Sept. 24: 'First-person shooters' have gamers locked and loaded

Your footsteps echo in the eerily empty halls of Rapture. Water splashes your face as it streams from the ruptured walls of the once-utopian underwater city. Something stirs from behind. You spin around just in time to see a man -- or something that once was a man -- lurch toward you, cackling maniacally and firing a revolver.

You jab a hypo of a revitalizing elixir into your left forearm, and soon an icy blast shoots out of your palm, freezing the attacker. You fire at the frigid goon with a shotgun, shattering him into a zillion tiny shards.

Welcome to "BioShock," an Xbox 360 title that's one of the most talked-about video games going. So is "Metroid Prime 3: Corruption" for the Nintendo Wii. And don't forget "Halo 3," an Xbox 360 title being hailed as the video game of the year ahead of its release at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.

All three are part of the hot genre energizing the video-game industry -- "first-person shooters," games that make players feel as though they're experiencing on-screen events through the eyes of an unseen main character.

Such games accounted for nearly $400 million in U.S. sales in both 2005 and 2006, according to the NPD Group.

Longtime gamer Jason Roeder, 23, an art director from Independence, Minn., has paid a reservation fee to ensure getting a copy of "Halo 3."It's a fun and relaxing atmosphere to be a part of for a few hours, whether it's set during World War II, in an underwater city fighting zombie-like characters or in a future world fighting aliens," Roeder said.

In its first 11 days of release, "BioShock" sold 491,000 copies, according to NPD data, while "Metroid Prime 3" sold 218,000 copies in its first five days. "Halo 3" will be adding to the nearly 11 million copies of "Halo" and "Halo 2" that NPD says have been sold to date. The pace of first-person shooter sales is "scorching," according to NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

What's behind the buzz?

Although such games first became popular in the early 1990s through groundbreaking PC titles such as "Wolfenstein 3-D" and "Doom," they're showing up in greater numbers now on home consoles because of technology that makes the games feel more realistic. Gamer after gamer described that experience in defining what attracts them to the genre.

"First-person shooters tend to be the games that are most immersive," said Chris Way, 29, of Shoreview. "You feel like you are experiencing the 'world' more than say with a title that has you in control of a character in the third-person viewpoint. There, you feel like you are just moving someone around the stage."

First-person games offer the most direct opportunity for players to put themselves into the adventure, said Brian Jarrard, the franchise lead at "Halo" developer Bungie Studios. "It's you inside the helmet. You aren't just following around another character and watching their adventure; you are living it yourself through your own actions, from your own perspective."

Way, a T1 engineer at a telecommunications company, has been playing first-person shooters since "Wolfenstein 3-D" and considers the highly acclaimed PC game "Half-Life 2" his favorite. "Metroid Prime 3" has been consuming most of his playing time lately. The new game uses the Wii system's unique motion-sensing controller to add a realistic twist to the experience. For example, to open a door latch, the player physically pulls his hand back, twists it and pushes forward, mimicking the movements needed in the on-screen action.

Boom time for online gaming

Another thing that makes first-person shooters so popular is the ability to play many of them online against other gamers. "Halo 2" has thrived on this feature.

Microsoft estimates gamers have logged nearly 1 billion hours playing "Halo 2" against one another on Xbox Live, making the game the top-played title on the company's online network three years after its release. Half of the top 10 games played worldwide via Xbox Live are first-person shooters, according to the company, including games such as "Call of Duty," which feature traditional military combat instead of the fanciful sci-fi plots of the "Halo" series, "Metroid Prime 3" and "BioShock."

In online play, just about every character on the screen has a real-world human behind it. That's what attracts gamers such as Robert Sellmeyer, 27, an insurance underwriting specialist who lives in Minneapolis and has spent seven to 10 hours a week playing "Halo 2" online.

"It's the competition, knowing that somebody else is getting so upset if you pop up and get them," he said in describing the appeal. "Oh, it's unbeatable online."

Playing first-person shooters online also brings gamers together without them leaving their homes, whether in competition or cooperatively.

"Halo 3" will ramp up the online component by allowing players to share saved videos of their exploits. It's one of many innovations of the popular game, which was optimized for the Xbox 360, a more-powerful system than the original Xbox console.

And that's why "Halo" fans are eager for Tuesday's release of the latest installment, which concludes the story of Master Chief and his battle with fellow humans against the alien Covenant.

"Pretty much everything we're doing in 'Halo 3' wasn't possible last time around," Bungie's Jarrard said. "The scale and scope of the game is leaps and bounds above what we could do on the original Xbox."

Randy A. Salas • 612-673-4542

Randy A. Salas • rasalas@startribune.com