It’s hard for me to track how my opinion on this
subject changed, because the change was subtle and slow.? The initial
first-person-shooter that I played was ?Wolfenstien 3D’.? As far as I
know, that was the father of all first-person-shooters.? At the time I
remember thinking what a terrific new concept it was.? First-person
shooters allowed for a whole new level of immersion in your video game.?
Now instead of controlling the little guy on the screen you WERE the guy
IN the game.? I could live vicariously through my video games in a way
that was never-before possible.?

Then, a few years later, Tomb Raider came out, and
I got to see what a 3D third-person-shooter was like.? Now I have issues
with Tomb Raider anyway.? It shamelessly rips off my all-time favorite
movie trilogy ever, Indiana Jones, and it makes me play as a woman.?
Most guys enjoy this, but I personally want to have an action hero I can
relate to.? I, being a guy, cannot relate to a woman action hero.? I
want the person on the screen to be a guy because then I can vicariously
live through him, as mentioned above.? All this aside, the first Tomb
Raider had its problems.? The camera didn’t always do what you needed it
to do, often becoming embedded in a wall or inside Lara herself.? As
intriguing as it was to have the camera view be up Lara’s butt, it
didn’t help me see my foe, and that got me killed a lot.? Moreover,
there was no system for me to manually aim at a target.? I just had to
trust that Lara knew what she was doing when she pointed her guns at
something, and then hit the button a lot hoping I killed it before it
got me.

No, I decided, third person shooters were not the
gaming engines for me.? They were too impersonal, and you had too little
control, and you couldn’t relate to the person on the screen very well.?
I would take my first person shooters over them any day.

So just the other day I was playing a first person
shooter, and I found myself virtually pressing my nose against the
screen.? I became aware that I had no peripheral vision, and this
bothered me.? But it had always been that way with my first person
shooters, so why was it a big deal all the sudden?

It was only then that I realized how many third
person shooters I had been playing, and liking.? The entire Jedi Knight
series had gradually transitioned me from a first person shooter to a
third person shooter.? Indiana Jones was an excellent third person
adventure game.? Alice had possibly the best aiming system for a third
person shooter ever.? And they had all given me such excellent control
of the camera, that I didn’t even realize how good I had had it.? Yes, I
admit it, I am now entirely hooked on third person shooters.? First
person shooter now seem weird and awkward, and like I mentioned, I miss
having the 180 degree view of my surroundings that a third person
shooter offers me.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2003 at 9:39 am and is filed under Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.