Is it Real? Or is it Memorex?

Ever since the advent of first person shooters, gamers have loudly debated whether or not realism is important to games. The first thing that pops to mind is the infamous "footsteps in Quake" argument that we like to bring up here on Firingsquad. But if we're going to talk about realism in first person shooters, it goes way beyond just footsteps. What about being able to run around, carry 7 different guns, each with more ammo than a helicopter could carry? How come you can shoot 50 rockets from a rocket launcher without reloading? Why is it that you can drop from a 3 story height without dying? And what's the deal with being able to survive a rocket just because you had "armor" on? Let's not even get started with the idea behind rocket jumping!

Nice looking architecture

Good job with the interiors

Keeping it Real

In order to combat this supposed "deficiency" in the action oriented shooters, mod makers jumped in to change things around and make things more realistic. All of a sudden, you had to reload your weapon after a certain, realistic number of shots. Rocket launchers and "fake" lightning guns were removed from the arsenals. Locational damage is taken into account. One shot kills with a pistol are possible. Indeed, mods like Action Quake, Action Quake 2, and Counter Strike for Half-Life have become pretty popular. Whether or not they actually made the original game more fun is up to debate (**cough**no**cough**), but their success proves that a niche for more realistic games is there.

Shoot first, ask questions later

That hostage is hosed

Umm, hello it's still Quake

The point is that no Quake mod can combat the fundamental problem underlying everything. No matter how many features or real weapons you include in a mod, there's still Quake under there (or Half-Life, or SiN, or Unreal or whatever the case may be), and it's NOT realistic. They're trying to turn an action oriented shooter into something that it's not - a realistic gun combat simulation. Wouldn't it just make more sense to build a realistic shooter from scratch? Red Storm came to the same conclusion.