Phoenix Down Under: The First-Person Shooter

Stare off into space with me, and we shall remember the history of the First-Person Shooter, and possibly several suppressed memories.

From humble origins:

The first instance of viewing life through the eyes of a video game character in first person came with the game Maze War. Additionally, the game also involved shooting things. The First-Person Shooter was born.

Everybody get dangerous!

Since technology has a habit of improving, the transition of video games into three dimensional worlds brought new and exciting changes. Wolfenstein 3D comes to mind.

This was the birth of killing things from the perspective of your protagonist. Nazis, mainly. Alien monster things would soon follow.

Ahh, guilt-free killing sprees.

In time, consoles took the stage, and First-Person Shooters with them. I've already discussed previously why GoldenEye was totally awesome, but it's important to note the changes that came about; the evolution of the genre. FPS games started moving into (sort of) uncharted territory with multiplayer. The mechanics and graphics were greatly improved. The huge hit Perfect Dark followed.

It wasn't until the next generation of consoles that the humble First-Person Shooter took a turn. To find out whether or not it was the right one, I'd suggest reading Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." The important thing is that these games delved into realism to convey their stories.

BLACK and Halo introduced the dreaded two weapon limit

It was time to start balancing realism with... not realism. Pausing to change guns became cycling through weapons, an arsenal in your pocket became a two weapon limit (with some games forcing your secondary to be a pistol), your legs... well, they still couldn't be seen. Health bars became red on your screen, which came back after time, and heads-up displays became simplified, even cleverly integrated, such as in Metroid Prime (it's still kind of an FPS, dammit.) TimeSplitters held on to a more classic approach to shooting things, but the public demanded more games like Halo and Call of Duty.

This is why today we see more and more military First-Person Shooters, considered to be a sub-genre in itself, with its own set of unique tropes. Did the genre really evolve though?

Death of the First-Person Ghost

Well... never mind.

So where do we go from here? Perhaps Crysis 2 will lead the way. Or Call of Duty: Milky Way Warfare.