A brief over view: The first person shooter.
It’s hard to deny that the first person shooter genre is at its peak in popularity thanks to the majorly successful franchises such as Halo and Call of Duty. This genre of videogame has proven to be so popular that even celebrities are talking about kill streaks on TV and no one bats an eye lid. The first person shooter of today is probably one of the many “gateway” videogames to use when introducing gaming to a friend, most commonly Male in their 20’s, I find.
Now, you may or may not know this but the genre has been around for longer than you have probably been alive. Id (pronounced idd, not I.D) are arguably the most revered amongst gaming enthusiasts such as myself creating such gaming names as Quake, Doom and Wolfentstein all of which are considered breakthrough games within the genre. For those of you who are not aware of the term First-Person Shooter, let me give you a brief paragraph of what it is and why it’s become the most popular genre in gaming history.
The first-person shooter is a videogame which takes places through the eyes of your protagonist with the ability of aiming and firing a firearm at the enemy with pin point accuracy against either AI controlled enemy units or preferably online with your consoles internet capability against other players either friend or foe.
It all started with Maze War way back in 1974 and was developed by one man. The genre was then evolved enormously by the aforementioned Wolfenstein in 1992 which saw you take on the evil forces of Adolf Hitler, a controversial move for the time.
The success of the game wasn’t a surprise for id software who had created such an impressive engine for the era and decided to move onto another brand new first-person horror game called DooM, one of my most memorable videogames which I still enjoy playing to this very day. DooM was taken to a whole new world, literally. Set on Mars see’s you blasting all sorts of alien life with fantastically designed weaponry, anyone remember the BGF 9000?
Since DooM and Quake we’ve seen leaps and bounds of improvement coming from all sides of the globe now with Goldeneye 007, Half Life 2 and Halo being the most notable videogames in the genres lifespan but there are plenty more to come. Keep an eye out for id softwares new game coming in September called RAGE. It looks like another game changer.
Happy Fragging!
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