The Future of First-Person Shooters

Ah, first-person shooters. One of the most common of video game genres currently. On the 360 and PS3 you can find hundreds of them. From Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare to Doom and GoldenEye 007, there have been many FPS's through the years.

On the Wii, very few first-person shooters have graced the system. The ones that have (with the exception of Red Steel) work super well and fluidly. The two that fit this description most are Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Medal of Honor: Heroes 2. Metroid has a deep and lengthy adventure to back it up, while MoH:H2 has some of the best online on the Wii. The DS has even fewer FPS's, with Metroid Prime Hunters as one of the few. It seems surprising there are not more on the two systems, for they would work very well (especially on the Wii).

Recently more news has come of the game The Conduit. A futuristic first-person shooter for the Wii that is believed to have as good of a control scheme as Metroid Prime 3 and Medal of Honor. Online multiplayer of some sort has been also confirmed. This news has really got some people across the web excited, me included.

So I got to thinking about the genre. I realized that many FPS's are very similar. Well over half of first-person shooters are wartime shooters, particularly World War II (e.g. the Medal of Honor series, Call of Duty series, etc.), . The other common first-person shooter is sci-fi/alien themed (e.g. Halo, Half Life, etc.) I've decided to come up with some various settings that FPS's haven't ventured before and the possible results.

The first thing that comes to mind is other wars besides WWII. Rarely do you see a shooter based on World War I. And I don't see why not? Sure there's less advanced guns but still, developers could make it work. And what about this? Civil War or Revolutionary War set games. Two more wars that haven't been used much, if at all, in video games. Imagine using muskets, fighting against the British or the South, and duking it out in historical locations.

Sort of similar to the last one, I thought of wars in the not to distant future (World War III anyone?) It was kind of done in Call of Duty 4. But I'm thinking of more along the lines of what could happen. This country invading that country; this other country coming to it's rescue. With slightly modified and updated weapons to use, set in the year 2020 or so, I don't see how this couldn't work.

A third idea of mine is a secret agent/superhero FPS. Sure there's been both spies and super-people in video games before. But never really in the first-person shooter genre. In such a game, I'm thinking that guns would be a lot less used; players would have to rely on their gadgets/superpowers to overcome obstacles and enemies. I wouldn't rule out guns but keep them limited.

To round off this somewhat short article is two more smaller, less thought out ideas. The first is some sort of Wild West FPS. (Hey that kind of rhymes!) This is one setting that would be unique to set a first-person shooter of some kind in. Maybe you're the pony express, or maybe you're one of Jesse James' bandits? The second would be a more medieval game. Bows and crossbows would be the weapons of choice for it. Not much more was thought out of this one but it was an idea...

So there you have it. What'd you think of the article? Lame? Extraordinary? Tell me in the comments.