What happened to tactical gaming?

[Greasemonkey]

Some background:

I began playing RO on the day the beta was released(who remembers the bullet-proof bushes? Anyone?)

My first foray into online gaming was Rainbow Six. I fell in love. It was awesome- tactical gameplay before I knew what tactical even meant. After that I played Team Fortress Classic, Day of Defeat(in BETA only...), the Rainbow Six add-ons, Ravenshield & add-ons, Ghost Recon & add-ons, Ravenshield... I remember playing Hostile Intent for HL and loving it.

I bought UT2003 to play Red Orchestra.... and then UT2004.... and then I bought RO:OST.

When I went off to college I stopped playing online games as frequently as I had before... during the college experience my participation in online gaming decreased and before I knew it my favorite titles turned into antiques. Today the Rainbow Six series(and anything with the Tom Clancy name...) has turned into utter brain-rot. The mods I once played are now abandoned(besides RO). The sequels are vaporware.

So whats out there? When I go to play a game today its RO(maybe Resistance and Liberation...) or Ghost Recon in single player. Where are the "thinking man's" games? Is this a genre that has died off?

Its rather sad to see the games I have fond memories of being as dead as they are with no suitable replacements on the horizon.

What suggestions do you guys have?

 

[Moyako]

hmmm.... I dont know... how about Red Orchestra: Heroes Of Stalingrad?? xD

 

[mistk�fer]

From my feeling it's the influence of consoles and multi-platform titles.
big studios produce their games for pc and consoles and therefor dumb the games down to be suitable for consoles. So in the end the genre died off as you noticed yourself. sad but true. but at least there will be RO2 ^^

 

[Agenda_Suicide]

Those bushes on Donets were some tough cookies.

 

[Murphy]

ArmA and ArmA2 plus expansions plus mods.

There are some other games that are somewhat tactical although they are no Ghost Recon or Rainbow Six... I had fun with them though, so what the heck: The Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter games (only played the first one, but I heard the second one allows you to command your squad in more detail) and the new Brothers in Arms. GRAW really wasn't half-bad (aside from the heli-mounted machine-gun intermissions...) if you don't go in with your mind set on hating it and Hell's Highway was a really good game despite some shortcomings in the gameplay.
They're both dirt-cheap nowadays too so you can give them a risk-free shot.

 

[kapulA]

When I went off to college I stopped playing online games as frequently as I had before... during the college experience my participation in online gaming decreased and before I knew it my favorite titles turned into antiques.

Real life happened - realism and tactical gaming takes too much time to be just a hobby you can hop off and on to and in order for it to be enjoyable you have to invest as much time as you would into a "real" hobby, which in turn makes casual gaming a much more common and viable option.
Obviously, I don't have as long a career in RO as you or the other mod vets, but I've been here since the open beta for Ostfront and played it exclusively for 2 years after it was released, actively participating in a clan for most of that time. Afterwards real life stuff started piling up and taking up more and more of my time so I gradually stopped being active in my clan and in RO in general, instead choosing to play more casual titles, almost exclusively on pubs, like TF 2 and the like. And I'm only about to start my first year of college, I imagine it only gets harder as time goes by. =/

 

[dogbadger]

medal of honor airborne has a few ppl playing seach and destroy type game on 1 or 2 servers - that's the most recent half decent tactical game i've played but it has it's shortcomings.

I would implore ppl to simply play all the games you mentioned , plus vietcong which still has a big coop community, arma series as mentioned and project reality which is the best organised PvP i've seen.

In the COD black ops thread a few ppl bemoan the way the series has gone, or object to it's popularity in light of it's absense of genuine realism. i don't care myself as i don't have time to play all the tactical games i love as much as i'd like to in anycase - and any excuse to avoid another game i'll take.

But someone mentioned that he and his mates will (grudgingly?) get Black Ops because there is nothing else to play until HoS -
I just don't agree unless you get bored of games far quicker than i do, or refuse to play anything that isn't modern graphically.

