(Reposted from a Hardcore Gaming 101 forum post from October 3rd, 2011. I figured it bears repeating and exposure to a different audience.)
I'd be willing to bet that, to about 90% of the people on
this forum, the cover-based shooter is probably the most reviled genre
outside of FMV games. Honestly, I don't like the majority of cover
shooters either, but that's because I feel that many of them are doing
something wrong with the concept rather than the concept itself being
horrible. I've played enough of these things that I have some idea of
what the "ideal" cover shooter would feel like.
Cover button should be configurable. Personally I prefer the "take cover" button to be the sort of button you should hold to continue taking cover. Some people prefer it to be a press-once button, where the cover button toggles whether you're in cover or not. Really, though, I think this should just be an option, in the same way that "toggle crouch," "toggle aim-down-sight," and "invert Y" should be options.
Blind fire should be blind. The concept of blind fire (shooting from behind cover without sticking your head out to aim) was pioneered by Kill.Switch, but even that game didn't quite pull it off. Many games will give you blind fire as an option, but make the crosshair still work as a general indicator of where your shots are going. I've seen games where blind fire only serves to make the bullets spread out to absurd angles regardless of what the gun's actually doing. Uncharted had the right idea, where you can fire blindly, but you are not given a crosshair, and the option exists mainly to shoot people that are immediately opposite your side of whatever low wall you're stuck to.
Blind fire as suppressing fire. The entire point of firing blindly from cover is to make sure you're putting fire downrange, towards the enemy, and forcing them into cover themselves. Most military units have the rest of their squad to pin down enemy units with gunfire (suppressing fire isn't really intended to hit targets; it's intended to keep the enemy's head down). Most cover shooter protagonists don't have a squad with them, so it's up to the player to try to suppress the enemy without exposing themselves to torrents of gunfire. Thing is, though, in absolutely every cover shooter I've played (exception being Brothers In Arms and Army of Two: The 40th Day), the enemy completely ignores the fact that you're shooting in their general direction. So with the exception of the Uncharted example in the previous point, blind fire is nearly useless in the majority of cases. If enemy AI were to react to your shooting by taking cover, clever players could pin the enemy down by unloading a rifle at them, then while they're stuck down, rush for the next available cover.
Cover-diving's nice, but give me more indication of what it'll do. This is something Deus Ex: Human Revolution did really well and I hope more cover shooters copy its example. Under normal circumstances, you'll jump when the A button is pressed. If you're in cover, though, the A button is multi-function. If you're at the edge of a wall, it'll usually show an indicator, where tapping the A button will dive towards the next available cover (if there's one in range) and holding the A button for a second will have your character turn the corner and continue sticking to the wall. The latter of those is a feature more of these games should have, since it cuts down on potential player deaths resulting from trying to wrap around walls without exposing themselves. One thing DX didn't do, though: cover vaulting. Then again, I guess they expect you to break cover to jump over it from the regular FPS view.
Do cover shooters need to be third-person? Killzone 2 and 3 have shown me that they don't need to be, that the whole idea of a cover button can be executed from a first-person perspective without switching to a third-person view. Without the camera pointing over your low wall of choice, blind fire is actually blind. This lends some credence to the "modern warfare"-flavored cover shooters potentially including gadgets like SWAT 4's Optiwand, Splinter Cell's Optic Cable, or even the recent firearms development Cornershot.
And the biggest annoyance of all: level design. Just because your game is cover-centric doesn't mean you need to litter your streets with concrete walls, wooden crates, and burned out cars. Be clever, people - put those physics engines to use for once and let the player make their own cover by knocking over desks and vending machines, or actually put some challenge to your cover corridors by giving the player a corridor that has no cover in it at all, forcing them to resort to the aforementioned suppress-and-rush tactics. Make them duck into offices, or force them to find a different flank from another room. Make the player goddamn think.
Personally, I think the problem with cover shooters isn't necessarily the fact that there are so many of them. I think the problem is that, for as many as there are, none of them are learning from the mistakes of their predecessors.
Cover button should be configurable. Personally I prefer the "take cover" button to be the sort of button you should hold to continue taking cover. Some people prefer it to be a press-once button, where the cover button toggles whether you're in cover or not. Really, though, I think this should just be an option, in the same way that "toggle crouch," "toggle aim-down-sight," and "invert Y" should be options.
Blind fire should be blind. The concept of blind fire (shooting from behind cover without sticking your head out to aim) was pioneered by Kill.Switch, but even that game didn't quite pull it off. Many games will give you blind fire as an option, but make the crosshair still work as a general indicator of where your shots are going. I've seen games where blind fire only serves to make the bullets spread out to absurd angles regardless of what the gun's actually doing. Uncharted had the right idea, where you can fire blindly, but you are not given a crosshair, and the option exists mainly to shoot people that are immediately opposite your side of whatever low wall you're stuck to.
Blind fire as suppressing fire. The entire point of firing blindly from cover is to make sure you're putting fire downrange, towards the enemy, and forcing them into cover themselves. Most military units have the rest of their squad to pin down enemy units with gunfire (suppressing fire isn't really intended to hit targets; it's intended to keep the enemy's head down). Most cover shooter protagonists don't have a squad with them, so it's up to the player to try to suppress the enemy without exposing themselves to torrents of gunfire. Thing is, though, in absolutely every cover shooter I've played (exception being Brothers In Arms and Army of Two: The 40th Day), the enemy completely ignores the fact that you're shooting in their general direction. So with the exception of the Uncharted example in the previous point, blind fire is nearly useless in the majority of cases. If enemy AI were to react to your shooting by taking cover, clever players could pin the enemy down by unloading a rifle at them, then while they're stuck down, rush for the next available cover.
Cover-diving's nice, but give me more indication of what it'll do. This is something Deus Ex: Human Revolution did really well and I hope more cover shooters copy its example. Under normal circumstances, you'll jump when the A button is pressed. If you're in cover, though, the A button is multi-function. If you're at the edge of a wall, it'll usually show an indicator, where tapping the A button will dive towards the next available cover (if there's one in range) and holding the A button for a second will have your character turn the corner and continue sticking to the wall. The latter of those is a feature more of these games should have, since it cuts down on potential player deaths resulting from trying to wrap around walls without exposing themselves. One thing DX didn't do, though: cover vaulting. Then again, I guess they expect you to break cover to jump over it from the regular FPS view.
Do cover shooters need to be third-person? Killzone 2 and 3 have shown me that they don't need to be, that the whole idea of a cover button can be executed from a first-person perspective without switching to a third-person view. Without the camera pointing over your low wall of choice, blind fire is actually blind. This lends some credence to the "modern warfare"-flavored cover shooters potentially including gadgets like SWAT 4's Optiwand, Splinter Cell's Optic Cable, or even the recent firearms development Cornershot.
And the biggest annoyance of all: level design. Just because your game is cover-centric doesn't mean you need to litter your streets with concrete walls, wooden crates, and burned out cars. Be clever, people - put those physics engines to use for once and let the player make their own cover by knocking over desks and vending machines, or actually put some challenge to your cover corridors by giving the player a corridor that has no cover in it at all, forcing them to resort to the aforementioned suppress-and-rush tactics. Make them duck into offices, or force them to find a different flank from another room. Make the player goddamn think.
Personally, I think the problem with cover shooters isn't necessarily the fact that there are so many of them. I think the problem is that, for as many as there are, none of them are learning from the mistakes of their predecessors.
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