Thursday, 12 August 2010
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First Person Shooters Have Taken Over Our Lives
For the love of Golden Eye! First person shooters are EVERYWHERE! I can’t avoid them. I feel like I’m trapped in that Jim Carrey movie, The Number 23, only instead of a number, all I see around me are the fronts of rifles and shotguns.
Before I continue this rant, I want to say that I love FPS games. When done properly, they are insanely fun to play, addictive, and provide hours of glorious time-wastage. But man oh man, there’s just too freaken many of them.
In the last few years, we’ve had Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: World at War, Modern Warfare 2, Fallout 3, Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Bioshock, Bioshock 2 and Resistance 2. And those games are all preposterously popular.
With Halo: Reach and Call of Duty: Black Ops coming out in the next few months, the question keeps swirling around in my head: Why the sudden explosion of first-person shooters?
I acknowledge the fact that this is not really a new phenomenon. The Doom/Duke Nukem years started this entire trend, and the Half-Life/Counter Strike era took it to the next level. Other video game genres have experienced this, too. Platformers were insanely popular in the early 90s, back in the heyday of the original Mario and Sonic games.
But outside of World of Warcraft and other online games, it seems like there are nothing but shooters in the landscape of gaming. And I think I know why.
Firstly, other genres have started to lose their appeal. Japanese RPGs, one of my personal favorite types of games, have been declining in quality in the past decade. The latest Star Ocean and Final Fantasy games have not lived up to their legendary predecessors. I’m looking at you, Final Fantasy XII. Damn you…damn you to gaming hell…
Sports games tend to appeal to a niche market. Someone who is not a baseball fan would not buy MLB 10 The Show. The large majority of NHL 10 players are hockey fans.
Action games, at least the upper echelon of them, are few and far between. God of War has been the recent standard for action-adventure games, but you can only make that game so many times. So there is relatively little competition for shooters.
Plus, Master Chief is just 100% pure badass.The incorporation of online play into shooters has really brought the genre to a new level. I don’t know what it is about obliterating some punk in Truth and Consequences, New Mexico that is so addictive, but I can’t get enough of it. And neither can the millions of other players who routinely log on to participate in the fun.
But the online component is a double-edged sword. For every satisfying online experience where you play with your friends and enjoy some quality fragging time, you get a round where some 14-year-old thinks that he is the best human ever. Even better, he constantly lets you know that fact through your headset. It’s the reason that I make such frequent use of the mute button.
Online play is also a bittersweet maiden. I just picked up Modern Warfare 2 last night after a hiatus of several months, and in my second round, I was MVP of the game (I think I had 19 kills and 6 deaths). But it was all downhill from there, as my score, productivity and self-confidence continued to decline with each passing round.
I don’t suck at this game, I swear. I’m usually in the top half of players in any given round or set of rounds. But there is no worse feeling in a first person shooter than when you have two kills and 12 deaths, and you can just feel your entire team blaming you for the loss.
But this roller coaster of enjoyment is what makes shooters so popular. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, and the wailing of Midwesterners are an intrinsic part of the experience. It makes me wonder what the next wave of gaming will be…
What’s your take on the popularity of the FPS? What will be the next big thing in gaming?
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- From: NYOrangemen28
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Comments (12)
Hm... Medal of Honor isn't mentioned anywhere. I believe they're coming out with a new game this year too.
I can't believe that Left 4 Dead/2 and Team Fortress 2 weren't mentioned anywhere. I play Left 4 Dead almost religiously, haha.
I thought by now there would be a backlash with FPS because there is
just so many these days. I enjoy them if they're in the context of
something like an RPG — Mass Effect, Deus Ex, Fallout. One thing I can
appreciate about the FPS genre is that they always seem to push the
envelope when it comes to graphics, and that pushes chip makers to make
more powerful hardware, and everyone benefits.
i think they hype is that people kind of take the "first person" to heart. like "im in the action" feel. especially with friends. also its more life-like. you cant "see behind you" like some 3rd person shooters let you. and in some cases, the "player" so to speak is in the way. halo has the guns, but that makes more sense than your player's head in the way. then again, my FPS experience is limited to COD, Halo, and Counter-strike. (few others, but cant think of them).
but thats just what i think about the hype. and most of them are really fun anyways. haha.
Mmmmm, it's all in what you like I suppose. I prefer games like Splinter Cell/Assassin's Creed mostly. I do own MW2 and the Halo series also. Frankly, I believe their popularity is based mainly in their multiplayer compatibility. Look at any game that's really, really popular and it has an awesome multiplayer experience usually.
Although, the multiplayer for Assassin's Creed 3 had crazy positive reviews at E3 and I'm very excited for it. It's very up close and personal. It looks like you have to stalk your targets and actually pull off assassinations on them, not just holding down the trigger button and rail off some rounds in their face.
As with any genre, there are good titles and bad. I don't look at FPS as anything different.
You hit it on the nose.
I live in Romania and blowing someone away whether it be in the States, Australia or Asia it is a satisfying feeling.
Online multiplayer has flipped the gaming world. It is the only reason some people purchase games.
@Kazydai - @fLiPgUy31O@xanga - You guys just proved my point. There are so many shooters I can't even remember them all! Haha
It's so true...If I don't get my Xbox Live fix of MW2 daily it feels like I go weeks without it XD.
I really should pre-order Halo Reach now.....
There's a pretty wide market for non-shooters. Prince of Persia, God of War, Gears of War - which is 3rd person action, Uncharted, Prototype, inFAMOUS, Army of Two, Splinter Cell, Mass Effect (A-RPG), Arkham Asylum, GTA, &c. are all fine examples of a mature action-adventure and American RPG market. (Fallout 3, in reality, is just an A-RPG with guns. VATS, leveling, and a third-person option really strips a pure FPS label.) As a genre though, this goes back to Heretic, Doom, Blake Stone, and Wolfenstein, &c., &c. - it's not even necessarily a "boom" if it's happened for 20+ years. All the same, if I'm not playing an FPS, I'm playing a strategy/RTS game or RPG. In comparison, though, FPSs have great multiplayer set-ups, and have pretty nailed reward-based gaming on the head. Shoot, kill/capture, unlock a new gun/achievement/rank, and do it all over again.
mmorpgs for the win
There are plenty of other games coming out but the biggest thing is that FPS's sell the most and they will always be the most popular. It was kind of like music gaming two years ago where that was all that was out on the market.
Check out the list of new releases up until January. There are plenty of other games coming out. Sure some of them are third person shoots like Gears, but they are a little bit different.The biggest problem with the gaming industry is that FPS's sell and everyone buys them like I said before. New Intellectual Property's are a very risky thing now a days. With the economy the way it is many game industries are cutting off parts of their studios. Pandemic, the maker of Mercenaries and The Saboteur have closed down just due to not enough cash flow. Luckily they did make up for it with one of best new IP's Dead Space.
As gamers we need to say nay to the generic FPS's and put our dollars behind new games and not keep buying the same thing. Until then, the trend won't change.
They haven't taken over my own life..
Fallout 3 is pretty good..though it has RPG elements to it...so it's not really too much of a shooter because of this..