Shooter game

Shoot 'em up '' (1978), an arcade video game that defined the shoot 'em up genre Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups) are a subgenre of shooters wherein the player may move, up, down, left or right around the screen, typically firing straight forward. Shoot 'em ups share common gameplay, but are often categorized by viewpoint. This includes fixed shooters on fixed screens, such as Space Invaders and Galaxian; scrolling shooters that mainly scroll in a single direction, such as Xevious and Darius; top-down shooters (sometimes referred to as twin-stick shooters) where the levels are controlled from an overhead viewpoint, such as Bosconian and Time Pilot; rail shooters where player movement is automatically guided down a fixed forward-scrolling "rail", such as Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom and Space Harrier; and isometric shooters which use an isometric perspective, such as Zaxxon and Viewpoint. Bullet hell Rail shooter Run and gun Run and gun video games are 2D scrolling action games in which the protagonists fight on foot, often with the ability to jump. Run and gun games may use side-scrolling, vertical scrolling or isometric viewpoints and may feature multidirectional movement. Top-down run and gun games use an overhead camera angle that shows players and the areas around them from above. Notable games in this category include Commando, Ikari Warriors, Shock Troopers and Shock Troopers: 2nd Squad. Side-scrolling run and gun games combine elements of both shoot 'em up and platform games, while the player characters move and jump around shooting with various guns and other long-range weapons. These games emphasize greater maneuvering or even jumping, such as Green Beret, Thexder, Contra and Metal Slug. Twin-stick shooter Shooting gallery Shooting gallery games (also known as "target shooting" games) are a sub-genre of shooters where the player aims at moving targets on a stationary screen. They are distinguished from rail shooters, which move the player through levels on a fixed path, and first-person shooters, which allow player-guided navigation through a three-dimensional space. According to New Blood Interactive CEO Dave Oshry, the term originated following the release of Dusk (2018), with fans of that game quickly coining the term. Third-person shooter (TPS) Third-person shooters are characterized by a third-person camera view that fully displays the player character in their surroundings. Notable examples of the genre include Fortnite, the Tomb Raider series, several entries in the Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid franchises, Syphon Filter, Max Payne, SOCOM, Star Wars: Battlefront, Gears of War, and Splatoon. Third person shooter mechanics are often incorporated into open-world adventure and sandbox games, including the Elder Scrolls series and the Grand Theft Auto franchise. FPS/TPS variants Arena shooter Arena shooters are multiplayer games that feature fast paced gameplay that emphasize quick speed and agile movement, and played out on levels or maps of limited size (the "arena"). Many of these are presented as first-person shooters, and thus "arena FPS" may also be used to describe a subset of these games. Examples of these include the Quake and Unreal series, more specifically Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament which first pioneered the genre. Arena shooters can also be played from other perspectives, such as via a top-down view in games like Robotron 2084 and Geometry Wars. Arena shooters frequently emphasize multiplayer modes with few or no single-player modes outside of practice matches with computer-controlled opponents. The genre hit its peak in popularity in the late 90s and early 2000s. Hero shooter Hero shooters are a variation of multiplayer first- or third-person shooters, where players form into two or more teams and select from pre-designed "hero" characters, with each possessing distinctive abilities or weapons that are specific to them. Hero shooters strongly encourage teamwork between players on a team, guiding players to select effective combinations of hero characters and coordinate the use of hero abilities during a match. Outside of a match, players have the ability to customize the appearance of these characters, but these changes are usually cosmetic only and do not alter the game's balance or the behavior of the "hero". Hero shooters take many of their design elements from older class-based shooter, multiplayer online battle arena and fighting games. The class-based shooter Team Fortress 2 is considered to be the codifier of the hero shooter genre. Popular hero shooters include Overwatch, Paladins, Apex Legends, and Valorant. Hero shooters have been considered to have strong potential as esports games as a large degree of skill and coordination arises from the importance of teamwork. Tactical shooter Tactical shooters are shooters that generally simulate realistic squad-based or man-to-man skirmishes. Notable examples of the genre include Ubisoft's ''Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon'' series and Bohemia Software's Operation Flashpoint. A common feature of tactical shooters that is not present in many other shooters is the ability for the player character to lean out of cover, increasing the granularity of a player's movement and stance options to enhance the realism of the game. Tactical shooters also commonly feature more extensive equipment management, more complex healing systems, and greater depth of simulation compared to other shooters. As a result of this, many tactical shooters are commonly played from the first person perspective. Tactical shooters may combine elements from other shooter genres, such as Rainbow Six Siege, Valorant, and Squad, which combine the traditional tactical shooter style with the class-based gameplay of hero shooters. A further variant of the tactical shooter is the extraction shooter, generally defined by the gameplay style of Escape from Tarkov. These games are often "player versus player versus environment" (PvPvE), where players are grouped into teams and placed on a map with the goal to reach an extraction point elsewhere on the map while avoiding the opposing team and non-player character enemies. During their attempt to reach the extraction point, the players may try to loot the opposing team or other features on the map for gear, which if they successfully reach the extraction point, they can keep and use to improve their character. Alternatively, they may have other assigned objectives to complete before extraction for better rewards. Gameplay is more slow and tactical for survival rather than straightforward run-and-gun. Other examples of extraction shooters include ARC Raiders, Hunt: Showdown, The Cycle: Frontier and the upcoming revival of the Marathon series. Looter shooter Looter shooters are shooter games where the player's overarching goal is the accumulation of loot: weapons, equipment, armor, accessories and resources. To achieve this players complete tasks framed as quests, missions or campaigns and are rewarded with better weapons, gear and accessories as a result, with the qualities, attributes and perks of such gear generated randomly following certain rarity scales (also known as loot tables). The better gear allows players to take on more difficult missions with potentially more powerful rewards, forming the game's compulsion loop. Loot shooters are inspired by similar loot-based action role-playing games like Diablo. Examples of loot shooters include the Borderlands franchise, Warframe, Destiny and its sequel, and ''Tom Clancy's The Division'' and its sequel. Artillery game Artillery games have been described as a type of "shooting game", though they are more frequently classified as a type of strategy game. Battle royale Battle royale games are a subgenre of action games that combine last-man-standing gameplay with survival game elements, and frequently includes shooter elements. It is almost exclusively multiplayer in nature, and eschews the complex crafting and resource gathering mechanics of survival games for a faster-paced confrontation game more typical of shooters. The genre is named after the Japanese film Battle Royale (2000) which itself was based on the 1999 novel of the same name, and was popularized in video games with PUBG Battlegrounds and Fortnite Battle Royale. == History ==

