Fine, it’s a first-person devicer, if we’re going to pretend that the gun isn’t a gun that shoots portal-opening projectiles.
And sure, I’ll buy Jim’s description. Just don’t pretend it’s not first person with a gun.
This whole “bug” thing is some sort of vicious rumour. I’ve had no bugs playing the game from day 1.
That’s a bit…solipsist, don’t you think?
Yeah. WORKS ON MY MACHINE! – ergo your poor in-game experience is a figment of your imagination.
Except that he hasn’t had a poor in-game experience, since he hasn’t played the game yet :) It was my assumption that his knowledge of such stems from anecdotal evidence, to which I offer my counter-anecdote.
Internets, you know.
Well, since I was the first person in the thread to comment on STALKER’s bugginess as a result of my (short) experience with the game prior to a violent uninstall, I figured the quip was directed at me.
Well, that’s not really what the discussion has been about. It’s been about whether Portal “is” an FPS. Or at least, that’s how the discussion started.
“FPS” connotes a lot more than just “first-person” and “shooting.” Games in the FPS format tend to focus on real-time, tactical combat where you control a single entity in 3D space. FPS also connotes a control scheme that separates moving from turning. Max Payne qualifies, despite not being first-person. Portal is not about combat, so it doesn’t.
I dunno. I think “first person” is pretty important in the phrase “first person shooter”. Especially when the term “third person shooter” also exists, and perfectly defines Max Payne (among others).
I’ve heard that term as well, but I don’t think it makes a useful distinction.
“First-person shooter” has become a discrete symbol, with a meaning that’s drifted from the literal meaning of the words that comprise it. Happens all the time in language. “Third-person shooter” was a term that somebody made up because he realized that “first-person shooter” was technically not correct. But when you think about the various reasons to classify games, when does the distinction between first-person shooters and third-person shooters become important?
It’s not a particularly descriptive term. It only really makes sense in the context of the term “first-person shooter,” because if you don’t make the connection, “third-person shooter” can also easily describe platform shooters and “shmups.” It requires you to understand the concepts of “first-person” and “third-person,” which many people who know and use the term “first-person shooter” probably don’t. “Third-person shooter” is a term created for and by pedants.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got my own set of issues I’m unnecessarily pedantic about. I’ll never let the goddamn descriptivists convince me that the phrase “beg the question” now genuinely means what the hoi polloi use it to mean. But they’re right about nearly everything else!
It’s great to see such an innovative game finally get some recognition.
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I never though Qt3 would have the patience for a game like Portal.
Sure it does. The perspective makes a big difference in how the game plays. I grant you that they’re closer to the FPS than the platformers and point factories that you mention, but they’re still distinct.
I’d like to see that, it would be interesting to see where some of my other favourites came in. Maybe somebody else voted for motorstorm too??
Regarding the term FPS it seems that recently the term shooter has been taking over as more and more FPS games are actually third person. GRAW and Gears being good examples of games that are FPS with a slightly different camera location.
Wait you mean like a Third Person Shooter?
Maybe it’s just me but I don’t see many people referring to anything as a third person shooter/TPS, how many TPS of the year awards do you see given out? It’s a bit like RPG, as some people constantly argue virtually any video game could correctly be called a role playing game but in common use RPG refers to a specific type of game. To me FPS refers to a specific type of game rather than meaning “any game with a first person view where you shoot things” and something like gears fits into this genre while something like portal doesn’t.
I would have thought that console Portal would have suffered quite a bit from the inability to twist around in mid air and land that next portal just before you impacted the ground. That was a good 5% of the awesomeness of Portal (that you could do some incredible things if you had ungodly twitch/FPS skills) and it seems like that just wouldn’t translate into console-ville.
We must be thinking of different games. As far as I could tell, Max Payne played exactly like an FPS.
Or: we must have differing definitions of “Third-Person Shooter,” because my definition of “Third-Person Shooter” would be “plays exactly like an FPS, but has a third-person camera.”
How about a game in which the protagonist is viewed via the third person (Generally utilizing a camera which follows the player character) in which the main gameplay element is shooting stuff in real time?
That’s called Real Time Shooter, aka RTS.
What the fuck?