if you're lucky.

But in 2016, two games came along that reminded me just how much FUN a shooter can be. Because when developers are more interested in frantic firefights and varied gameplay, than historical accuracy and set piece explosions, we end up with games like DOOM, which is id Software's gory tribute to 90s game design, and Titanfall 2, which has more imagination in one level than most games achieve in their entire story mode.

And, yeah, everyone's already said how awesome these games are. But considering how much I enjoyed 'em, I think I'd be remiss not to cover them on the channel, and take an indepth look at how these two games, basically saved the first person shooter campaign. Starting, with Doom - which has the best combat loop in a decade. Wait, when did Resident Evil 4 come out? Yeah. Best in a decade. Each encounter in this game is a breathless scrum between the demons and the doomslayer - who richochets around the environment like a pinball, bouncing off enemies and threading through tight corridors to pick up health and ammunition.

It's fast, basically. Not just because your movement speed is high, but also because id forcefully rejected just about every piece of shooter design that has been employed to slow this genre down. Like, take aim down sights. In a normal shooter, accuracy sucks when shooting from the hip so you have to zoom in to look through an ironsight or a scope - which... massively reduces your speed. Doom ditches that: outside of a few guns, there is no aim down sights.

Also, you're as accurate when running at full speed, as you are when standing still, so you can shoot when you're on the go. And because you can strafe at the same speed as you can run, you can orbit around an enemy, pummelling them with bullets and avoiding their fire. Oh, that's because enemies use projectiles instead of hitscan. A quick reminder: hitscan weapons hurt you as soon as the enemy pulls the trigger. Projectile weapons fire physical, slow-moving objects at you, that you can dodge.

If you do get hit, you won't be hiding behind cover for your health to regenerate. Instead, you'll need to hunt around the arena to find a health pack. Or, even better, run towards an injured enemy to unleash a glory kill, which lets loose a shower of health pickups. If most of Doom's design keeps you moving around enemies, the glory kill system pushes you towards them. It makes you feel like a brutal predator, taking down your prey one by one. Plus, that satisfying split-second animation gives you much-needed time to blink, and consider your next move.

Because Doom is a surprisingly tactical shooter, where you're executing different plans all the time - just, at a hundred miles an hour. As I talked about in my episode on the original Doom, this new game has a bestiary of unique demons who all work in very different ways. There's the Revenant, who batters you with missiles. The bumbling Cacodemon, who floats in close to munch on your face. This dude, who chases you about like a quarterback. And the pinky demon, who you take out like a bullfighter. It has a shield on the front, so wait for it to charge past you and then blast it in the butt to kill it.

So you'll need to pick your priorities, which might mean dodging pinkies and cacodemon fireballs while you focus your fire on a deadly hell razer or an annoying summoner. Each enemy makes you move in a different way, too, as you head for cover or snake through bullets or just run the hell away. And then there's the other piece of shooter wisdom that Doom punches into a billion bits. While most games limit you to a couple weapons at a time, Doom lets you carry an entire Walmart's worth of firearms on you at once - all accessed from a radial menu that slows, but doesn't stop the action.

Different guns have different uses. The fast-action assault rifle is great for needling enemies and stopping them from shooting, the shotgun works great up close, the rocket launcher is deadly but risky, and there's the one-hit, one-kill chainsaw which showers you with ammo, but runs out of gas quick. So pick your targets well. Juggling guns and enemies is something of a puzzle. and you've got to figure out the answer in the seconds before you get tackled by a pinky and turned into a thick red paste.

This new Doom also adds verticality to levels, with a satisfying double jump, a generous system for quickly clambering up platforms, and the ability to chain a jump into a glory kill for a big leap between spots. And so, between different enemies and different level layouts, id software can effectively cobble together an infinite number of combat encounters. But, and here's the rub, even the best firefights in a decade get boring after a while and Doom can be an intensely repetitive game.

Between endless battles you get some exploration stuff and some so-so platforming bits. And you can divert from the path to pick up secrets and collectibles. Personally, I vowed to avoid hunting down collectibles forever after shooting 100 pigeons in Grand Theft Auto IV and seriously questioning my life choices. And I think I'm becoming allergic to upgrade trees, too. But even if you do go after Doom's various trinkets and upgrades, jumping at pipes and looking for secrets can send the game's intensity from 11 to 0 in painful, whiplash fashion.

Which brings us to Titanfall 2: a game with an expert sense of pacing and the best FPS campaign in a decade. Wait, when did Half Life 2 come out? Yeah. Best in a decade. BT-7274: Got you Now, when I say pacing, i'm talking about two different things. One, is how often a game is introducing new and original ideas to shake things up. And Titanfall 2 is doing that constantly through its tautly-wound single player campaign.

