Going back to broad strokes genres, this week’s topic concerns the FPS (First Person Shooter), a staple of the overall gaming scene.

A First Person Shooter is the type of game where you play from a first person perspective (big shocker) and focuses around shooting (bigger shocker there), whether that’s other players or NPC enemies. It’s nice for a genre to be so plainly self-descriptive! FPS games also involve the navigation of a 3D environment, and often times incorporate standard concepts that are ubiquitous at this point like ammo management and loadouts of different weapons. This genre was heavily shaped by Doom (the original, released in early 90s), to the point where before the name FPS fully took hold, one term often used was “Doom clones”. Nowadays there are many subgenres and styles paired with the FPS - class-based shooters, “boomer shooters”, milsim and/or tactical shooters, twitch shooters, and others.

Here are some questions and subtopics that I encourage people to discuss:

  • What are some of your favorite subgenres or styles of FPS, and your favorite games from them?
  • Do you enjoy secondary concepts often associated with FPS games like ammo management and loadout adjustment?
  • What genres do you like to see crossed over with an FPS?
  • Do you prefer multiplayer or singleplayer FPS games? For multiplayer, Co-op or PvP?
  • What are some of your favorite weapons from FPS titles? What’s been memorable?

Also feel free to bring up anything you like related to the topic! If you have suggestions for future discussion topics, leave them in the suggestion thread.

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  • BigVault
    2•1 year ago

    I’m going to go on a nostalgic trip below.

    IMHO, Powerslave/Exhumed was one of the best first person shooters on the 5th generation consoles and the Powerslave engine (Slavedriver) enabled the Saturn to run an amazing port of both Duke Nukem 3d and Quake.

    I remember being ecstatic that a game I could only play on a friends PC when I visited back in the day (Duke3d) was not only playable on my Saturn, it was a fantastic port too. DeathTank Zwei was a lovely hidden bonus game included on the D3D port.

    Likewise, Quake was an impossible port, bought to a console that traditionally struggled with substandard 3d games vs the psx.

    I remember seeing a psx owning buddy play a superb port of Doom on his psx, only for me to be burned by the absolute 💩port that Rage software put out on the Saturn. Even the 32x cartridge version of Doom was batter.

    Console shooters have come on in leaps and bounds each generation but Exhumed on the Saturn was a real highlight for me in my younger years.