First Person Shooters

Last week I asked for suggestions on what I should write about, and the only comment to the blog asked me my opinion on first person shooters (FPS). For those of you who might not know what an FPS is, it is a game from the first person perspective (so you usually don’t see your character on screen) where the main point of the game is to shoot things, or defend yourself. They often cross over into survival or survival horror games, too.

I don’t like them. It’s not so much the twitchy coordination needed for being a sniper, or hand eye coordination needed for aiming, rather it’s the fact that most of the FPS on the market are better in multiplayer. I quite enjoyed playing Goldeneye with groups of people, because the trash talking was amusing, some of the levels were fun, and it was great to have a 5-15 minutes game where everyone was on the same skill level.

I don’t live with or near enough people who play console video games that getting people together physically in one room is really possible anymore, and I’m not so keen on playing online with random people who are 12. And often jerks. I’m somewhat hesitant to play online, not just because I don’t like the MM part of MMORPGs, because I get a lot more grief for being a girl, especially in games that are considered more traditionally “male.”

So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that I don’t play the game, so I’m not good enough at it to defend my gender against the claims that we don’t know how to play FPS, and I don’t enjoy them enough to want to play in spite of the griefing. There have been a number of quite interesting looking FPS games, but I’m also not as much a fan of the horror genre, so I’m not really interested in playing Dead Space or Left for Dead. Halo is right out.

I do enjoy adventure games that have FPS shooter portions, but I don’t find FPS engaging enough by itself to really seek out and spend a lot of time playing. And thank you for your question!