The Problem with First-person Shooters

I don't think the FPS has evolved all that much from they days of Doom sadly. Speaking in terms on gunplay. I still find TLoU to have some of the best gunfights in a game yet, and that's a TPS whose focus isn't really on shooting at all.

These game designers need to actually shoot some real firearms and bring the gravitas of that experience to the genre.

How come we don't have any "2nd Person Shooters" how did go from 1st person to 3rd Person ? What happened to the 2nd Person ?

The only real problem I have with current first person shooters, and a lot of games in general, is the lack of style. Everything has to be real or realistic. Why? I have reality every day. Games are meant to be an escape from that.

Take platforming for example. This used to be handled by mainly short, stocky plumbers, strangely colored Erinaceinae with attitudes and a myraid of other anthropomorphized creatures and cartoon characters. Now it's done by people. People are boring. People aren't capable of the things animals are capable of. Imagine Assassin's Creed, but instead of a regular guy, you're a lizard. Scaling walls without worrying about ledges, using your tongue or tail to move across gaps, etc.

Realism always has it's place sure, but I am hoping after we see games like No Man's Sky and Splatoon! do well that some of the AAA publishers will start looking for things that are more unique.

@Lulu_Lulu: the 2nd person perspective is mostly for self-help books that address "you" if that makes sense.

@mastermetal777

My english isn't that good... But 2nd person is when someone else adresses you ? So how would that work in gaming ?

I don't think it would. Although, according to Wikipedia, "Traditionally, the second-person form is used less often in literary fiction than the first-person and third-person forms. But it is, in many languages, a very common technique of several popular and non- or quasi-fictional written genres such as guide books, self-help books, do-it-yourself manuals, interactive fiction, role-playing games, gamebooks such as the Choose Your Own Adventure series, musical lyrics, advertisements, and also blogs."

Hmmmm.... AGREED !

Well, technically, you as the player are the silent narrator of any game. You're guiding the character to their goal and directing the story's path, though not always the conclusion.

@mastermetal777: Well yeah the objective of every FPS is point and shoot. But thats a total generalization. There are many FPS that are unique and different. Games like Portal 2, Left 4 Dead, the new game Splatoon, and Evolve all have unique characteristics that, in my opinion, transcend the feature of "point and shoot"

@iTrueColors

Huh ? Splatoon is 1st person ?

Anyway, FPS is pretty much just point and shoot, I don't think Any FPS can learn from Portal because thats a Puzzle Platformer that just happened to be in 1st Person.... With a gun.

Eh, Not the best article. Dont take this the wrong way, I kinda stopped reading once I realised I was just reading the usual rant of someone not understanding why something is popular. These anti-CoD/Halo/Battlefield rants got old in 2009.

I think the biggest problem with FPS right now are that the arsenal implemented into today's FPS' fall into the usual pseudo-authentic archetypes. By pseudo-authentic, I mean that they arent real, but they follow the same rules of modern firearms. You have a rifle with a clip of 30 or so rounds, you reload. Snipers, handguns, sporadic machine guns and shotguns (though I love a good shotgun - it carried RAGE) all generally operate in the same way with the usual attachments. And it's bleeding into Sci-Fi/Fantastical shooters as well.

The linear run and gun FPS' I've enjoyed were the shooters that shy away from these weapon archetypes. While Bulletstorm, RF: A, Resistance 3 and Hard Reset arent the best shooters in the world, the core shooting gameplay in those games are fun. There were guns that use physics, control effects, interesting projectile behaviour and just unique and imaginative weapons with cool mechanics within them.

But it's not all a FPS can do to interest me. I love cool movement mechanics. I actually admire TitanFall for how slick movement is in the game and how it plays into with the dynamic and flowing game modes. Tribes: Ascend was fun too, bringing back much needed speed and momentum over the slow and deliberate styles of shooters of the modern FPS.

@illmatic87: Well I appreciate your honesty. This article was written over a few years ago, so of course it's gonna sound a bit dated. I just found it, made some minor edits, and posted it. Next time I write an article about the problems certain genres have, I'll make sure to stay current and actually contextualize everything.

Hmm...I notice you never mention games like Swat 4, Rainbow Six 3 Ravenshield, or the new Shadow Warrior. I have to ask, how much FPSs outside of the modern AAA genre have you played? The majority of the FPS market nowadays really is littered with sub-par, generic gameplay, but there are rays of sunshine. Wolfenstein was pretty good. Flying Wild Hogs (makers of Hard Reset and Shadow Warrior) are a personal favorite of mine.

I absolutely love the tactical FPSs from the mid 2000s like Swat 4 and Rainbow Six 3. You might really enjoy Swat 4, as it heavily emphasizes non-lethally subduing suspects instead of simply shooting them (in fact, shooting them if they're not directly threatening you will cost you the mission).

Ever played Metroid Prime? Deus Ex or System Shock 2?

Also, what are you playing your FPSs on? I personally never enjoyed the FPS genre all that much until I switched to PC; they just really feel natural to the platform. You're more focused due to sitting at a desk, you can often increase the field of view, get rid of annoying motion blur, play at 60fps (the way all FPSs should be played honestly), turn off head bobbing, and nothing beats the precision of a mouse--nothing!

