The further we get into "next-gen" gaming, the more I see the options for gamers slipping away. What I mean to say is, for every ten games that are released (and no, these numbers aren't official): three will be sports games, four will be first person shooters, one will be a racing game, one will be an action game, and the last one will be "other" (basically, a random offering from any of the genres not mentioned).

Now I love sports, and I generally love sports games. I don't see how every sports game makes it to store shelves (All-Pro Football 2k8 and the yearly iteration of NBA Live come to mind), but I can at least see how so many sports games are made, considering how many different sports there are for developers to attempt to emulate in console form.

While I've never been a fan of racing games, I can see how a car enthusiast would enjoy those types of games; especially when you can race a customized car online against other people.

Action games these days tend to get my attention more than any other genre, as they either feature highly-complex (Ninja Gaiden) or wildly original (Heavenly Sword) control schemes and game mechanics. The problem is that so many of them can be beaten in such a short time that they rarely seem to be worth the $60 you spend on a new copy...and a higher, unlockable difficulty does not a new game make.

Which brings us to the real focus of this blog: the first-person shooter. To put it frankly, the first-person shooter is responsible for the death of originality in console games. Furthermore, I specifically blame the Halo craze and the hype surrounding what I consider to be the most overrated game franchise in history. Halo did nothing for the video game industry but provide console gamers with a multiplayer experience that those of us who were playing Doom and Duke Nukem before we hit puberty had experienced years earlier...that and convince every video game producer on the face of the Earth that FPSes were the end-all and be-all in gaming.

Now, I'm not saying Halo is a bad game franchise. Halo is actually a pretty good game franchise, but it's nowhere near the quality that some people would have you believe it to be. It is NOT the single greatest game franchise of all time, nor is Halo 3 the greatest game of all time...or hell, even the best FPS of all time. The game mechanics, though good, are nothing that we haven't seen before. The story, if you want to call it that, is a cliche pulled right from the pages of every novel or script written about an alien invasion and the ensuing fight to save humanity. The weapons are the same rehash from every other FPS. So what makes it so special?

And it's at this point that anyone who owns a 360 and is reading this will call me a Sony fanboy and say that I'm crazy for not thinking Halo 3 is some kind of shining beacon of the gaming industry. But, I will repeat my previous statement for those of lesser intelligence: Halo 3 is a GOOD game, maybe even a GREAT game, just not an AMAZING game.

...And the bottom line is that Halo isn't even the problem, because Halo is enjoyable, and furthermore, Halo doesn't try to throw any gimmicks at you. Mediocre first-person shooters that try to make up for their mediocrity with some kind of gimmick are what is killing this genre (that and the fact that there just don't need to be this damn many FPS games, period).

Five minutes into the demo of TimeShift, I realized that the gimmick WAS the game. Yes, stopping, reversing, and slowing time are kinda cool for a while, but there has to be something more to the game to make it good...like depth and good A.I., both of which TimeShift lacks. Upon playing the full version (but not buying it), I realized that my original assessment was correct: this game was as cookie-cutter as first-person shooters go, but the devs had hoped that the ability to manipulate time would get people to see beyond this.

Turok seems like another run-of-the-mill first-person shooter wrapped in a handful of gimmicks. Yes, it's cool to watch dinosaurs fight with each other while you wait to pick-off the victor, but it's not cool enough to make up for the fact that it's a blatant (and poorly-executed) Halo rip-off that's bringing absolutely nothing new to the table. So animations of Turok killing a guy with a knife are really supposed to make us forget that everything is derivative? And maybe some of us would if Turok didn't plod along at a snail's pace. I'd like to attribute any complaints that I have to the version that I've played being a demo, but I highly doubt that matters.

Lots of Sony fanboys are ecstatic that Haze is an exclusive, but again, all I see is the gimmick surrounding "nectar", which makes me nervous that this may be "just another FPS".

The best FPSes that I can think of didn't need gimmicks to be good games...they relied on a little thing called "gameplay".

And despite my current distrust and distaste for first-person shooters, I bought Orange Box a couple of weeks ago anyway...because there just aren't that many games out worth spending $60 on. I expected to meet some measure of disappointment along the way, but I found myself enthralled by the storyline and the gameplay of Half-Life 2 all the way through Episode 2; in fact, I was so disappointed that the adventure was over, I went online and started to look up info on Episode 3.

These games had completely altered my perceptions and given me hope for a genre that I thought was dead; it single-handedly restored my faith in first-person shooters in the span of 5 days. It had let me know that there are still first-person shooters out there with engaging stories, memorable characters to interact with, and gameplay that involves more than just shooting everything that pops onto the screen. Now, if only I could convince the rest of the gaming industry to adopt this as the standard for the FPS...