My FPS experience

I've been gaming a lot lately, doing what I usually do on the daily. I've been playing a lot more fps (first person shooters) games and I noticed I'm actually pretty good at them. Fps games can sometimes be a little tricky at first because there are just so many factors that go into shooters. Most of it just comes down to whoever is the more skilled player will take out the player who is less skilled than him. But in certain cases (like mine), I just usually end up getting lucky, and that ain't bad. I feel like a lot of fps skill is kind of based on luck because you can ambush people when they weren't on their guard and stuff like that. I was always terrible at playing Call of Duty, like on Xbox360, but when I switched over the PC I became much better. The mouse and keyboard is idea for aiming and looking down sites because it is more precise than a controller. When my brother got me CoD: Advanced Warfare I became really good at shooting games because I learned the play style. Also, it doesn't hurt than Advanced Warfare is a more tactical Call of Duty, nowhere near as campy as CoD: Ghosts. Eventually I became so good that I was always 1st or 2nd on the leader boards in every game.

     And then I just stopped playing. I felt like I'd exhausted everything in the game and eventually the whole Advanced Warfare community just stopped playing. Also, there were a lot of hackers on the PC version. It made for horrible games with the hacking so obvious that every time you spawned you would immediately die. That was how bad it got. I'm not sure if anythings been fixed regarding the game but I highly doubt it now that there's a new CoD game out called Black Ops III. That was pretty much the end of fps games for me.

     Until I met a new friend. He's super into fps games and he's pretty good at them. We started playing Team Fortress 2 and its been a blast. Its really getting me back into fps games because I'm realizing they are more fun with friends talking on discord. I got a really cool gun in Team Fortress that vaporizes enemy players in 1 or 2 hits. It's really fucking good! But I still have problems with the aiming system in Team Fortress 2. Perhaps I have to play with a higher sensitivity or something. It's a great game, probably the best shooter out there. At my friends house I even got to play Overwatch once. He coached me through a game and I played amazing well.

     And then when Battlefront III came out I was playing that for a while. I still am actually. I find the shooting in the game to be vastly different from any other kinds of fps games. I'm still at a loss at how to play this game really. In addition, I got Unreal Tournament III at Goodwill once and I've got it set up so that I can play on private servers online and still play the game online even though the original game servers are down. I used to be a beast at Unreal Tournament III on the Xbox360, back in the day. Unreal Tournament is another one of those fps games that you just have to play at least once. It's an amazing shooting experience, the best arena shooter.

      But when I got into the Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex multiplayer game beta I realized I'm actually pretty damn good at fps games. One part of why I do so well in GotS (Ghost in the Shell) is that the maps are designed in a way that you will be punished for camping or staying in one spot for a long time. Keep in mind that I only play team deathmatch because whenever I try doing the other game modes it takes forever to find players and I always just end up leaving the queue. So this game is all about running and gunning, basically the same tactics as in Battlefront III. The better you are at run and gun, the better player you will be. That's my basic tactic, just run, look for enemy players, then shoot. Run around some more and repeat. Somehow I've done amazing well with this tactic. I average like 20 kills a game and sometimes I even get more than that. Not bad for a game that's still in early access. I highly recommend this game by the way.

     The thing that this game has going for it is the name and the brand. Ghost in the Shell is a beloved anime and I can only imagine what kinds of things they will add to the game once its polished and released after beta. I feel like the graphics are meh and that the abilities of the Operatives (basically the same system as in Black Ops III, where you choose a hero and they have special abilities) don't really help you out in any significant way. Since when are shooters becoming like mobas? I find the abilities not that important because even if somebody is using their ability they can be taken out easily with a gun shot. However, this game shines in its game play.

     The first thing you notice when you play team deathmatch is that everybody is playing it as a team. Nobody is going out like little Rambo's like in Call of Duty. It feels like a tactical Counter Strike match where you have to disable the bomb. Everybody's moving in like a squad and not just going in death after death. They're using their head and playing smart. This has helped me learn to be more patient in shooters and not just try to shoot an enemy when I first see them. Sometimes you want to hide behind corners, wait for them to shoot and they have to reload, or just flank them by taking an alternate route on the map and just rushing them. This is all basic stuff to fps gamers but I had to learn all of this myself. I just got the hang of it recently and its been a blast! This Ghost in the Shell game has been my catalyst fps game and now I'm hooked.

     I'm going to keep trying to improve in Battlefront III, keep up with Team Fortress 2 with my friend, play Unreal Tournament III, and definitely keep playing Ghost in the Shell. The beauty of fps games is that you don't have to invest too much time into them for you to have a good time. You can be very casual with it and play a few matches before bed. I've only really been playing a bit here and there and its been very rewarding and satisfying. Nothing feels better than getting that headshot kill, double kill, and possibly even triple kill and being on top of the leader boards with the most kills. The number one fps game I'm looking out for Overwatch. I'm hoping that it comes out sometime later this year. But we don't really know for sure when it will come out. Overwatch is going to be a huge game. Even in beta I can see that it has so much potential as another great Blizzard game. Watch out for its release maybe sometime this year. Shooters can be a little hard to get into at first because it might feel like a steep learning curve, but once you get the hang of it you can just annihilate online. It's good, clean fun!