The most engaging first person shooters of the last few years force players into intense bouts of melee combat, Gamasutra reported today.
Game Developer magazine published the study last year. It used current generation FPS games — Battlefield 2142, Call of Duty 3, F.E.A.R., Gears of War, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, and Resistance: Fall of Man — plus two 2004 titles Halo 2 and Half-Life 2.
The surveyors recorded “300 hours of physiological and gameplay data” and tested how players reacted to gameplay by monitoring brainwaves, heart rate, breathing, blinking, temperature and motion. They found, among other things, that melee combat is more fun and exhilarating than any other approach.
Close combat was the most reliable method of creating engagement, adrenaline, reward, and all the emotions that make shooters so much fun. Certainly, this is nothing new to the genre, but the next-gen games that excelled in this area were exceptionally strong at creating high-paced close combat frequently.
This graph shows how players responded to different weapons in Halo 2, with melee combat and especially the one-hit-kill energy sword reigning as most satisfying.
The chainsaw in Gears of War generated a similar response. Both these titles didn’t just allow for melee combat. They forced it through tight level design and surprise encounters.
Close quarters combat in these games is exciting because it put players in situations where they either score a one hit kill or be killed in one hit, where they can do a lot of damage or die immediately.
This frenetic FPS melee has largely been replaced with cover and distanced enemies and regenerative health, and not unfairly because it can be very frustrating or very rewarding. Halo 2 and Gears of War both did a good job of padding these close, personal encounters with standard fare, which makes the most sense and keeps the gameplay interesting.
