May I ask a question of the video game aficionados?

Looking at these and other lists of the most popular most video game franchises, it sure seems gamers love their shoot-'em ups. Are these games really that fun? I mean I liked playing them in the arcade and all for a few minutes, but I can't imagine spending hours and hours on them. Also. are they really able to distinguish themselves from one another? And why is that the almost all of them seemed to have a futuristic and/or space setting? Doesn't that get repetitive? Sorry...I'm just not getting it.

Personal Input: Shoot-'em ups, or FPS (First-Person Shooters as we mainly dub them) provide quick, enjoyable excitement. No sooner has the console been booted up then we can sit down and play the game in the heat of action: I liken this to a mini-game (like in the Mario Parties, Game and Watch Galleries or even a quick board game like Chess and Checkers). However, I personally enjoy RPG (Role-Playing Games) more. The issue with those, as discernable by virtue of dichotomy, is that they take a while to get into. With a long plot spanning hours, these tend to stick with you more and often offer more varied gameplay. I normally don't play for hours on end; I usually vary up with an hour of a FPS broken with an hour of a RPG.


Yes and no. Needless to say each FPS has its own story, though due to its usual shallowness, RPG's usually are more memorable. That being said, if a story is well-done, that makes the FPS all the more worthwhile (Halo 2...excellent use of juxtaposition and dichotomy, for example), while others with terribly lacking stories (like Halo 3 ) can be even more fun to play but do not lend themselves for much "reach" after one leaves the console. I'm not enough of a hardcore gamer to determine when it really started to take off, but Halo seemed to reinitiate the FPS following N64's James Bond: Golden Eye, and, due to Halo's excellent storytelling (plot twists galore...the enemy of my enemy is...not my friend...) sci-fi abounded. This also follows, needless to mention, in part, from a boost in the Sci-Fi movie industry. As graphics have taken off, so have the movies followed with their graphics. Series like Gears of War, Dead Space, Mass Effect, KOTOR, Crysis, Fallout, and Killzone to name a few...even down to the lesser known ones like Bulletstorm seem to have some passing nod to Halo, even if it is as simple as reviving the Sci-Fi genre.

Good FPS's give me a certain sense of intellectual satisfaction. The more I can outsmart/outmaneuver the other guy the better. Which is why I love open battlefield games like battlefield, and tactically based games like rainbow 6, operation desert storm (oldie but goodie), or other squad shooters. Mindless gunning like halo or CoD is fun for a while, but it's zombie play. In CoD you have neither the space or the time to plan accordingly it's just map memorization and reflexes. And Halo's all about who shoots first or who has the more powerful gun. Good for escapism and entertainment value, but I require more than that. Eventually those games lose all playability for me and just piss me off. I would love a realistic shooter sim. A "forza" of shooters.

The same reason I enjoy paintball (not tournament style). I don't really know why, and I can't sufficiently explain it but I love it.

Good points. I'm not really a FPS person. I enjoy them but, like driving games and fighting games, they are only really worth playing with for hours, on multiplayer. Everybody raved about Battlefield 3, my brother bought it and said it was good, so I tried it. Yes, it was good, but I couldn't see myself going through the entire game just shooting artificially intelligent characters. It was great that you were on an open battlefield, but really, MGS4 did it better.

I don't play franchises much, most get stale after the third or fourth game (yes Pokémon I'm talking about you). However, I would agree on Metroid and Zelda for obvious reasons.

And this:


Also

Can CaveStory be considered a franchise? If not, I really hope it gets some kind of sequel some day, or a spin-off a la Chrono Cross. Pixel is truly MY HERO, the ultimate one-man army.

I think a lot of gaming franchises get boring by the third or fourth one, as well. So I usually only bother buying the first (or maybe also the second) one, while the formula is still fresh.

Last night I was playing Rage


One of my favourite games of last year (Deus Ex Human Revolution and LA Noire being my other two favourites of 2011). It provides the polish and atmosphere you'd expect from a Bethesda published product, as well as the frenetic gunplay of the id software classics I grew up with

lol. I was in stitches when the 'quick time' event came up The old shooters were the best

My personal favorite is the Thief series. Unfortunately Edios seems to be dragging it's feet on the release of T4.


Which brings me to another of my favorite franchises, the Grand Theft Auto series. What I find appealing about this series is that you're playing an ordinary person, albeit a criminal, set in an everyday urban environment rather than some augmented humanoid in the year 2617 or whatever.

Another of my favorites. To answer your question, probably because IW did not get rave review. However, they did make up for it with HR.
And finally I would add Max Payne.

You probably liked the System Shock games too, I know that SS2 is one of my favorite games of all time. I don't know if two games qualify as a franchise (if one does not count the recent Bioshock games, I didn't play those.)


I played Deus Ex all the way through many times. However, I learned that Deus Ex 2 (or whatever it was supposed to be called) didn't have the features that I enjoyed from Deus Ex, so I stayed away.

What about human revolution?

I've seen this before, too true.

I think I've nearly finished Rage now. I am having a blast with it. It seems to be just an entree, though, for the upcoming Doom 4. I can't wait for that one to come out. I was a huge Doom freak back in the day.

I want it to be a return to the style of the old Doom games. No regenerating health system, no weapon limit. I like having a huge arsenal of rocket launchers, plasma guns, chainsaws, and BFGs to blow demons into oblivion. With the id tech 5 engine from Rage, it should look killer.

I wouldn't get your hopes up. Don't ever trust the video game industry to do something right.

This. After Halo and Halo 2, I had quite a bit of faith in Bungie. Halo 3 shattered that, ODST salvaged it, and Reach rebuilt it. Then Bungie went and now 343 Industries has Halo 4. I have to say I was underwhelmed by Halo Anniversary, but we'll see. Probably the only company I have faith in (beyond the realm of Nintendo which is too big to separate into smaller groups...I just love Legend of Zelda) is Bioware. LucasArts isn't on the scene enough and Pandemic disintegrated soon after Destroy All Humans. But, besides these, there are a few companies that don't seem to get it quite right. Obsidian and, unfortunately, Sega has been recently declining on the console...

I love the AOE (Age of Empires) series, have every game and play them all the time. Aswell as the Half Life series, Duke Nukem, and Street fighter.

I do play Quake, and recently found that you can play on the internet, so have registered for that

Although all my games are PC, as I've never had a games console.