 

[nath2009uk]

Swat 3 / 4.
Swat 4 is millions times better than Swat 3, yet Swat 3 is more like Ghost Recon, crawling in grass for ages, except you breach houses and one shot people.

I don't think there is any others worth mentioning, that I know of. Alot of them still end up being the *Rush* for the one hit kills.

I also tried the Arma 2 demo online, it was somewhat lulzy. Drive a jeep over a bunch of enemies.

 

[C_Gibby]

Swat 3 / 4.
Swat 4 is millions times better than Swat 3, yet Swat 3 is more like Ghost Recon, crawling in grass for ages, except you breach houses and one shot people.

I don't think there is any others worth mentioning, that I know of. Alot of them still end up being the *Rush* for the one hit kills.

I also tried the Arma 2 demo online, it was somewhat lulzy. Drive a jeep over a bunch of enemies.

is SWAT 3 multiplayer?

 

[nath2009uk]

Nope. It's a pretty old game, probably around 2000. I never found it fun.
Swat 4 is alot better I've heard. It's tactical at vanilla, yet has several mods out there. Also, it's MP

 

[LemoN]

ArmA and ArmA2 plus expansions plus mods.

This.

 

[SiC-Disaster]

It died after other companies were taking over franchises (looking at you here, Ubisoft). I won't go on my usual rant because i'm quite sure 90% of the forum regulars are familiar with it but i'll say this:
TWI and BIS are truely the last bastions of true tactical gaming without any of the halfassed crap which tries to speak to several playstyles at the same time, resulting in satisfaction for nobody.
Perhaps Blackfoot Studios with GB too, but i dont see anything happening from that direction any time soon.

 

[Greasemonkey]

It died after other companies were taking over franchises (looking at you here, Ubisoft). I won't go on my usual rant because i'm quite sure 90% of the forum regulars are familiar with it but i'll say this:
TWI and BIS are truely the last bastions of true tactical gaming without any of the halfassed crap which tries to speak to several playstyles at the same time, resulting in satisfaction for nobody.
Perhaps Blackfoot Studios with GB too, but i dont see anything happening from that direction any time soon.

I agree- I absolutely detest Ubisoft and I hold them responsible for sodomizing the Tom Clancy franchise.

What really leaves me confused is the lack of mods for HL2. When I first started playing online games it seemed like EVERYTHING was on HL1. Heck- I was playing HL1 mods well into 2006-2007 it seemed. Is there some other engine that everyone has centered around? Is there some mod community I'm not aware of?

Hostile Intent was a great HL1 mod and I'd love to see a similar mod pop up for HL2.

I guess I'll look into SWAT4( I think I've played it before... it seemed fun at the time).

I really can't express how fond I am of the old Rainbow Six and RogueSpear days. They were great games to play either in co-op or adversarial. Ghost Recon blew my mind when it came out... Ravenshield was somewhat a disappointment and marked the beginning of the end for the R6 series.

I'm still going to continue playing Ghost Recon SP. There are lots of quality campaign mods out there.

The other thing I love about these older games is how well they run on less-than-new machines

 

[Murphy]

RavenShield was still every bit as great as its predecessors, imo.

Have you played Hidden and Dangerous 2 yet? I think you would love it. There's a demo too, just in case.

 

[Major Liability]

You know, people still play Hostile Intent almost every day. If you join the Hostile Intent Mod Squad Steam group I'm sure you'll get invites whenever there's a gathering. If nothing else, we always play every Sunday. Pheonix Rising, the Source engine sequel, has been held up in development for a while but I think they're making progress again.

Raven Shield is still alive, I play it all the time. It's just got a low population.

I don't know if it's "tactical" enough for you but Insurgency is a ton of fun, though I really hate being marines just because their weapons are mainly 5.56mm. M14 DMR and the L1A1 are the only guns I really like in the game.

