First Person Shooters as I remember them

I grew up with video games in the late 90s, and one of my favourite genre of games was the First Person Shooter. Since then games have come a long way, both from a technical standpoint as from a design perspective. There's a lot of layers in modern games, different ways of  rewarding the player for doing well, and many different ways to keep the player engaged through the ups and downs of the game, or its story.

However, something isn't quite right with FPS in recent years. I feel that, although the industry has made great strides, something has been lost in polishing and pushing the genre forwards. Even modern titles that are said to harken back to the shooter days of old seem to miss certain elements that I enjoyed in shooters growing up.

There's always plenty of build up starting out. We get a cut-scene, either in-engine or pre-rendered, introducing us to the character cast, the universe. Often times there's some introductory phase where we, as the player, are introduced to the game's mechanics and systems. Slowly but surely we're brought up to speed on the game and the world our character inhabits. The story arcs dramatically and is inter cut with a variety of different gameplay sequences. Some of these sequences bring us particular weapons, carryable or stationary, to resolve the situation at hand. Health often times regenerates over time, necessitating the use of cover, and our objectives are clearly marked, and usually straight ahead of us, albeit in varying distances from where we are now.

While I don't want to say that any or all of these are bad, they make an FPS a very different beast from what it was. And I miss the beast that FPS used to be.

I miss shooters that let me jump in and get to the action right away.
I miss not having to invest in a character cast, or a storyline, in order to enjoy some gameplay.
I miss when the only break in play was when I decided to go back to see if there's anything I missed.
I miss trying to find secrets and alternate routes through levels.
I miss building up an arsenal of weapons, each giving me different ways to approach a combat situation.
I miss having to manage my health, heading into a new area with plentiful health because I worked for it.
I miss moving around, trying to get good shots off and evading damage, instead of hiding behind cover.

It sounds like many different companies are working on bringing back this sort of game. Cliff Blezinski is said to be working on an Arena Shooter, word is that the new Doom looks to be much higher paced than its predecessor, there's a new Unreal Tournament in production that looks to fill that hole as well.

I don't yet feel comforted, knowing that what I loved is making a return, but it seems I'm not the only one who seems to think we might've thrown out a bit too much under the veil of innovation and moving forward with the genre. It's to this end that I decided to try my hand at a prototype, to see if I could capture something of what I've been missing in FPSes.

The prototype comes in the shape of a Source mod. you can download the prototype below. Simply extract the folder called 'SpaceCorridors' to your Steam/SteamApps/SourceMods directory and restart Steam.

Download Link

I would love to hear any feedback on what this prototype does and does not manage to achieve, as well as any thoughts you may have on modern and classic first person shooters.