[Rivenshield]

I was watching some old YouTube videos of PS1 combat -- too bad nobody recorded any of the old 133x133x133 slaughterfests -- just to pass the time, and waxing nostalgic about the look and feel of a game I haven't played in at least five years...

...and I was watching inventory windows pop up and people moving things around, swapping weapons, Spitfires spitting their angry little tracer-bursts... fixing each other, resupplying each other, a whole small crowd around every equipment terminal to replenish ammo or swap favorite configurations to meet the demands of the moment... a whole self-organizing swarm on the move and visibly coping with all the demands of logistics and supply, so unlike any FPS before or since....

...where you *needed* the cooperation of the people around you to drive or shoot or last longer than five seconds, which was why a smaller force with its act together could routinely stand off larger ones that didn't, and how a large force that *did* have its act together was this awesome destructive tidal wave of online humanity....

...and it struck me with a certain sense of melancholy that we'll never see it again. Because everybody will have magic miniature force fields that light up a la WoW every time you get dinged and slowly regenerate on their own, and almost everybody will be able to pull ammunition out their ass. No fixes and no need for them. No Spitfires to stop cloakers. No way to mix and match *anything.* No way to do what we routinely did ten years ago. No gunners needed for our prize front-line tanks. No more rock-paper-scissors. No ANTs and not much hacking. No teamwork required. Just a huge gaggle of self-sufficient individuals, where even the infiltrators will have freaking shotguns and sniper rifles.

Let's be honest, gents: This isn't Planetside anymore. It's merely a sci-fi 32x32 shoot-em-up writ Biblically large.

At least that's what I think. Didn't mean to go off on a rant there. I could be wrong.

I hope I am. But it doesn't feel that way.