Couple of other mods I've heard good things about but haven't tried myself: Project Reality for BF2 and Resistance and Liberation for Source engine.

 

[Nimsky]

There's still plenty of tactical gaming to be done if you know where to look. ArmA 2 + OA is the obvious choice. It's pretty much the best milsim game on the market right now. Find a nice group to play it with (ROARMA? ) and you'll have a good time.

Raven Shield is still very playable online, and the great thing about those old games is that you don't need servers or a player base (unless you want to play on pub servers, which are pretty bad). All you need is one or more buddies on TS, host a listen server and you're good to go. Same thing goes for Ghost Recon and its expansions.

SiC, it's about time for another GR session dammit

 

[dogbadger]

i thought ravenshield was the highpoint of the series, though obviously not as groundbreaking as R6 on release. BT was good too.

vietcong has still got a great coop scene.
swat 4 is pretty good for non lethals but i think the recoil is overdone on smgs - prob to encourage the former.
still enjoyable and hilarious in mp.- dont patch unless you install Stetchov addon
Insurgency and resistance&liberation mods for HL2 are both pretty good imo and i give them a session every couple of weeks or so.
Are plp still playing H&D sabre squad in coop?
I'm reinstalling all my GR games v soon.
love arma 1 + 2 , still play OFP now and then too.
When my other PC is up and running i'll be straight back on project reality without question.

so yeah - plenty about for a tactical gamer - though not necesarily modern.
There aren't enough hours in the day....

 

[omarfw]

I study a lot of typology and from my standpoint I can tell you that 75% (max) of the population we refer to as sensor thinkers leaving only 25% of the population that are intuitive thinkers. This is a rough estimate of course.

Sensor thinkers enjoy games like MW2 and movies like transformers 2 and the expendables. Media that is basically mindless entertainment presented to them on a platter with little for them to actually think about and figure out. They are simple people who choose to think simplistically.

Intuitives enjoy more complex media. movies that make you think. games that make you consider the potential outcomes of different scenarios. aka strategizing. It has nothing to do with level of intelligence but rather whether or not someone prefers to use it in a simple or complex way. I can tell you right now that almost every RO fan is an intuitor as well as myself.

Tactical games are sparse because the majority of the population enjoys mindless games like MW2 and counter strike. Game developers know that mindless shoot em up games sell better and to a wider audience. Games like RO and arma require brainpower and future based thought patterns that, while fun and easy to do for some people like intuitive types, are considered to be somewhat of a chore for S types.

 

[Crusher]

Well maybe in the future tactical gaming will be the major selling point for a few years, just like shoot em ups, WWII shooters and now Modern Warfare shooters. It's the main reason why I fear for HOS, just like UT3 it will be released while the new generation of games are being played for a while. No one is interested in a WWII game anymore, infact, gamers are starting to get bored of Modern warfare games. It's just a matter of time what the new generation will be. Maybe WWII again.

 

[Nimsky]

I study a lot of typology and from my standpoint I can tell you that 75% (max) of the population we refer to as sensor thinkers leaving only 25% of the population that are intuitive thinkers. This is a rough estimate of course.

Sensor thinkers enjoy games like MW2 and movies like transformers 2 and the expendables. Media that is basically mindless entertainment presented to them on a platter with little for them to actually think about and figure out. They are simple people who choose to think simplistically.

Intuitives enjoy more complex media. movies that make you think. games that make you consider the potential outcomes of different scenarios. aka strategizing. It has nothing to do with level of intelligence but rather whether or not someone prefers to use it in a simple or complex way. I can tell you right now that almost every RO fan is an intuitor as well as myself.

Tactical games are sparse because the majority of the population enjoys mindless games like MW2 and counter strike. Game developers know that mindless shoot em up games sell better and to a wider audience. Games like RO and arma require brainpower and future based thought patterns that, while fun and easy to do for some people like intuitive types, are considered to be somewhat of a chore for S types.

Interesting.