So, yeah. Call of Duty and Killzone and Halo and what-have-you.
Do you like them? Or... not? For better or for worse, they're a gaming staple nowadays, so it's not like you can just avoid them.
Personally, I'm a fan - but not that big a fan. I do like the occasional RUNRUNRUNSHOOTSHOOTRUNSHOOTDAMNDEATH type of game, but only every so often - I usually prefer games with more meat on their bones.
And technically that wasn't even an FPS. No. I usually stay away from games that have realistic, true-to-life guns, people and stuff. The Call of Duty series makes me want to rear my head and spit cobra venom at it.
It's like the first two, but then the whole series isn't an FPS to begin with. No circle strafe, third-person view for Morph Ball mode and Screw Attack, standing still to look around.
Metroid Prime is a First Person Adventure - a First Person Shooter that focuses less on shooting and more on... you know... adventure. Honestly, it's closer to The Elder Scrolls games than it is to Halo.
The Elder Scrolls are waaaaaaaaaay more open ended, but yeah. Halo is just running around shooting crap, and Metroid does have exploration, scanning etc.
But just because you use third person views sometimes and do more than shoot 'em up doesn't mean its not an FPS.
But that's the thing - if in Metroid, you had a sword instead of a gun, you'd call it an adventure game. But you have a gun, so it's an FPS? Nah.
It's an Adventure game. If someone likes Metroid Prime, what would you recommend to them - Zelda, or Call of Duty?
Well, neither really but that's besides the point. The difference in weapon actually matters:
Gun = You are shooting things. You could be playing a shooter.
Sword = You are not shooting things (although most medieval games have stuff like bows etc. but they're practically never the primary weapon) and you are defenitely not playing a shooter. Perhaps it is an action adventure or even strategy game.
The difference in weapon there affects gameplay a lot and can therefor change the genre. Genres are very limiting and many games don't fit into them well, but I stick to Metroid Prime being at least partially FPS, Perhaps half FPS half Adventure. My beef with that is that I find adventure to be an extremely nondescript word when describing a video game. It usually just means 3D platformer with a mixture of puzzle solving, exploration and combat, which I find dumb because even though I've just said there is a genre it describes I feel that since many, many games contain what you might call "an adventure" the word shouldn't be used that way.
-- Edited by DestinyGuy on Friday 10th of April 2009 10:26:31 PM
Adventure, by definition, involves a grand excursion in which you control a character, exploring worlds, beating enemies, clearing levels. Emphasis on the word 'exploration', it's what separates an adventure game from an action/platformer/strategy game, and it's what Metroid Prime has a whole lot of. Action games contain a whole lotta fighting, with little emphasis on searching places. Eg: Madworld.