Who's the Current FPS King?

So Joystiq just posted some early impressions on the next Medal of Honor game, and I came away with basically thinking that EA has scrapped everything from the shit storm that was Medal of Honor: Airborne and is just straight ripping Call of Duty 4. Hell, the article even says its campaign seems like a truer sequel to CoD4 than CoD:Mod2 was. It also says that DICE is developing the multiplayer (EA Los Angeles is doing the campaign), and given how much I'm loving Bad Company 2, I might actually have to keep an eye on this one. But then I got to thinking...

The new Halo: Reach trailer mentions having loadouts, and even Bioshock 2's multiplayer aped CoD4. So here's the question: is Call of Duty the new king of the shooters? I guess the answer would have to be, "yes." I mean, Modern Warfare 2 was the fastest selling-game of all time, beating a mark once held by Halo 3 and then broken by GTA IV. Now, it's not exactly a fair fight because both GTA IV and Modern Warfare 2 are multi-platform games, but still. It says something that all these new FPSs are trying to mimic the Call of Duty formula when for so long everyone was chasing Halo. Have we already seen that fabled Halo-killer?

Just think about that. I remember a few years ago thinking that the idea that a Halo-killer could possibly come out before Bungie was done with the series was just preposterous. Killzone and Killzone 2 were both hyped as Halo-killers and I think we all know how that turned out. I can't believe that I'm about to type this, but Halo: Reach is playing catch-up to Call of Duty. Halo is no longer the leading innovator in the genre. How did this happen?

Well, way back in 2007, Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare were released. I still consider the former to be the premier shooter on the console, but I'd say I'm in the minority. I think where they lost their audience--not to imply that Halo 3 is struggling to find an audience, they're just not way out in first place anymore--is that they spent too much time innovating in the wrong areas. More on that in a bit, but first a little background: Halo 3 was the first game to eclipse Halo 2 in online activity, and this was after the first Gears of War and three Call of Duty games had come and gone. While Call of Duty 4 was a much-hyped contender (Game Informer named it, not Halo 3, as its most anticipated game of 2007), there was little reason to believe that it could actually top Master Chief.

So where did Halo 3 misstep? While I know Sweet Clyde has some considerable distaste for the game, I would probably say it's my favorite game of the series. It's a lot like Halo 2 but with more dressings. That's the problem, though. While Forge and the ability to save replays are awesome, they're not features that will draw in more people than a fresh experience. The problem was that Halo 3 felt like Halo 2 in HD with more features but the same gameplay. While I loved that, I'm not playing it anymore. I feel like I've been playing it since 2004. Sure, Grifball was enough to bring me back for a while, but they won't offer it to me on a consistent basis, and the gametype doesn't yet have the staying power I'm looking for. The fact of the matter is: Halo 3 didn't innovate gameplay and Call of Duty 4 did.

So, back to the question I proposed in the title: who's the current FPS king? Honestly, I don't know. Is it Call of Duty 4 still or Modern Warfare 2? With Activision pumping out a "new" CoD game every November, how long before that series becomes stale? Maybe Halo: Reach will take back the crown in a year when the CoD torch has been passed to Treyarch. Hell, maybe even Bad Company 2 or Medal of Honor can come in and take the reigns. There certainly seems to be room because if nothing else, Modern Warfare 2 was cocky as hell. It's actually very easy to draw a parallel between Modern Warfare 2 and Halo 3. They were both sequels to what was the most popular FPS on the market, and neither felt particularly fresh.

If there's a recipe for success when creating a sequel to the most popular game on the market, I think it's following the footsteps of Halo 2. Sure, there are still people who are waiting for a "real" sequel to Halo: Combat Evolved, but if Halo 2 had just been more of the same, the proverbial Halo-killer may have arrived years earlier. You can't just follow the "If it ain't broke don't fix it" philosophy because otherwise people will get bored. I know Sweet Clyde saw jet packs in the Reach trailer and groaned, but that tells me that they're trying to create a fresh experience (Yes, I know Tribes had jet packs, shut up. No one else is allowed to do jet packs because Tribes did it? Did you consider Halo: CE a Doom-clone, you narrow-minded prick?).

I know I've rambled on about this for a while now, but if you take one thing away from it it's this: the state of the current FPS market is in flux and we may never again have one series that is the golden standard for the genre.

--Chilly P