What is a "Modern Singleplayer Shooter"?

So up until a few years ago I started playing singleplayer shooters due to the classic FPS craze around 2018 or so. Before that, I think the only singleplayer shooters I ever played were a few hours of HL2 from the Orange box and the Shadow Warrior Remake because it was free on Humble Bundle.

The defining thing about the Classic/Retro FPS craze that started around 2016 or so was that it was in opposition to "Modern Shooters." If you look at interviews with the DOOM 2016 developers for example, they said they wanted to move away from the trend of cover shooters with regenerating health, and ultra-linear level design. Over and over they insist how ground-breaking "push forward combat" is. Did video games before Doom 2016 not have aggression at all?

As a person who never played anything before that era, an FPS campaign is synonymous with 90s style shooters. I cannot imagine how an FPS game would work without a pistol/shotgun/rocket-launcher/bfg setup and keycards, it just seems alien to me. This "Modern Singleplayer Shooter" is like a myth to me, something I accept for granted but I've never actually experienced. I've never played COD, Battlefield, or Halo, and these are series that I associate with Multiplayer, not singleplayer. My assumption is that nobody really plays the singleplayer campaigns of these games and only care about the PvP modes.

What I've been (jokingly) told is that after the year 2000 all shooters became bland, colorless, military simulators without any humor, complexity, or strategy. This can't possibly have been true. I want to branch out to different games and see shooters from a different perspective. What shooter should I play that is as far from retro-style FPS games as can be?

It’s time to play more games. With what you’ve described, you could basically pick anything at random and give it a try. It doesn’t sound like you’ve played very many FPS games besides the ones you mentioned. There’s a lot to try that have good campaigns. What are you interested in? War? Sci-fi? Horror? It also depends on how far back you’re willing to go. 

1 hour ago, My Celium said:

This "Modern Singleplayer Shooter" is like a myth to me, something I accept for granted but I've never actually experienced. I've never played COD, Battlefield, or Halo, and these are series that I associate with Multiplayer, not singleplayer. My assumption is that nobody really plays the singleplayer campaigns of these games and only care about the PvP modes.

 

What I've been (jokingly) told is that after the year 2000 all shooters became bland, colorless, military simulators without any humor, complexity, or strategy. This can't possibly have been true. I want to branch out to different games and see shooters from a different perspective. What shooter should I play that is as far from retro-style FPS games as can be?

DNSKILL5 has already said it. It seems like you haven't really played that many FPS games

Some of the games I could recommend (some games that played a major role in changing the fps landscape over the years) are:

• Half Life 1: You already have played or at least tried out HL2. So if you haven't played HL1, I would definitely recommend to try out. The SP campaign is still enjoyable with plenty of different cool weapons to try out and choosing the right weapon/strategy requires much more thinking than most 90s FPS games. Run, Think, Shoot, Live is the tagline of Half Life.
• Halo: Combat Evolved: The game that made stuff like regenerating health, two weapon system, vehicular combat and dedicated grenade button popular in the FPS genre. Despite the stuff like regenerating health, the game doesn't really play like a military shooter. You really have to think which 2 weapons to carry and when to play defensive or when to play offensive. Quite interesting combat loop. Although the level design in Halo CE suffers from repetitive environments.
• Medal of Honor Allied Assault (MOHAA): While shooters with military settings were being made since like the mid 90s, it was this game that really took popularity of the military setting to new heights. Has as a very engaging atmosphere and setting, even though i think some missions are annoying. Anyone who has played the game will tell you about the infamous "Sniper Town" mission.
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare: Call of Duty series began its roots as a spiritual successor to MoHAA, as the series was founded by Infinity Ward, who were the same guys that made MOHAA under the dev name of "2015". That changed with CoD4 when the world war setting of the first 3 games was ditched in favor of the modern era setting of this game. I don't think much needs to be said about this game, but there is a reason why this game was (and still is) so widely known.

