Pioneered by the likes of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, the first-person shooter has grown to become one of the most popular genres in gaming. There’s something inherently visceral about viewing the world from the eyes of your character, as it puts you a step closer to the action.
Though I wouldn’t consider myself to be a genre enthusiast, I have played a number of first-person shooters in my travels. Here’s a quick list of a few faves! What are some of your fave first-person shooters?
Last year, my 7 year-old cousin at the time discovered Modern Warfare 2 through my 12 year-old cousin. Ever since that day, my now 8 year-old cousin has become enamored with the Mature-rated Call of Duty series. For him, Modern Warfare 2 was his Mortal Kombat; it was his gateway drug to Mature-rated games. As of now, he owns Conflict: Denied Ops and Sniper: Ghost Warrior, which he brags about being M-rated all the time.
I didn’t bring this anecdote up to talk about parenting. I don’t approve of him playing content I would deem inappropriate for him and I do what I can to keep that stuff away. The reason I bring this up though, is because my 8 year-old cousin now views that M rating as a symbol of cool. He loves the fact that he owns games that he knows he’s too young to be playing. They’re his forbidden fruit and he’ll take anything he can get at this point.
All of this made me think about my video game collection and how it relates to the ESRB. Once upon a time, the Mortal Kombat series was my forbidden fruit. Did my catalogue of games evolve in relation to the ESRB guidelines or did I overdose on forbidden fruit? I do the math to answer these questions and highlight any insights regarding gaming as I grew up.
Because I write In Third Person solely as a personal outlet of gaming nerdiness, I don’t pay much attention to my analytics. Even if no one in the world were to ever see this blog, I would continue writing in it anyway, just to get these gaming-related thoughts out of my head and onto something a bit more tangible. Well, as tangible as the Internet can be. If you or anyone else decides they want to read my musings, power to you.
And read my musings you have. Sure, my traffic may not rival the Craigslist posting your mom put up to promote your family garage sale, but there are a consistent number of people that frequent my site, according to my numbers. Thank you to everyone that has ever read my blog and a special thanks to everyone who checks in regularly.
Whether you’re a regular reader or just found my blog on a whim, I’m going to present to you the five most popular posts on my site. I was actually kind of surprised by the results. Click through to find out what the hottest content is on In Third Person.
As the oldest child on my mom’s side of the family, I learned very quickly that I would have an influence on my younger siblings and relatives wheter I consciously tried to or not. Before my younger brother could ever get into playing toys, he got a hold of a Gameboy and a Super Nintendo controller and never looked back. At the time, I figured it was just the kid thing to do, but those early days of playing Super Mario World really did change his life.
(SPOILER ALERT: This post will discuss major plot points in Modern Warfare 2 and Prince of Persia)
The terrorist scene in Modern Warfare 2 has been dissected from every conceivable angle by now. Odds are if you’re a fan of reading niche video game blogs like mine, you’ve probably played this sequence and have already come to your own conclusions about it.
For the record, I hate it. I hate it for a number of reasons, but for the sake of this discussion, I’m only going to get into one reason why I dislike this scene. I don’t hate it for the fact that you get to shoot innocent people. I applaud Infinity Ward for leaving that option open. However, that entire scenario is fundamentally broken because of the people you can’t shoot.
For those of you playing Modern Warfare 2 and are looking for some new maps to play on, Infinity Ward supposedly has the cure for you. The Modern Warfare 2 “Stimulus Package” contains 5 maps, two remakes from Modern Warfare 1 and three brand new ones.
I was hyped to get new maps for this game, and until I heard the price, this seemed like a no-brainer to me. But dude, 1200 Microsoft Points for 5 maps? Two of which aren’t even new?
Over these past few weeks of unemployment, the game that has monopolized my time is Modern Warfare 2. Having played multiplayer for just over 24 hours, a lot of that was “not fun”. I say that in the sense that for every time I killed someone, I died about 2.5 times. There were games where I would kill two people and die 20 times.
Over the past year, I’ve been following any media I find on Heavy Rain for the Playstation 3. At first, I only knew this as the game that introduced me to the concept of the uncanny valley. And even though the game’s Quick Time Event based gameplay doesn’t excite me enough to buy a Playstation 3, I really hope this game sells well because Heavy Rain means a lot to the future of mature games.
With the year winding down, many gamers have been discussing the best games of 2009, mostly to debate which game should be honoured “Game of the Year”. I think it’s impossible for any media outlet or any individual person to make a list that will make everyone happy. However, what I can do better than anyone else is speak for myself. With that said, my choice for “Game of the Year” is not the be-all-end-all opinion you have to believe in. Feel free to give me your picks for “Game of the Year” and “Game of the Year” nominees.
In Third Person 