In this level, you grab a tool that can be used to turn off fans, flip platforms, and hack robot sentries. Another stage takes place in a sci-fi Ikea factory, as you bounce through pre-fab houses on a monster conveyer belt. This level has you wall-running on a spaceship, high above the planet. And, of course, there's press Left Bumper to time travel. Effect and Cause, as is the level is called, lets you ping back and forth between two moments in time - from a squeaky clean research centre in the past, to its charred ruins in the present.

It's a visual spectacle and a brilliant idea, but what makes it so rad is how it impacts the two things Titanfall does best: combat and platforming. In shootouts, you can phase out of time, and then phase back in, now behind a group of soldiers. Then again, the present timeline is crawling with these vicious dinosaur enemies, so you have to juggle two combat encounters at once - often jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

And there are the platforming bits, where you switch timelines mid-jump to phase in walls and safe spots beneath your feet. It's brilliant. And then, at the end of the level, Cooper rips the time machine off of his wrist, and the mechanic is gone for the rest of the game. Tossed away, before you ever have a chance to get bored of it. And that focus on keeping the player engaged is how Titanfall 2 is always operating. Because the other aspect of pacing is how well a game manages to mix up its most fundamental pillars of gameplay.

Titanfall 2 has firefights, it has platforming bits, it has titan battles, and it has some story stuff too. And the game does a brilliant job of switching between these sections before you ever have a chance to get tired of them. Each style of gameplay moves at a slightly different speed, and tests slightly different skills - so you don't get fatigued from constant action, but there are no lulls in the pace either. Some aspects of Titanfall 2 are better than others. The platforming's fantastic, though, why isn't the grapple hook in the singleplayer?

The titan bits are pretty dull. And the combat is really good... but it doesn't quite reach the heights of Doom. Like that game, Titanfall 2 wants to keep you on the move - as seen in the flashy CGI trailer at the start of the game. TRAILER NARRATOR: The pilot is the true dominant force. Fast and agile. Graceful, yet devastating. So you get tools to move fast, like a super long slide and a wall run that increases your speed and your defence. And certain enemies push you to run, like the tick: which is a sort of frag grenade on spider legs that chases you around the arena and will kill you if you don't get moving.

But where Doom asks you to move around and towards enemies, in my experience, Titanfall 2 more often makes you run away from the fight. Part of this has to do with the shooter tropes that Doom so confidently rejected. Aim down sights and slow strafing encourage you to get some distance from enemies before engaging. Unless you've got a shotgun, that is. Plus, hitscan weapons, regenerating health, and even the need to reload your weapon force you into cover and retreat.

And if Respawn really expects players to wall-run and shoot at the same time then... well, for one, that's pretty hard. Maybe it's easier on a keyboard and mouse. But, also, the level design doesn't exactly support it. At the beginning of the game, you run a thing called The Gauntlet which is a sort of obstacle course where you jump, slide, and wall-run, while simultaneously taking out foes. The design of The Gauntlet, which is like a winding corridor littered with pockets of enemies, allows for a joyous moment of zig-zag warfare as you bounce between walls while letting off shots and grenades.

The game itself never really sees anything like this. The arenas are mostly just big boxes and the platforming sections are completely devoid of enemies. Because if you want gamers to play in a certain way, you've got to encourage them, through systems, like the glory kill; or level design; or incentives, like the scores in Platinum Games. Otherwise, they'll more likely play it in the most safe and boring way possible.

Because even Call of Duty has wall-run these days, but I still played Infinite Warfare by cowering behind a series of walls and boxes. Which is the same way we've been playing shooters for years - because it feels like most FPS campaigns have been working off the same blueprints for the last decade. Which is why games like Doom and Titanfall 2 - and other wacky shooters like Wolfenstein and Bulletstorm - are such a breath of fresh air.

They remind us to question the design trends that have built up in certain genres. They remind us that variety comes from clever level design and expert pacing, not just historical set dressing. And, above all else, games like Doom and Titanfall 2 remind us that first person shooters can be fun. Thanks for watching. Game Maker's Toolkit is powered by the crowd-funding website Patreon, and these are my top tier supporters.

Here's an interesting fact. The director and singleplayer lead of Titanfall 2, Steve Fukuda and Mackey McCandlish, were design leads on Call of Duty 4. So while Activison might be stuck making the same game every year, the guys and gals in the trenches are capable of doing much more interesting stuff. If they get the chance. Anyway, after these credits have run I have a couple episodes you might want to check out. Before Doom 2016 came out, I looked back at the original game to talk about the importance of unique enemies.

And you can learn more about hitscan weapons and regenerating health, in a video called "How Games Do Health"