What makes an fps good

When we think about shooters, we tend to think about guns, but before we ever get to the "shooter" part of FPS, we have that "first-person" bit to deal with. Before we get a gun, we're given a perspective to use and a space to walk around in. In other words, where we fight shapes how we fight.

In their director's commentary entries in the Half-Life 2 games, the developers at Valve express how important it is to feature verticality in level design. In a shooter, players can move forward, backward, side to side, up, and down.

Seems pretty simple until you realize that most current shooters feature combat on a relatively flat plane with enemies who keep their distance. In other words, most shooters are about moving forward while aiming side to side. As a result, you need level design that empowers and entices you to move. It's one thing to be able to wall-run, strafe, or double jump, and another thing entirely to have levels that actually encourage players to do that.

One of my favorite rooms in recent years is the "Sword of Crota" room in Destiny. It's filled with columns, set on multiple levels and has a series of enemy spawn points set throughout the room. One advantage of this is that enemies can flank you, but the counterpoint is that they can also hide from you, which means you've got to actively hunt them down rather than simply letting them come to you.

This requires more engagement from you, the player. Engagement is the texture and weight of a game, the thing that draws you into the experience. Dark Souls is a game that's all about engagement. Instead of just mashing the X button to attack your foes, you have to think about engaging them. Good shooter level design is the same way—it's all about keeping you thinking about the combat. It's about giving you quality time with your enemies.

Don't believe me? Imagine an enemy that stands still and accepts your bullets; you shoot it, and it just sits there without responding. How boring is that? What about an enemy that dies as soon as you click on him? He'd be boring, too! Either enemy is like a bad tug of war opponent—you don't want an opponent who lets you pull the rope without resistance, but you don't want a rope that refuses to budge either. For tug of war to be fun, you need enemies who have a bit of give and take.

Now think about a good shooter enemy, one you've enjoyed fighting. For me, it's guys like Halo 's Elite, an enemy who gets in close to punch me in the face, that make the game fun. When I face a guy fully intent on bisecting me with a sword, I backpedal, wildly firing my shotgun in an attempt to maintain distance between us.

One of my favorite things to do in a game is to throw a grenade at my foe, manipulating him into, say, jumping off a cliff or avoiding my grenade only to run into my stream of bullets. One of my favorite kills in Destiny involved baiting a phalanx into charging me, only to leap out of the way and let him run directly into a tripmine grenade, which exploded, killing him. Some enemies, like Wolfenstein's armored shotgun troopers, are best flanked before they're killed, much like Halo's hunters, who have weak points on their backs.

With enemies like that, the vulnerabilities encourage players to move around the map space just as much as the gunfire they're dodging. Destiny's phalanxes are similar, with impenetrable shields that can turn some encounters into impromptu bullfighting matches. Enemies should be tough but also work to make you utilize the movement mechanics and the map you're in—in other words, enemies are about pushing you to use all the elements of the game. They're not fodder to be pointed and clicked on.

They're environmental hazards to move you through the space in interesting ways. If enemies push us around the map through threat of damage, then our gun is what pulls us to them.

A shooter's guns should look cool in our hands, should sound amazing, and should help us engage with the game space. One of the things I love about Destiny is the detail put into some of the guns, particularly The Last Word, an exotic revolver.

Your character's hands twirl the pistol around when switching to it and fan the gun to fire it; the result is a glorious camera shake that conveys the sense that the gun is crazy powerful.

Even firing it in an empty room the gun itself looks like it's powerful. When you pull the trigger, The Last Word looks like it's unleashing hellfire on your foes. Video games are limited in their ability to create haptic feedback—that is, you're not actually firing a gun and feeling its recoil in your hands, you're pressing a button and watching your character fire it.

So a lot of attention has to be paid to the way the gun acts in order to make it feel as if you're holding it without actually doing so; unfortunately, too many games simply have a bit of recoil and leave it at that. Now imagine seeing all this cool stuff happening… and discovering that your gun sounds like a nerf toy.

The other night, I watched John Wick spectacular film; best action movie I've seen since The Raid , and came away surprised at just how good the guns sound. They're rich and meaty, and not many shooters feel the same way.

Fortunately, Wolfenstein : The New Order's guns have the right amount of thunk to them. The mechs in Titanfall , which I've recently returned to because of its new horde mode, sound glorious. Payday 2 's Stryk pistol, seen above, has a wonderful rat-tat-tat sound. I think people traditionally consider weapons as having a correlating enemy type, like how Shadow Warrior's flamethrower is great for groups of small enemies, but not a great choice against a boss.

This is true, but I think there's a bit more to it than that. The best shooter weaponry helps us move around a combat space. Halo 's ineffective-at-range MA5B helps pull players close to Elites, encouraging a duel of punches. Sniper rifles encourage us to seek high vantage points. Meanwhile, triple-digit frame rates are great for competitive multiplayer or just for people who prefer having extra responsiveness in their single-player games, even if that means dropping some graphics settings.

However, getting a Hz or a Hz monitor means that you might end up spending a bit more on a monitor than you would if it were a regular 60 Hz panel. While it might not necessarily be more expensive, you should only get one if you truly need it and can make use of the extra responsiveness they offer. Samuel is GamingScan's editor-in-chief. He describes himself as a dedicated gamer and programmer. He enjoys helping others discover the joys of gaming. Samuel closely follows the latest trends in the gaming industry in order to keep the visitors in the flow.

Generally, 30 FPS is roughly the lowest frame rate at which a game is still playable. You Might Like These Too. Samuel Stewart Samuel is GamingScan's editor-in-chief. More About Samuel Stewart. The objective is to survive and avoid being killed by the shrinking Trace the evolution of war in the 7 Call of Duty games released in the last 5 years!

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