Then there are so many games out there that aren't classic 90s style shooters, but aren't exactly cover based military shooters either. Stuff like Doom 3, Quake 4, FEAR, Bioshock series, Portal 1&2 etc. All so many different games that I can recommend to check out.

2 hours ago, My Celium said:

If you look at interviews with the DOOM 2016 developers for example, they said they wanted to move away from the trend of cover shooters with regenerating health, and ultra-linear level design. Over and over they insist how ground-breaking "push forward combat" is.

That's because they're getting high sniffing their own farts. Much of the "aggression" of DOOM 2016 comes from the animation, gore, music, etc. as well as the glory kills that were cribbed from other non-FPS games. Considering DOOM Eternal, they must not have liked the concept of "push forward combat" all that much, unless their idea of "push forward" means "fight enemies while locked into an inescapable arena while figuring out how to avoid running out of resources, then stop to read an exposition dump on a lore card before and after the next rudimentary platforming sequence". DOOM 2016 is a pretty good game, but it's not doing anything ground-breaking or revolutionary. Everything it did was already done by other games. And DOOM Eternal is the antithesis of "push forward".

Post-2000, a lot of popular FPS games, mainly of the military type, were indeed bland, colorless, and soulless. But there were plenty of games that weren't, and you had an entire sub-genre of games like Serious Sam and Painkiller that were built around the concept of doing little more than mowing down hordes of enemies in colorful environments.

A lot of great examples already brought up.

The thing bothering me the most is the quote about shooters passed 2000, there's so many interesting shooters from post 2000 like TimeSplitters, Black, Necrovision, XIII, EYE Divine Cybermancy... Hell I'd even say RAGE or even Borderlands were unique enough to be noteworthy.

Me thinks you've just been fed nonsense.

Hell there's shooters releasing now that aren't even "retro shooters" that are well worth the time, like Trepang2 and Severed Steel (which still gets updated).

To me the Half-Life series has more in common with early-mid 90s shooters than it does with "modern" FPS games. Games like Call of Duty, Doom 3, Quake 4, the modern Wolfenstein games are clearly in their own sub-genre of FPS games and that's what I consider to be "modern"-style FPS games (and unfortunately I find them incredibly boring due to the elements they share in common).

DNSKILL5 and ReaperAA more or less cover it. The """"modern FPS"""" stereotype is kind of a boogeyman on forums like these for their console-centric compromises, linear level design and absurdly high budgets, but a lot of that comes from the myriad games that attempted to copy elements from the big name games and did it worse. Their scripted-rollercoaster take on campaigns are fun enough on their own terms if you're down for it.

COD4 is probably the boogeyman-est of all the boogeymen, but even today even the oldest games in that series are still priced a bit of a ways out of impulse-purchase territory. If you wanna see what damn near everyone was copying in the mid-2000s, though, either that or the sequel Modern Warfare 2 (the 2009 one, not the... *sigh* I know, I know...) will show you with the ultimate clarity.

Me, I'd personally recommend Halo: The Master Chief Collection. It's reasonably priced enough (ten bucks a game, forty for all six, and that's before any sales) and gives you a whistle-stop tour through most of the trends as they were being set.

3 hours ago, mrthejoshmon said:

Me thinks you've just been fed nonsense.

It's no different than people who think that all modern music sucks - they just look at the popular, mainstream shit (which I agree did go further downhill around 2000 or so, in terms of music, games, and movies) and come to the conclusion that it all sucks because they're ignorant of anything that isn't popular and/or want to be negative about everything new in general. I think that sometimes they try to sound special by showing off the fact that they don't like mainstream things, but they aren't intelligent enough to look beyond what's mainstream.

5 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

That's because they're getting high sniffing their own farts. Much of the "aggression" of DOOM 2016 comes from the animation, gore, music, etc. as well as the glory kills that were cribbed from other non-FPS games. Considering DOOM Eternal, they must not have liked the concept of "push forward combat" all that much, unless their idea of "push forward" means "fight enemies while locked into an inescapable arena while figuring out how to avoid running out of resources, then stop to read an exposition dump on a lore card before and after the next rudimentary platforming sequence". DOOM 2016 is a pretty good game, but it's not doing anything ground-breaking or revolutionary. Everything it did was already done by other games. And DOOM Eternal is the antithesis of "push forward".

