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Preys-World - Will consoles ever be able to match the PC in the FPS genre?

Friday 14th of July, 2006 - 12:01:03 GMT

The PC was witness to the birth of the first person genre with the release of Wolfenstein 3D in 1992. However it wasn’t until the following year and the release of Doom that the genre really took off and ever since it has dominated the PC market. Originally the fps was not a multi-format genre and most of the games remained on the PC, but over the last few years the fps has started to appear more and more on home consoles as well as the PC, but the general consensus remains that the best examples of the genre remain on the PC and consoles can never match them.

This argument was severely tested in 2001 with the appearance of Halo: Combat Evolved on the Xbox. The game was originally intended for the Mac, then the PC and finally Microsoft brought out developers Bungie so that they could have exclusivity for their new console. When it was finally released to critical acclaim, it was heralded by some as the best fps ever and easily the best fps on consoles. As it had been originally designed for PC it carried over a lot of the ideas that had made fps strong on the PC and then adapted them to fit to the console. The controls were tight and well balanced and the AI was spot on. It looked like it was possible to make a good fps on a console. However when the game was later released on the PC it received a lukewarm reception. Many felt that there were better examples of the genre available this and couldn’t see what all the fuss was about therein lays the problem. What was seen as a great fps on consoles was only seen as such because it had nothing to compare to. Once it came to the PC, the home of games such as Half-Life, it was shown up as good, but not the stellar title it was believed to be. That isn’t to say that Halo is not a good game, because it is, just that it isn’t a great as those who play consoles believe it to be when stacked up against PC first person shooters.

So if what is considered as the best fps on console is not as good as the best PC fps why is this the case? Firstly I think it is down to a system of control. Even the best control pad layout isn’t really a match for the precision of a mouse. This inferior control leads to designers having to compensate and change game design by including such things as auto-aim and larger hit boxes. (This problem may be negated with the release of the Wii and the Wiimote where you will be able to get more of an accurate aim, and it will be interesting to see what developers do with this control system, but for now we are stuck with the analogue controllers.) These kinds of features are alien to PC users and often diminish the game in their eyes and this fact leads me on to my second point. Maybe it is just that both set of users are looking for a different experience from their first person shooters. Let’s take for example Prey. The demo for this game has just recently been released for both the PC and the Xbox 360 and there has been a different reaction from both sides. The PC fraternity have welcomed the close corridor based gameplay, whilst the console crowd have complained about the lack of open areas and bad AI. This aptly demonstrates what the two communities are looking for in a fps. On the one hand we have the PC crowd who have grown up on Quake; Doom etc with their tight corridor based shooting and as AI has got better this has enabled better fights that require precision aiming. However console owners are used to the wide open areas of Halo where this precise aiming is not so much a factor as you have more space to manoeuvre. Therefore when confronted with a more corridor based shooter where the AI has perhaps been dumbed down slightly, they dislike it.

So maybe the reason why we are not seeing a console fps that is better or on a par with the best PC fps’ is because both audiences are looking for a different experience from their shooters. This I think is the main point. As long as we continue to see PC and console specific first person shooters that cater to the needs of their respective market, it doesn’t matter that the shooters on the PC are probably that little bit superior. Maybe with the advance of technology and new control schemes we will see better console shooters, but as each market wants something different from their fps’ I don’t think this is likely to happen any time soon and so for me the PC will always be ‘the’ place to play first person shooters.