bregolin wrote:

Not sure if matches the walking simulator definition, but The Witness is AWESOME. I think you'll like it.

I think I grabbed this when it was free on the Epic store, thanks for the reminder! Guess I need to check it out. 😀

I remember the first time I played Heretic, Hexen, Wolfenstein 3-D, Duke Nukem 3D and Doom. I was about ten or eleven years old back then. The mere ability to walk around and explore the "3D" environments from the eyes-view perspective alone was incredibly amazing. It was literally nothing less of magical, if only for the reason of being novel.

Then came Quake and I hated the clunky polygon models, unable to appreciate how much more versatile a true 3D engine was compared to the 2.5D shooters, because I had no understanding of the difference back then. For a pretty long while I was fairy indifferent towards the FPS genre although I did not give up on the 2.5D classics and eventually discovered more of them including Rise of the Triad. All the while being a huge fan of StarCraft and StarEdit. Then I chanced upon the demo of Will Rock which if you don't know is a Serious Sam clone set in Ancient Grome, and immediately took a strong liking to it, for exactly the same reason: you could explore awesome (or at least nice-looking) environments, and in addition encounters with monsters encouraged fast running and strafing across those nicely designed areas.

I vividly remember how my brain was deceived by both Doom and Will Rock: in Doom I tended to unconsciously lean sideways when dodging the imps' projectiles and much later in Will Rock I had that feeling in the stomach every time my character would be set off flying by a catapult. Both effects wore off pretty quickly once the brain realised that it was being duped, but this highlights an important factor that playing a fast paced first-person action game may provide for a similar kind of fun as actually playing a fast-paced physical game like football, which may have a certain appeal to players as well. (While your brain does realise that you're not actually moving yourself when playing an FPS, it still has to solve problems related to processing and reacting to visuospatial information.)

MrFlibble wrote:

in Doom I tended to unconsciously lean sideways when dodging the imps' projectiles

I still do it, when the battle is intense enough.

clueless1 wrote:

I'm not really into the killing part so much as the storyline. If there's not a good story, I usually don't enjoy it. I tend to take a stealthy approach, and was never very good at games that require running and gunning. Some of my favorites were Return to Castle Wolfenstein and its sequels, Half-Life 1 and 2, Unreal, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake II, Medal of Honor, and F.E.A.R. Quake II is the weakest story of those listed, but for some reason it still really appealed to me. Nostalgia, great atmosphere and sound effects made up for the story, I guess. Duke3D was super fun for the first episode, but then it got old after that.

You should try modding the config file in Duke3d. You can make the rocket launcher into a mini-nuke.

Well, I've always been preferential and biased towards Unreal because I've learned how to quite literally do nearly anything I want with the game beyond having to learn C++ coding and possibly break dozens of copyright and IP law to bind code to the executable.

And I'm with clueless1, I'm more into these things for story and environment than a slaughter fest everywhere. You can design some pretty interesting environments in these game engines if you know how.

DracoNihil wrote:

And I'm with clueless1, I'm more into these things for story and environment than a slaughter fest everywhere.

Ain't nothing wrong with a good slaughterfest... 😜

MrFlibble wrote:

Then came Quake and I hated the clunky polygon models, unable to appreciate how much more versatile a true 3D engine was compared to the 2.5D

Same with me. I saw it as a step back rather then forward.

Think of the big movies round the same period. Arnie, Stallone, etc taking on the world single handed with massive body counts.
these games benefit from whatever make them enjoyable, yeh people are weird.

I only really played Doom and Doom2 before jumping over to RTS's but I can see the appeal, even a casual gamer can get the hang and get that reward stimulate from killing a few things quicker then most other styles of game but at the same time offers room to improve if you take gaming seriously

MrFlibble wrote:

Then came Quake and I hated the clunky polygon models, unable to appreciate how much more versatile a true 3D engine was compared to the 2.5D shooters, because I had no understanding of the difference back then.

I had a similar reaction until two things changed my mind.

1) The adoption of using the mouse and keyboard for FPS control. Previously I'd been playing games only with the keyboard. It took awhile to learn how essential mouse-look was in a 3D environment.
2) The adoption of 3D accelerated graphics. I still remember the first time I fired up Quake with a 3DFX Voodoo card and seeing how crisp everything looked.

After that, I was able to fully embrace 3D shooters.

For me it was Mech Warrior 2. Seeing that with actual textures (such as they were) on a Mystique, along with the awesome soundtrack, there was a whole new level of immersion. But then I don't have as much trouble as some do with 1st-gen 3D. I still love PlayStation games. N64 shows its age a little, though.

It was Carmageddon (the first, and best, one) that sold me on 3D graphic cards. It looked so much better with a 3Dfx card than in software mode, that I had to get my hands on a shiny new Voodoo 4MB card (which, if I recall correctly, cost more than the N64 to buy).

Personally, I think it's the deeper immersion of the first-person perspective that really makes them enticing. Coupled with the kill or be killed element there's definitely a lot that makes it easy to draw you in and deliver an intense experience very quickly.