I think you start to have a point with the DLC that pushed the waves thing too hard but, the Doom 2016 I played was far more infuriatingly based on making you fight waves in rooms over than Eternal was, to the point I think Doom 2016 is a chore to even play. I really don't get where the fans of 2016 come from, I found that game to be the worst of two worlds and Doom Eternal fixed it by committing more to it's specific approach. That was my experience, so it means either Doom 2016 did that stuff more, or, Doom Eternal made it far more less of a chore to do and I didn't notice it as a bad thing because of Eternal's design changes, and it only really got noticeable again in the Ancient Gods DLC but those have quite a few issues anyway. Took me a full calendar year to make myself finish 2016 because I don't think I liked it at all really. 

And that's without even getting into it's "story scenes" most of which you get forced to rewatch if you happened to die shortly after one of them. So Eternal's choice about cut scenes letting you just skip them was the better choice there too. 

I didn't play much of the 00-early-10s wave of FPSes because my main thing is I don't care at all for the war theme, and honestly there wasn't a tonne of choice outside of that for a long time. That would be my beef with a lot of it mainly, FEAR was okay, I actually liked Clive Barker's Jericho quite a bit (shit opening but it gets a lot better like 2 hours in), Wolfenstein 09 is honestly my favourite one in that series. If Condemned counts, the original one was pretty great. RE7 and 8 are survival horror FPS games but you do enough shooting in them to count them, and they're decent. 

I just finished Terminator Resistance and that's probably more fully successful as a love letter to the first two Terminator movies than it is as a pure videogame experience but being a fan of an awesome pair of movies and seeing this game do everything right in terms of spirit and the themes was amazing and Robocop is probably great too. 

Of course Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Timesplitters and the original Turok games are all awesome but I kinda think they mostly count as retro, but yeah I'd totally say play the Timesplitters games, and I would throw in No One Lives Forever, the best game Monolith ever made in my opinion, and it's sequel. Really if any kind of FPS really got screwed by trends it was just the ones that were different from generic war/sci fi theme. 

I've finished HL1 and HL2 last year, loved them a lot. I have played almost every notable immersive sim, I really like them but they aren't my favorite. For monolith shooters other than Blood, I liked Condemned and found FEAR very boring and easy.

I'm probably going to play through the Master Chief Collection and then COD4. It seems like they're the most representative in the genre and they'll give me the most interesting experiences.

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I really don't get where the fans of 2016 come from, I found that game to be the worst of two worlds and Doom Eternal fixed it by committing more to it's specific approach.

I liked Doom 2016, but yeah I feel like it's a weird middle child between Doom 2 and Eternal.
I had a friend who speedran Timesplitters. How would I play it on a PC today? I absolutely hate playing FPS games on controllers but if there is a KB+M mod I'll check it out.

@hybridial I don't doubt what you're saying to be honest. I played 2016 when it came out and at the time I wasn't a hardcore DOOM fan, I wasn't too discerning about anything so I just thought it was a solid 7.5/10 game. It was a nice change of pace for me, the glory kills made it feel like an FPS version of God of War and games like God of War lock you into arenas all the time. I don't remember how prominent it was, so I'm sure you're right about it in regards to its design. Either way, I never played it more than once so I wasn't overly impressed with it. And because I only played it once, not being able to skip cutscenes is something I didn't notice (or don't remember) but yeah, I'd be very annoyed with that on a second playthrough. No reason not to allow players to skip cutscenes in general, that's a poor and obvious oversight.

