I hear a lot of complaints from gamers saying that there isn't enough variety or creativity in games these days. It's not something I inherently disagree with, even though I understand the reasons why many game publishers have taken a conservative tack with what they green-light. It's perhaps exacerbated by the stage of the console cycle we're in right now, when known IPs and established technologies rule the day.
The most popular genre in the Western world right now is shooters. It's hard to say when exactly this happened, but Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark helped create an audience of multiplayer FPS titles on consoles, Medal of Honor pretty much originated the "realistic" World War II shooting sub-genre, and Halo did quite a bit to establish expectations for players on speed, game type, level design, player abilities (and limitations), and parts of its DNA are spread about the genre almost ubiquitously nowadays. Regardless of origin, E3 made me fully realize just how laden with shooters the AAA games industry has become.
The much anticipated Modern Warfare 3
The heavyweight bout of shooters for later this year is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 vs. Battlefield 3. Both of these titles are going after the popular “FPS modern urban warfare” sub-genre and looking to cater to a multiplayer crowd of millions worldwide, and while it's likely that Call of Duty will end up selling more by a large margin, many are curious if Battlefield 3 will manage to secure better review scores and fashion a place in the hearts and minds of games. Shooters don't end with these two titles for 2011... in fact, they barely even begin.
The Xbox 360 has two of the biggest titles of the year in Halo: Anniversary and Gears of War 3, iterations of two of the biggest shooter franchises around, defining sci-fi action and cover-shooters for many. Beyond that there will be a couple of shooters with RPG components in Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Rage, which are sure to get people's attention. There's a retro-future shooter in Resistance 3, the running-and-gunning Serious Sam 3: BFE, a free online shooter in Ghost Recon Online and the “Lady Gaga of Shooters” in Bodycount. Uncharted 3 and its PS Vita incarnation Uncharted: Golden Abyss will come out (which despite its pretensions to storytelling is still essentially a third-person cover shooter) and while Saints Row: The Third and Dead Island won't exactly be shooters in their form and function, they will still involve quite a bit of aiming a gun and shooting at things.
"If we weren't buying games like this and putting them at the top of the sales charts, there wouldn't be so many."
What's amazing is that this release schedule swelling with shooter titles towards the end of the year is counterbalanced with almost as many shooter titles during the beginning of 2011! We had a low-fi distant-future shooter in Killzone 3 and high-fi near-future shooter in Crysis 2. We saw the first in a new series of over-the-top arcade shooters in Bulletstorm and a long awaited and completely overdue over-the-top FPS in Duke Nukem Forever. A game that could have gone to retail went purely digital in Section 8: Prejudice and FPS action returned to the faithful Wii gamers in Conduit 2. Shooters have included non-fictional military units with third-person action in SOCOM 4 and a completely fictional military scenario in FPS Homefront. F.E.A.R. 3 features the continuance of a complicated story plot laced with horror elements while Brink used the story as a framing element and has no single-player mode to speak of. Other third person games like Dead Space 2, Red Faction: Armageddon and MindHack have come out and given their own twist on things, (dismemberment, construction/deconstruction, enemy takeover) but are still very shooter heavy.
As I assembled this list, it felt like shooter games were coming out of the woodwork. It was actually mildly depressing just to see how shooter dependent the AAA games industry has become. I also realized that it would be very difficult to make a completely exhaustive list – I tried as hard as I could, but even as I was actively writing this article, a couple more games came to my attention that slipped my mind because there are just so many. What's more, it's just the beginning of what is sure to be an onslaught of shooter titles in 2012 and beyond.
Probably the biggest title penned in for 2012 is Halo 4, which will be the third full Halo shooter title in as many years but the first incarnation to star Master Chief since Halo 3 in 2007. The PS3 will be getting a F2P shooter in Dust 514 and PC gamers (and more) are no doubt looking forward to the Metro 2033 sequel Metro: Last Light. Squad based special forces with bleeding-edge tech will hopefully come in 2012 with Ghost Recon: Future Soldier while sheer toughness will carry the World War II squad-based shooter Brothers in Arms: Furious 4. Anticipated sequels will take gamers to distant worlds in Prey 2 and a remote island in Far Cry 3. An established franchise in Star Trek will boldly go into the modern cover-shooter genre while brand new IP Starhawk will let players create and destroy cover (and buildings and vehicles). Insomniac will go multiplatform with Overstrike, Irrational will soar through the skies with BioShock Infinite and games like Devil's Third, Tomb Raider and Prototype 2 won't be purely about shooting, but will still probably involve quite a bit of aiming and firing deadly projectiles. There is also whatever Respawn and Bungie are up to, but I'm guessing they will feature guns.
EA's big guns: Battlefield 3
What's the cause of this deluge of shooters? It's tempting to blame Call of Duty... so I will. In all seriousness, success is emulated in this industry as it is in many others and Call of Duty is the most successful retail franchise in gaming right now; publishers want a piece of that, and Activision wants to increase their the size of the pie. That's why they hype up their map packs more than many retail games these days and are pushing their new subscription service Call of Duty Elite. Very few games even come close to replicating Call of Duty's retail success, but just because the almost mythical “Call of Duty audience” is out there, publishers are compelled to try and appeal to them.
We're at about that time in the console cycle where people are trying to capitalize on sequels – we're at a “1.5 stage” and it shows with the number of derivative titles with numbers on the end. Still, it felt like at least the premises of games were somewhat varied between the various side-scrolling action/adventure games back in the day (and whom do I have to kill for a new Kabuki Quantum Fighter?). Not all of the games I mentioned are dark, gritty shooters in a pseudo-modern setting, but they just add to the preponderance titles where most of the time is spent gunning down hordes of enemies while they try to reciprocate likewise.
Does some of the blame for this fall on developers and publishers? Certainly, but gamers themselves also are at fault; if we weren't buying games like this and putting them at the top of the sales charts, there wouldn't be so many. I take some solace in the fact that two of the biggest hits so far this year are the creative and puzzle heavy Portal 2 and the story-driven detective yarn L.A. Noire, both of which I expect to be nominated for their fair share of “Game of the Year” awards. I think there's a lesson to be learned for those who pull the strings in the gaming industry; it isn't necessary to shoot army guys in the face in order to have success. And true greatness can't be achieved by setting your goals as low as directly emulating what has come before in the recent past. To gamers, I would suggest supporting more games that break the mold; buy something like Journey when it comes out later this year – I guarantee it'll be good for your gaming soul and might lead to more games that won't be described with, “It's like Call of Duty, but...”
