Shooter game
Shooter video games, or shooters, are a subgenre of action video games where the focus is on the defeat of the character's enemies using ranged weapons given to the player. Usually these weapons are firearms or some other long-range weapons, and can be used in combination with other tools such as grenades for indirect offense, armor for additional defense, or accessories such as telescopic sights to modify the behavior of the weapons. A common resource found in many shooter games is ammunition, armor or health, or upgrades which augment the player character's weapons.
Shooter games test the player's spatial awareness, reflexes, and speed in both isolated single player or networked multiplayer environments. Shooter games encompass many subgenres that have the commonality of focusing on the actions of the avatar engaging in combat with a weapon against both code-driven NPC enemies or other avatars controlled by other players.
Subgenres
Shoot 'em up
Shoot 'em ups 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 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 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.Shooting gallery games can be light gun games and rail-shooters, although many can also be played using a regular joypad and an on-screen cursor to signify where the bullets are being aimed. When these debuted, they were typically played from a first-person perspective, with enemy fire that occurred anywhere on the screen damaging or killing the player. As they evolved away from the use of light guns, the player came to be represented by an on-screen avatar, usually someone on the bottom of the screen, who could move and avoid enemy attacks while returning fire. These sorts of shooters almost always utilize horizontal scrolling to the right to indicate level progression, with enemies appearing in waves from predestined locations in the background or from the sides. One of the earliest examples is the 1985 arcade game Shootout produced by Data East.
As light gun games and rail shooters became more prevalent and started to make use of scrolling backgrounds, such as Operation Wolf, or fully 3D backgrounds, such as the Time Crisis or House of the Dead series, these sorts of games fell out of popular production, but many like Blood Bros. still have their fanbase today. Other notable games of this category include Cabal and Wild Guns.
Light gun shooter
Light gun shooters are shooters designed for use with a gun-shaped controller, typically a light gun in arcade games; similar control methods include a positional gun, motion controller, pointing device or analog stick. The first light guns appeared in the 1930s, following the development of light-sensing vacuum tubes. It was not long before the technology began appearing in mechanical shooting arcade games, dating back to the Seeburg Ray-O-Lite in 1936. These early mechanical gun games evolved into shooting electro-mechanical games around the mid-20th century, and in turn evolved into light gun shooter video games in the 1970s.Early mechanical light gun games used small targets onto which a light-sensing tube was mounted; the player used a gun that emitted a beam of light when the trigger was pulled. If the beam struck the target, a "hit" was scored. Modern screen-based video game light guns work on the opposite principle—the sensor is built into the gun itself, and the on-screen target emit light rather than the gun. The first light gun of this type was used on the MIT Whirlwind computer, which used a similar light pen. Like rail shooters, movement is typically limited in light-gun games.
Notable games of this category include the 1974 and 1984 versions of Wild Gunman, Duck Hunt for the NES, Operation Wolf, Lethal Enforcers, the Virtua Cop series, Time Crisis series, The House of the Dead series, and Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles & Darkside Chronicles.
First-person shooter (FPS)
First-person shooters are characterized by an on-screen representation of the player character's perspective within a three-dimensional space, with the player having control and agency over the character's movement and action within that space. While many rail shooters and light-gun shooters also use a first-person perspective, they are generally not included in this category, as the player generally lacks agency to move their character within the game world.Notable examples of the genre include Doom, Quake, Counter-Strike, GoldenEye 007, Battlefield, Medal of Honor, Unreal, Call of Duty, Killzone, TimeSplitters, Team Fortress 2 and Halo, while games such as Half-Life, Deus Ex, and System Shock would combine shooter gameplay with narrative-focused or role-playing game elements to instead branch off into the immersive sim genre.
Boomer shooter
Boomer shooter is a term used to describe newer FPS games that are purposely designed to emulate the style and design principles of 1990s FPS games like Doom and Quake. The name "boomer shooter" is derived from the baby boomer generation, where "boomer" has since become slang for anything old or antiquated. According to New Blood Interactive CEO Dave Oshry, the term originated following the release of Dusk, with fans of that game quickly coining the term. Newer triple-A games like Wolfenstein: The New Order, Doom, and Doom Eternal helped to repopularize these styles of shooters in the mid-2010s, and indie developers further contributed to the field with games like Amid Evil, Ion Fury, and Ultrakill.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.