I don't really get the hardcore 2016 fans, myself. One of the things they seem to really like is the plot, which I thought was bland as shit. The game is certainly not some "ground-breaking" revolutionary thing with innovative "push forward combat", if that's what the developers claimed. I liked Eternal less, but I understand its fanbase better because it's a much more ambitious game trying for a more specific style. I liked the combat most of the time (although I disliked the DLC in general - it was very irritating in many aspects, and overcoming its challenges felt like a chore rather than a challenge) but I don't like the plot, the artstyle/setting, the lore cards, etc. so it just doesn't line up with my interests.

Nice shoutout to Jericho, that game had a great atmosphere. I bought it based on the demo back then. Undying is also pretty cool, though I had problems running it on my PC. Also Wolfenstein '09 was the first PS3 game I ever bought, again based on the demo. I loved the gore, and that axe. I like RE in general, and I think Village is a great game. I really liked the unique setting and enemies/theme in that game. It had a lot of variety between the village itself, the castle/vampires and the Silent Hill-esque Doll parts. I really think the factory part at the end brings it down though. You have good taste.

7 minutes ago, My Celium said:

How would I play it on a PC today? I absolutely hate playing FPS games on controllers but if there is a KB+M mod I'll check it out.

I used Dolphin with a widescreen patch. You can probably set something up so your mouse emulates an analogue stick. I don't know how well it would work though, the controls and mechanics are specifically made with a controller in mind. The campaigns in 2/Future Perfect are fun an varied, but the games are mainly played for their splitscreen multiplayer. The map editor in Future Perfect was a lot of fun back then. Timesplitters was some of the most fun I've had with a videogame ever. Even for singleplayer, there is a lot of content between the campaign and its optional objectives, arcade challenges, etc. It's one of the few multiplayer games where having a match against the AI in singleplayer is actually fun.

8 minutes ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

I don't really get the hardcore 2016 fans, myself. One of the things they seem to really like is the plot, which I thought was bland as shit. The game is certainly not some "ground-breaking" revolutionary thing with innovative "push forward combat", if that's what the developers claimed. I liked Eternal less, but I understand its fanbase better because it's a much more ambitious game trying for a more specific style. I liked the combat most of the time (although I disliked the DLC in general - it was very irritating in many aspects, and overcoming its challenges felt like a chore rather than a challenge) but I don't like the plot, the artstyle/setting, the lore cards, etc. so it just doesn't line up with my interests.

I definitely think that the plot and setting way too overly intricate, yet you need to read codex notes to see most of it. I mean granted, the on screen story isn't difficult to follow but I feel like they didn't have to be as heavy handed with it. I actually don't mind the concept of the Khan Makyr as the villian in Eternal, because her motivation is hypocritical and the Doom Slayer's motivation to save mankind in the face of their imminent destruction is absolutely in the spirit of Doom. I think just because of that I am okay with Eternal's story, 2016's is just Doom 3's except they try to make it less comical. Ancient Gods kinda ruins everything though by explaining everything, when there are some things better left unexplained. 

I'm replaying 2016 right now, the first few levels are a lot more boring than I remembered.

Speaking from the experience of someone who got into the Call of Duty campaigns as they exploded in popularity: I found them pretty engaging at the time. I would describe them more as playable war/spy thrillers than an intricate gameplay experience. A lot of the gameplay is peeking out from behind cover and popping shots at fairly weak enemies. Once the enemies are cleared you move forward. Occasionally, you participate in some sort of minigame or quick-time event, maybe there's an extra strong armored enemy here or there, but you're mostly playing pretend military man while hardly being at risk of dying. Even on the veteran difficulty settings, you could just wait behind cover for your health to fully regenerate.

For me, the main hook (aside from pvp) was the overall campaign experience. I was in middle school, and I had only ever been exposed to 6th gen consoles (PS2, Gamecube, etc.), so the leap in graphical fidelity and story telling blew my mind. I do think some of the stories they tell still hold up, but I think any enjoyment one could get out of those games will come from how immersed they feel in the experience of it. You blast some soldiers and are rewarded with some good ol' first-person spectacle. By the third Modern Warfare, the formula got pretty stale, and all the tropes had been played out by that point. I mean if you played a drinking game solely based on how many times your helicopter/rover/etc. gets destroyed and you wake up from the wreckage in a haze, you'd be dead by the end of the first MW.

