There's a right way and a wrong way to borrow from a competitor, as EA and Zynga are even now debating. The wrong way is to warp over all the best bits without bothering to work out where they fit in, as though designing the game around what it says on the box. The right way is to break what you're borrowing down and build it back up again, per the new game's creative trajectory.
Much of 18th century English literature is founded on this principle - those chaps certainly knew their Homer and Aristotle - and so, thankfully, are a large number of third-person shooters, often branded "Gears clones" by reviewers and readers.
1. Vanquish
When it stays put, Vanquish is a game after Epic's heart - four-way D-pad weapon select, shoulder view, precision aim, the works. But Vanquish very rarely stays put. By the time you've rolled the "r" in "rip-off", it'll be across the room, jet-blasting through an Iron Giant's legs like a rockstar with fire extinguishers tucked into his socks. And by the time you've framed the final "f", it'll have slung a grenade at an Imperial Walker-a-Like, sniper-shot that grenade in mid-air to kill the driver, then flipped to the cockpit and turned the vehicle's guns on a convenient cluster of oil drums, cue hysterical burbles from the score gauge.
10 comments so far...
JCHN on 8 Aug '12 said:
WHY DOES EVERYBODY ACT LIKE GEARS OF WAR WAS THE FIRST GAME TO USE COVER-SHOOTING MECHANICS!!!!!
OXM ETboy on 8 Aug '12 said:
I have you in my eye, sir.
michaelhill2110 on 8 Aug '12 said:
my first experience of a cover shooter was rogue trooper, a ps2 game based on the 2000ad comic. it was released 6 months befour gears (may 2006) and though it didn't class itself as a cover shooter.... it was. i still prefer it to the first gears and was chuffed to find it in CEX for a quid.
Baryonyx on 8 Aug '12 said:
Quite, no-one ever mentions Kill Switch! It was actually quite good and seemed very refreshing at the time. I remember reading gaming mags which were praising it's 'revolutionary' cover mechanic, it seemed very fresh after years of circle strafing!
Of the games mentioned in the article, I would say:
Binary Domain - must play. Excellent game, top quality shooter and the sort of thing we should be getting behind more. A thoroughly compelling experience that developed out of something I just expected to be a pleasant distraction. I eagerly await the sequal.
Ghost Recon: Future Soldier - The shooting action is pap. The whole game is a bit of a confused article. Typically clean 'Clancy' polish applied to most of it, but it never feels like a cohesive product, or indeed anything you'll care about in the end.
Spec Ops: Worth playing for the story and character driven narrative. Pretty dull shooting action, but I don't regret playing it as the story was genuinely compelling, despite the improbable setting. Suspend your disbelief and enjoy a wonderfully dark story.
kronk10 on 9 Aug '12 said:
Why can i not find a review of vanquish on OXM ?? I played the demo and loved it but not enough to go out and buy it at the time of release! It may be uber cheap now so i may have to pick Vanquish up as i was rather fun rocket skidding along the ground while blowing crap up
bamozzy on 9 Aug '12 said:
I only have Ghost Recon of these 4 and I am not overly impressed with it. Of the recent releases (2012) I much prefer Max Payne 3 - which is NOT on this list?? Granted the Campaign maybe a bit linear and controlled but I actually enjoyed playing through it all and it has a lot better shooting mechanics than Ghost Recon does in my opinion (I played through with Free Aim on)
The Multi-player is also a lot more fun than Ghost Recons too and a completely different pace to the campaign. I was mainly interested in the Campaign but after playing the MP I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun it is and the Graphics are a lot better than Ghost Recons.
Therefore I would have Max Payne 3 on this list as a better cover shooter than Ghost Recon.
I can't comment on the others - I will say I have NO interest in Binary Domain. Nothing I have seen or heard has enticed me and with a limited budget, there are a lot of other games I would rather buy. Spec Ops: the Line I have a limited amount of interest in - for the story and campaign but not so much the MP and Vanquish I have picked up and put back down a lot of times but never bought - might pick it up if I see it cheap again but a lot of new games I want are due out soon so need to save my pennies....
FishyGinger on 9 Aug '12 said:
Quite right, in fact I remember in 1992 running from zombies in a 3rd person shooter. Admittedly I was an 8 year old in a retirement home off my tits on jam tarts but it still seemed like a realistic game to me.
Let that be a lesson to you all, don't snort preserves and pastry.
bamozzy on 9 Aug '12 said:
If you have been gaming as long as I have then you will know that Gears of War was NOT the first but may well have been the first 3rd Person Cover Shooter on the Xbox 360 and it is one of the better ones too!
JCHN on 9 Aug '12 said:
I love how everybody is replying to my comment, thinking that I was being serious.
Read the article, and you will see that I said this for a joke.
Lancer Armstrong on 9 Aug '12 said:
I've said this before and I'll say it again: VANQUISH IS THE MOST UNDERRATED SHOOTER OF THIS GENERATION.
It is, quite simply, brilliant. A Masterpiece of Action Gaming. Hell, even the end credits have you shooting the developers. Great great game.
I really liked Spec Ops: The Line, but I LOVED Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Smart, tactical, action-packed and inventive (love how you can go into a first person iron sights view with every single weapon. All Third Person games should have this option).
Max Payne 3 I didn't like at all. Absolutely hated it, to be honest. It's annoying, tedious and really bad at communicating with the player. Also, I can't stand that cheap Tony Scott "acid-flashback" look, and the fact that there's more time spent on cut-scenes than actual gameplay (cut-scenes that you can't really ever skip, by the way, because the damn game is always busy loading). Max Payne 3 doesn't deserve to be on this list, in my opinion.
Haven't played Binary Domain yet, but I've heard good things. And it combines some of my favourite things: Third Person shooting and robots. I'll get it as soon as the price goes down.