Editorial: On My FPS Sabbatical

Summer is a pretty slow season for game releases, which actually works out beautifully for me. I typically use the drought to my advantage, dividing my time between catching up on my backlog and digging into multiplayer games in earnest. Since we live in the Call of Duty era, that typically means much of my time is spent peering at scenery – and the opposition – down the barrel of an automatic weapon. At least, that’s how I’ve managed my time in the past. This year’s been different. After playing through military shooter after military shooter, I’m completely fatigued on the genre. And so, I’m taking a break.

Like a lot of old coots, I’ve been playing first-person shooters since the genre has existed. Some of my fondest gaming memories revolve around getting lost in Wolfenstein’s pixelated hallways and seeing Doom’s amazing chainsaw for the first time. I remember spending countless hours playing Duke Nukem 3D with my friends, after our modems connected with a squealing hiss. Hell, I even bought Faceball 2000 the day it came out for the SNES. As the genre has matured and grown, I’ve kept pace alongside it. That’s why it seems so strange for me to pass over FPS titles when I get ready to play at home.

Lately, I’ve been obsessively playing Piranha Bytes’ game Risen on my Xbox 360. That’s in spite of the fact that I still haven’t finished Crysis 2, F.E.A.R. 3., or even (gasp!) Duke Nukem Forever. It’s also despite the undeniable truth that the 360 version of Risen is far from a great game. In spite of its myriad flaws, however, it provides something that I just haven’t gotten in an FPS for a while now: a sense of seeing and exploring something new. And it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that I need more than what those shooters can give me.

People typically liken the experience that a top-notch first-person shooter offers with that of an amusement park ride. It’s a pretty solid analogy. I recently took my four-year-old to the Mall of America’s Nickelodeon Universe park, and I couldn’t help but notice that the Ghost Blasters ride was functionally identical to the current state of the art in video games. The enemies in most shooters aren’t painted sheets of plywood (and they’re rarely ghosts; terrorists have usurped those spooky foes), but that peek-a-boo shooting gallery action is the same at its core.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I don’t hold anything against players who consider first-person shooters their bread-and-butter. I'm not snooty. It’s no coincidence that the genre has thrived over the past decade. Games like Call of Duty are easy to get into, provide immediate gratification, and are possibly the best venue for competitive multiplayer that gaming has ever seen.

A fundamental lack of variety isn’t helping matters. You can swap out the locations, enemies, and guns, but the majority of FPS games – and I’m looking at you in particular, military shooters – have adhered to a standard template: Bad guys come out and you shoot them in the face. Occasionally, helicopters crash and explode or the floor collapses beneath your feet. Other genres can be distilled to their essences in similarly snarky ways, but aside from puzzle games, I can’t think of a game genre that so tightly limits player interaction. And no, I don’t consider jumping on a crate or opening a door to be interactions. Similarly, I’m finding it harder to ignore the sense that I’m being herded through a series of corridors, no matter how wide they might be.

There are, of course, exceptions to this seemingly rigid formula. FarCry has done a respectable job of delivering an open-world and interesting NPC interactions in addition to its military-style gunplay. BioShock bolted solid storytelling and RPG elements onto its shooter framework and became a critical smash in the process. For every exception, however, there are plenty more games where players roam through bland airstrips, bunkers, and urban wastelands with the personality (and functionality) of a roaming turret.

Getting back to a game like Risen, I’m positively delighted at being able to explore a huge world and make my mark on it. When I see a human in the distance (truthfully, not too far in the distance, since Risen isn’t that great on consoles), I’m excited because I know that there’s a possibility that the encounter may result in something different than me unloading dozens of bullets into his body. I’m given choices. I’m rewarded for looking around and paying attention to my surroundings in ways that I find more satisfying than throwing a flash-bang into a breached door and barking “clear” into a headset.

Once I’m done with Risen, I’m going to continue my self-imposed break from shooters. I’ll probably roll right into Arcania: Gothic 4 or Divinity II. Even if they aren’t great, they’re a welcome change of pace from the pistol-shotgun-submachine gun-rocket launcher loop that I’ve been stuck in for the past few years. Don’t get me wrong; I like shooters. I also like chocolate cake. And lately, I feel the same bloated sense that accompanies consuming too much of a good thing.

I will say, this break is just that—a self-imposed, temporary vacation from the genre. I’m looking forward to ending my FPS vacation when Battlefield 3 comes out. But I have to say, I’m more excited for Skyrim.