I've never been a fan of first person shooters. It's not that I don't like the idea of shooting things to pieces, trust me, that idea is more than apealing to me some days, but I just don't get on with them. I don't play them much, and they don't bother me. But this is something I've never been able to fully explain as to why before.
Back in the early ninties first person shooters simply didn't exist. There wasn't the graphical power for such a thing. All shooting games were 2D side scrollers, and often mixed platforming into the element, just to avoid it being a "hold right and fire" ordeal. But as consoles and PC's became more powerful, the idea of taking things into 3D was possible, and with that came first person shooters (FPS's).
But lets not get ahead of ourselves here. Sure, first person shooters have been around for a while, but they weren't always big news. Ever since the early days of the Playstation era FPS's have been possible, hell Goldeneye on the N64 was out in '97, but they were almost exclusively found on PC's at this point, possibly due to graphical power, possibly due to developers simply not seeing the demand.
Whatever the reason, FPS's didn't dominate consoles until the last generation, where they appeared seemingly limitlessly on the PS2 and Xbox, and to a lesser extent on the Gamecube. This popularity has continued, and nowadays they're the biggest selling genre on the PS3 and Xbox360, and it's only the casual gaming audience that's stopping them from swamping the Wii with the same type of games.
But where does that leave me as a gamer? As I just said, I don't like first person shooters. And you're probably wondering why exactly, and to tell you the truth I'm not 100% sure. It's not the controls, as early FPS's like the first Medal of Honour on the psone use a completely different control scheme to modern shooters, and there are several third person games like Mercenaries that use a near identical control system that doesn't bother me in the slightest.
So maybe it's just the games themselves? Perhaps I don't like gritty realism, and scary shock horor. Well looking through my game collection, I'd be inclined to agree with you. I prefered the Prince Of Persia series before it turned darker and edgier, and not many of my games would earn above a 12 rating under game ratings systems.
But then there are games like Portal. While the computer GLaDOS is a sinister machine, and in places it's dark humour is chilling and (as I already said my girlfriend said) unnerving, this game is largely not a shooter. Portal is largely a puzzle game, and I must admit, from watching, I would be inclined to play it, but that view puts me off.
When I was younger I always used to imagine what other people saw. I would think to myself "What do things look like in there eyes?" and I would imagine myself jumping out of my own body, and into there's just to look in there eyes. It was a thought that unnerved me then, and it still unnerves me now. And this is what FPS's do. They allow the player to see through someone elses eyes, and I for one find that quite disturbing.
This is why I don't have a problem with third person shooters (when they take my interest anyway, not many do). I can see the character in a third person shooter, and while I can opt to look through his weapon in order to aim better in many of them, there's a clear distinction between me controlling the character, and me playing the role of the character myself. I like that seperation, and I don't like it when it's removed. It simply makes me feel uncomfortable, and nauseous.
But with FPS's now dominating the console, what do I, the man who dislikes that view, do? This is part of why I've not got a new console yet, I'm still yet to find more than one game on each console that I'd buy. Likewise, with games like Portal, and Mirror's Edge now bluring the line for first person being for more than just gun games, how long will it be before all games have first person as standard? And what will I do for a gaming fix when that happens?
And yet why does it have to be like that? Third person shooters exist, and can have a first person mode for shooting. Why is it not possible to have a first and third person mode in a game, and let the player choose which perspective they want to play it in. After all, this is a standard feature of many car racing games.
Before you say "cars need less animation than people"; the characters in FPS's are already animated. After all, what are you shooting at in multiplayer otherwise? If it's possible to animate a third person to exist in multiplayer, why can't why stick the camera back behind the player for those who wish it? If it's a case of realism, then sod that, how realistic is shooting down an alien fleet single handed anyway?
Ignoring Hollywood movies I mean.
Back in the early ninties first person shooters simply didn't exist. There wasn't the graphical power for such a thing. All shooting games were 2D side scrollers, and often mixed platforming into the element, just to avoid it being a "hold right and fire" ordeal. But as consoles and PC's became more powerful, the idea of taking things into 3D was possible, and with that came first person shooters (FPS's).
But lets not get ahead of ourselves here. Sure, first person shooters have been around for a while, but they weren't always big news. Ever since the early days of the Playstation era FPS's have been possible, hell Goldeneye on the N64 was out in '97, but they were almost exclusively found on PC's at this point, possibly due to graphical power, possibly due to developers simply not seeing the demand.
Whatever the reason, FPS's didn't dominate consoles until the last generation, where they appeared seemingly limitlessly on the PS2 and Xbox, and to a lesser extent on the Gamecube. This popularity has continued, and nowadays they're the biggest selling genre on the PS3 and Xbox360, and it's only the casual gaming audience that's stopping them from swamping the Wii with the same type of games.
But where does that leave me as a gamer? As I just said, I don't like first person shooters. And you're probably wondering why exactly, and to tell you the truth I'm not 100% sure. It's not the controls, as early FPS's like the first Medal of Honour on the psone use a completely different control scheme to modern shooters, and there are several third person games like Mercenaries that use a near identical control system that doesn't bother me in the slightest.
So maybe it's just the games themselves? Perhaps I don't like gritty realism, and scary shock horor. Well looking through my game collection, I'd be inclined to agree with you. I prefered the Prince Of Persia series before it turned darker and edgier, and not many of my games would earn above a 12 rating under game ratings systems.
But then there are games like Portal. While the computer GLaDOS is a sinister machine, and in places it's dark humour is chilling and (as I already said my girlfriend said) unnerving, this game is largely not a shooter. Portal is largely a puzzle game, and I must admit, from watching, I would be inclined to play it, but that view puts me off.
When I was younger I always used to imagine what other people saw. I would think to myself "What do things look like in there eyes?" and I would imagine myself jumping out of my own body, and into there's just to look in there eyes. It was a thought that unnerved me then, and it still unnerves me now. And this is what FPS's do. They allow the player to see through someone elses eyes, and I for one find that quite disturbing.
This is why I don't have a problem with third person shooters (when they take my interest anyway, not many do). I can see the character in a third person shooter, and while I can opt to look through his weapon in order to aim better in many of them, there's a clear distinction between me controlling the character, and me playing the role of the character myself. I like that seperation, and I don't like it when it's removed. It simply makes me feel uncomfortable, and nauseous.
But with FPS's now dominating the console, what do I, the man who dislikes that view, do? This is part of why I've not got a new console yet, I'm still yet to find more than one game on each console that I'd buy. Likewise, with games like Portal, and Mirror's Edge now bluring the line for first person being for more than just gun games, how long will it be before all games have first person as standard? And what will I do for a gaming fix when that happens?
And yet why does it have to be like that? Third person shooters exist, and can have a first person mode for shooting. Why is it not possible to have a first and third person mode in a game, and let the player choose which perspective they want to play it in. After all, this is a standard feature of many car racing games.
Before you say "cars need less animation than people"; the characters in FPS's are already animated. After all, what are you shooting at in multiplayer otherwise? If it's possible to animate a third person to exist in multiplayer, why can't why stick the camera back behind the player for those who wish it? If it's a case of realism, then sod that, how realistic is shooting down an alien fleet single handed anyway?
Ignoring Hollywood movies I mean.
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