What's next for first person shooters?

Modern Military Shooters

Since Call of Duty 4 changed up the first person genre in the way it handled multiplayer and the perk system it introduced the genre. Following along on the success of Call of Duty 4 this was further reinforced by Modern Warfare 2 which was a great game but since then most FPS game have been following in the footsteps, or more so in the shadows. Playing it safe with the same kind of package but with a new coat of paint.

This tactic that has been playing out over the past few years has indirectly hurt the Call of Duty franchise, because while there is a yearly release of a Call of Duty game there is a dozen other similar games released which in directly hurts Call of Duty. This was the case with Black Ops, when it was released I stated I thought the game was great but it lacked the lasting appeal of other games in the series purely for the fact it played so similar to previous entries it was a been there done that feel.

So the question is what’s next? Well that is a hard question because the Call of Duty series dominates currently so it becomes harder for other games to get noticed due to the attachment of Call of Duty. My personal view is that Modern Warfare 3 if it is released this year has to move forward for the future of the franchise, because playing it safe with yearly entries will doom the franchise due to pure over saturation of the modern warfare first person shooter. I say this because of the audience that franchise has, nothing really competes on the level. Battlefield 3 is a contender but honestly I can’t see that changing this drastically.

Can the return of Duke spell a change to the genre?

The genre really needs a developer to push forward to set a new benchmark be that Infinity Ward or the likes of Respawn, Valve or Bungie. We have seen some interesting takes on tweaking the genre with the likes of Bulletstorm with its drastically different take and with Duke Nukem releasing in a few months and depending on the success it might start to get the ball moving on a new style of First Person shooter which breaks out of the current comfort zone.