I don't know. It just seems like you're dismissing an entire genre based off a very limited selection. There's a whole history to the genre that you leave untouched in your article.

I think shooters need to improve on story telling. Deus ex Human Revolution might not have a good story, but I thought the story telling was fine. Though I guess it might help it has cut scenes. However, a game like dishonored, which still is a good game(but I haven't finish yet since I was finishing max payne 3 and playing batman arkham asylum twice) doesn't really have good story telling to me. But like I said the game isn't bad, but the story telling is really average for an interesting setting. I mean the melee is fine all but the story hasn't kept on hook like it did with human revolution. It doesn't really have interesting characters as well. A game doesn't really need to have a oscar worthy script, but it needs to have a decent story telling. That's why game's like mass effect and human revolution are my most played shooters. The story telling doesn't need to be serious, it just need to keep someone like me on hook. Now I haven't been able to finish bioshock because it's a pretty slow pace shooter, but I'll get to it eventually. Just my opinion really.

@cfisher2833: For me, the problem is mostly the story. And as for some of your examples, I never played the Rainbow Six games, SWAT, and I only ever played the original Wolfenstein 3D.

As for Metroid Prime and Deus Ex, I don't consider them "true" FPS games, since their more engaging mechanics don't necessarily boil down to gunning down waves of enemies. Enemies are secondary to exploration in Metroid Prime, and Deus Ex has sci-fi philosophy and RPG development as the engagement rather than the actual combat - or lack thereof, if you decide to play stealthily.

That i totally agree with.

I feels more and more that we are playing in the same world.

Fortunately there are some exceptions.

There is no problem with FPSs. It's a great genre. The problem lies with kids that only started gaming in the PS2 era and think that Final Fantasy is somehow the pinnacle of gaming.

@TheShadowLord07: Interesting point. I want both a good story and good gameplay. But a game like Dishonored which has a lacking story but good gameplay will keep me hooked much longer than a game like Dragon Age Origins with a heavy story but crap gameplay. I had a hard time finishing Mass Effect 1 because of the lackluster combat despite the interesting story. Perhaps the way the story was presented compelled me to complete Mass Effect 1.

Whereas DA Origins story was just a bunch of fantasy lore thrown at you from jump with people whining about this and that with crap combat. I think the fun gameplay is what makes FPS so popular. Not every game needs to have an Oscar worthy story. Most people play games to escape reality. Sometimes after a long day at work, I just want to unwind and blow shit up for fun and to decompress.

I rest my case..

This. This. This. This. This.

Related to this, I like that most FPS games also employ the 'silent protagonist' element. I didn't like it when Black Ops introduced 'your' character speaking at various times, though I've gotten over that now and, I think I appreciate games where your character speaks more than I used to but I'm still a huge fan of FPS games where your character doesn't speak, or if possible, you don't see your character at all. For example, I like the Bioshock 1 approach better than the 'occasional dialogue' approach used by Infinite, though the later has great, great, dialogue so it's pretty close in that aspect.

You don't have to look down gunsights in Far Cry 3. You can shoot from the hip without onscreen crosshairs.

@jun_aka_pekto: Well it doesn't matter anyway.. its still the same old FPS... you go around shoot people! its always been like that for decades. they add more cutscenes,more dialogs,better controls but the core gameplay of "Run'n'shoot" has never really changed...they still use the "Run'n'shoot" as the bread&butter of any FPS game.

I love bioshock 1's artwork,story,music and yet i cannot make myself play it because of its FPS shooter gameplay...IMHO bioshock 1 would've been way better if it had resident evil style camera angles or at least a non-shooter gameplay,the only FPS i like doesn't have any conventional guns(portal).

@mastermetal777: So basically, although games like Metroid and Deus EX are FPS, because they innovate you dismiss them as not true FPS. I guess I am confused as to what you are trying to say. Also, as a fan of the genre, I am going to go ahead and say if you haven't played Rainbow Six you really shouldn't be writing articles about what is wrong this particular genre. I understand not liking it, there are plenty of people that don't. But you haven't played enough of the genre to present your opinion as unbiased.

@luka024: 1. Metroid Prime is simply a 3D Metroid game that happens to be in the 1st person perspective. It's just a perspective shift on an established formula.

2. Deus Ex was also in the 1st person perspective, but it was centered around being a stealth RPG with the possibility of shooting someone if you wanted.

3. I have played plenty of both old school and modern FPS games to know what I'm talking about. The games I used in my article were merely the most commonly known examples of said genre. Rainbow Six might be a good example of the FPS formula, but I bet it still follows the same mechanics of being an FPS game in that you still point a gun and shootm the rules of how you go about the mission might change, but it's still the same type of base mechanic.

My point was, Rainbow Six was a huge franchise to somehow have "missed," which brings into question your credibility as a whole. And yes, all first person shooters consist of shooting people. From the first person. Again, Metroid and Deus involved shooting people. From the first person. Sub-genres were integrated to expand on the base formula. That's how you move a genre forward and build on the base mechanics to appeal to people like yourself, who have a personal vendetta against them and dismiss any game that is in the genre that doesn't fit your narrow exposure to the genre.

@luka024: I have no vendetta. Metroid Prime is one of my all-time favorite games, as are Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Portal, and BioShock. I like FPS games. I simply wish they had more in-depth mechanics and stories like the ones I listed.