Computer game genres

Game genres

·        First person shooter

Example of a generic fps game

A first person shooter or FPS is a very popular genre of game. The game is played through the eyes of the player’s character (as seen below) which is known as first person perspective. Generally the aim of this kind of game is to shoot enemies and navigate your character through the environment around you. It also usually consists of a number of linear levels that you must go through in sequence to get to the end and finish the game.

·        RPG

RPG or role playing games are more popular with hard-core gamers. In these games you control a character and play through a story in a fictional world. Often this consists of lots of exploration and interacting with NPC’s (Non-Person Characters, or characters in the game controlled the game itself). This is also a more personalised experience as most RPGs allow you customise your character or play through the way in a variety of different ways and can be much longer to play through than other genres of game.

·        Platformer

In a platformer game the players’ character usually has to jump between various platforms (hence the name) and avoid obstacles on the way. Super Mario was an early example platformer game, with many others evolving from this such as Tomb Raider or Crash Bandicoot.

·        Side-Scroller

Side-scroller games were originally very popular in arcade machines, where the player controlled a character had to move through the level rather like a platformer or shoot enemies to progress, while moving from the left of the screen to the right which then drags the screen, scrolling to the next section of the level. The metal slug series are an example of side-scrollers.

Similar to this genre is the top-down scroller which simply flips the orientation, but is otherwise the same although the screen may scroll down automatically such as in the game 1942.

·        Action-Adventure

This genre is very broad and therefore difficult to define. Any game that follows a story for the character to go through and action elements such as combat can be said to fit into this genre.

·        MMORPG

Standing for “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game” these games are as their title suggests played online and against hundreds if not thousands of other players. They are basically RPGs were you create your own character and personalise them and then get put into a huge fictional world, the only difference being there are nearly no NPCs (Non Person Characters) here, everyone you interact with is another user. World of Warcraft is an example of an extremely popular MMORPG.

·        Strategy

This simply refers to any game that heavily makes use of strategy elements in its gameplay such as games where you control armies and order them tactically around a battlefield, sometimes building bases or defences. Medieval 2 Total War or  Command and Conquer are good examples.

·        Fighting/beat ‘em up

This genre of game features the player controlling a character who must fight against a variety of opponents, either in one on one combat like in Tekken or against numerous weaker enemies like in Streets of Rage. The players’ character will usually have a repertoire of moves or attacks like high kick, punch etc.

·        Puzzle

Puzzle games like the name suggests are a game that either is a series of fun and challenging puzzles that the player must solve, or an action adventure game that has number of challenges blocking progression throughout the game. The Professor Layton series of games on the Nintendo DS are a popular example of puzzles games.

·        Simulation

Any game that tries to simulate a real-life activity accurately can be classes a simulation. However it must try to simulate realism, for example Burnout Paradise, a racing game featuring unrealistically fast cars which drive around on streets full of other cars is an arcade style racing game, whereas Gran Turismo 5, a circuit racing game where every car is an exact replica of its real-life counterpart and the cars handle as much like they do really as the developers could make it is a racing simulator. There are also various flight and train simulators around.

Adding one piece of equipment to a car in Forza Motorsport 4

To conclude:

As you can see many of these genres can overlap and a game can be in more than more genre. Also this is not a definitive list of genres as you can break many of them down further into sub-genres, or add others such as driving or sports but most of these are fairly self-explanatory so I’ve left them out.