Looking back, the level design is a little bit less linear than some give it credit for. Modern Warfare 2's second mission is a fairly open snow base that gives you some freedom in how to approach it. There are some hidden collectables and side paths here or there too. That being said, it is a far cry from the more open, maze-like shooters of the early-mid nineties. I would even consider some of the locked down arenas from 2016 or Eternal to be more open spatially.

Just my quick thoughts looking back, but I say you could probably get the gist of these campaigns from looking up some footage on youtube. My personal favorite is Call of Duty: Black Ops.

And about Halo: it did start a lot of the console-oriented trends that helped to guide the later military-shooter craze, but it feels wildly different in my opinion. Halo is more centered around large, open maps with vehicles, NPC allies, and unique enemies. You're not hiding behind cover a lot, you're not aiming down sights to lock on to enemies, and you're not watching as many first-person cutscenes. You do have a two weapon limit, but each weapon feels more unique and has varied utility. For example, you'll have to decide whether you want to keep your RPG launcher (higher power, less ammo) or switch it out for a plasma weapon (can take down enemy shields faster than bullets/rockets but are more common). The first Halo (& Reach) even use medkits for health, with a regenerating layer of armor to keep you from getting stuck in an unbeatable scenario. I agree with @Kinsie that the Master Chief Collection is probably the best bang for your buck. But I don't think they feel as locked down as the narrative-focused Call of Duty campaigns.

Titanfall 2 campaign is always a blast.

11 hours ago, My Celium said:

What shooter should I play that is as far from retro-style FPS games as can be?

My left-field choice would be ArmA III. I remember enjoying Operation Flashpoint when it came out back in 2001, because it was a major leap at the time. A military game with huge, open maps, realistic combat distances, realistic damage, realistic sights, etc. On top of this the player was free to achieve the objectives however they wanted, which from what I recall often involving stealing a BMP and blowing things up from a distance. The only game that remotely resembled it was Delta Force, which was much simpler. This was back when the notion of a game having a definite completion time - "it has twenty hours of gameplay" - was alien and weird.

I remember at the time thinking that Flashpoint couldn't possibly work on a games console, because it required a high-resolution monitor and fine mouse control. And the engine was sheer brute force - massive draw distance with lots of polygons. Whereas console games use all kinds of tricks to reduce the draw distance, reduce the player's field of view, reduce the amount of polygons the player can see at any one time. I learn from the internet that the original Flashpoint actually was ported for the OG Xbox, and there was an attempt to bring the later games to consoles - Codemasters released Dragon Rising for the PS3 generation - but the results were pretty poor and didn't sell well.

As such ArmA III is PC-only, and will probably remain PC-only, because it just doesn't work as a console game. The gameplay involves running behind cover for ten minutes before being shot dead by a distant speck. It demonstrates that there is a market for one realistic military shooter, probably not two.

I think the gold standard for the "modern" style of FPS campaign is Titanfall 2, which packs a ton of ingenuity into a pretty short game. It isn't anything like a '90s FPS: It's perfectly linear, your health regenerates if you take cover, and it's designed around big, bespoke set pieces rather than open-ended "situation-based" encounter design. But every level is memorable, the weapons sound great, and your character's movement is exceptionally fast and agile compared to that of the stock FPS hero of the 2000s. Unfortunately, it was a dramatic commercial failure relative to EA's expectations for it, and instead of a sequel, we have Apex Legends, a battle royale game in the same setting. Unsurprisingly, many of the developers of Titanfall 2 were the same people who developed the original Call of Duty games, and they built on their experience making those campaigns to make Titanfall 2. I'd recommend CoD 2 and CoD 4 to see the studio at their best, before the sequel rot really set in.