The concept of shooting games existed before video games, dating back to shooting gallery carnival games in the late 19th century, as well as target sports such as shooting sports, bowling, cue sports, archery and darts. Mechanical gun games first appeared in England's amusement arcades around the turn of the 20th century, before appearing in America by the 1920s. The British cinematic shooting gallery game Life Targets (1912) was a mechanical interactive film game where players shot at a cinema screen displaying film footage of targets. The first light guns appeared in the 1930s, with the Seeburg Ray-O-Lite. Games using this toy rifle were mechanical and the rifle fired beams of light at targets wired with sensors. It had a Western theme and was one of the first games to feature competitive head-to-head shooting between two players, inspiring several early Western-themed shooter video games. 1960s to mid-1970s Spacewar! (1962), recognized as one of the first video games, was also the first shooter video game; it featured two players controlling spacecraft trying to fire onto the other player. The first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, shipped with a light gun for a shooting gallery game in 1972. In 1976, Midway had another hit shooting video game, Sea Wolf (1976), which was adapted from another Sega EM game, Periscope. Late 1970s to 1980s The genre gained major attraction in popular culture with the release of Taito's Space Invaders arcade video game in 1978. It established the basis of the shoot 'em up subgenre, and became a cultural phenomenon that led into a golden age of arcade video games that lasted until around 1983. In contrast to earlier shooting games, Space Invaders has targets that fire back at the player, who in turn has multiple lives. Designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, who combined elements from his earlier Western Gun (such as destructible environmental objects) with elements of Atari's Breakout (1976) and science fiction media, Space Invaders established a formula of "shoot or be shot" against numerous enemies. Most of these shooting games were presented from a 2D top-down-style perspective, with either a fixed or scrolling field. Games like Space Wars (1977) by Cinematronics and Tempest (1981) by Atari used vector graphics displays rather than raster graphics, while Sega's Zaxxon (1981) was the first video game to use an isometric playfield. Shooter games diversified by the mid-1980s, with first-person light gun shooting gallery games such as Nintendo's Duck Hunt (1984), pseudo-3D third-person rail shooters such as Sega's Space Harrier (1985) and After Burner (1987), and military-themed scrolling run and gun video games such as Capcom's Commando (1985), Konami's Green Beret (1985) and SNK's Ikari Warriors (1986). In the late 1980s, Taito's Operation Wolf (1987) popularized military-themed first-person light gun rail shooters. followed by Sega's mech simulation shooter Metal Head (1995) and Parallax Software's FPS game Descent (1995). GoldenEye 007 (1997) for the Nintendo 64 later combined the FPS sub-genre with light gun rail shooter elements from Virtua Cop, popularizing FPS games on consoles. In the late 1990s, FPS games became increasingly popular while rail shooters declined in popularity, as FPS games were generally able to offer more variety, depth and sophistication than rail shooters. == Controversy ==

Due to its violent nature, some consider the shooter game genre to be a representation of real world violence. Debates regarding video games causing violence were exacerbated by the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, whose perpetrators, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were fans of the game Doom. Similarly, in Germany, school shootings such as those at Erfurt, Emsdetten and Winnenden, resulted in conservative politicians accusing violent shooter games, most notably Counter Strike, of inciting young gamers to run amok. Several attempts were made to ban the "Killerspiele" (killing games) in Germany and the European Union. Shooter games were further criticized when Anders Behring Breivik, perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, claimed that he developed target acquisition skills by playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. This has led to a plethora of experimental research to determine the true effects. Experimental Research, focusing on the short term effects, found that playing violent games can increase the player's aggression. An experiment by C.A. Anderson and K.E. Dill, in which they had undergraduates randomly play either a violent or non-violent game, determined that the students who played the violent game were more susceptible to primed aggressive thoughts. Further studies have shown that there are some limitations with the research. Many research studies have not taken into account that violent video games tend to be more competitive, have a higher playing difficulty, and are more fast paced than non-violent games. Past research also shows that the way aggression was measured in the studies could be compared to the way competitiveness is measured, leaving open the question of whether or not the effects of violent video games are forms of aggression or competitiveness. == See also ==