The Glory of the Shooter
Wired News had an article up the other day on First Person Shooters. Karine was kind enough to send me a link to it and it’s a good little read. Nothing ground breaking or eye opening, but it definitely helps define what the role of shooters are for some people. Maybe that’ll help a few folks out there understand why shooters are so fun.
I enjoy killing things and feeling like a bad-ass. How do I get that feeling? Why, by being the hero of our story with tons of ammunition and the bodies of my enemies crumpled before me, powerless to stop my onslaught as I save the world. Games like FEAR helped improve that feeling, when they introduced effects like the slow-mo dealie. As the article says, Shooters tend to appeal to our carnal side and allows us to engage in some mindless violence while we take a break from things like World of Warcraft. I play it. I admit it. I was in the beta. But frankly? WoW gets boring after a while. Even now my interest in it wanes to some degree and I yearn for a shooter to give me some real action and a nice distraction from the “grind” that so often accompanies an MMORPG. This is why I’m rather excited about new MMOFPS games. Not only will I get to mow down my foes but I’ll also have the MMO experience to keep things going for a long time.
MMORPGs are like fillers inbetween my FPS bouts. Unless of course I happen to find an FPS that truly catches my fancy multiplayer wise and then more than likely the MMORPG will take a back seat and will only serve to please me when I’m not in the mood for fast-paced action. That sounded kinda wrong. But whatever. FPS games are almost like the extreme sports of the gaming world. They’re fast, they’re engaging, and they’re usually for the adrenaline junkies. MMORPGs are for the more laid back person, sure they’re fun, but there’s more to them, there’s more to do in them and there’s that whole social experience in them that helps people “escape” their real life for a short time. While I’m not a big fan of the escapist ideal, I do understand that that’s what people use it for and good luck to you on that. Me? I need to kill some Nazi’s.
Undead Nazi’s.
In space.
With giant robots.
Yeah.
1 opinion for The Glory of the Shooter
Karine
Apr 18, 2006 at 7:50 am
Glad you enjoyed the article :)
I think your definition of what type of game is for what person/gamer is dead on. I wouldn’t exactly define myself as a gamer, and the reason I like a game like WoW is because there’s more to do than just killing stuff. Because, while that might be fun for a couple of hours, eventually that gets a little stressful and… I don’t know… repetitive. I’m sure FPS have some strategy that makes it a little more interesting - which so far I’ve found is the thing missing in WoW (though admittedly I’m not very far yet). And yes, I can already feel the leveling grind. I’m just glad that there’s fishing and the AH to fall back on when that happens ;) That said, I. and I (heh, that reads funny) are looking into other MMOs. We’re tired of all the disconnections and authentication issues and feel like trying something else. We’ll keep you posted :)
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: