It wouldn’t be fair to judge the current status of the FPS solely on the modern military shooter. There were plenty of titles this year that, at least on a storytelling level, were perfectly content with doing their own thing. These were titles such as Rage, Bulletstorm, Duke Nukem Forever, Brink, Conduit 2, and Crysis 2, to name a few.
Pessimistic gamers have focused so much on the Modern Warfare 3 vs. Battlefield 3 debate that a good deal of attention has been taken away from the shooters that take us off the planet or into a post-apocalyptic world to fight aliens and mutants, or that try to tell us stories we might not have heard in a game before. Brink has an interesting premise, although I couldn’t help but think of Bioshock while reading the story summary, Rage features an intriguing mix of shooter and racing elements, and Crysis 2 and Killzone 3 are beautiful looking games to say the least.
It’s a shame that many FPS releases this year were overshadowed by an increasingly ridiculous debate between fanboys and internet trolls; a debate which I admittedly contributed to myself. Now that Modern Warfare 3 has been out for a while, hopefully everyone has gotten over the hype, or is just downright sick of it. The good news is that 2012 is looking to be another awesome year for the FPS with planned releases of Borderlands 2, Bioshock: Infinite, and a rumored development of Doom 4. The upcoming titles for next year should give players a righteous gaming experience before we’re forced to trudge through the deluge of the inevitable November Call of Duty release. Until then, have some fun with this year’s amazing games.
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