Sep 1, 2007. Best modern shooters.

This week, we talk about the best modern shooters because the market is being flooded with them, so let's find out what makes a great shooter. This is kinda important because of things like money and time and nobody wants to play another generic shooter.

No doubt the best shooters on the original Xbox was Halo and Halo 2. How did they make such a generic story like aliens taking over the world into a great game? The answer is variety. Yes, the marine weapons were boring, but the alien weapons were wonderful, especially those energy grenades that stick to the enemy. Halo also had enemies that fought each other, which just gave the game a more lively atmosphere in single player. So imagination and more realistic enemies separated Halo from the other games in its genre.

His name is Max Payne, and he had one hell of a story to tell. The use of the in-game engine to try and retell his past was brilliant. It really set the mood and made him a more likable character because those sequences were psychological. The game also used bullet time effectively so the gameplay was a step up from other third person shooters.

You know, we didn't like Doom 3, but a lot of people did. For us, the problem was that the game was too dark. Yeah, it had great graphics, but you couldn't see anything. Maybe that made the atmosphere more realistic, which is why it's one of the best shooters out there.

There's so many WWII games that they've become generic and over melodramatic with the music and some old guy blubbering in the background, who was probably a hired voice actor anyway. But the Brother In Arms series is outstanding because it offers real squad base combat. And while the ability to heal your squad or their AI isn't always that great, they interact and communicate more like real people instead of the cannon fodder you see in other games.

Finally a 360 title makes it to the shooter list and it's Bioshock. And it's not on the list just because it's got next-gen graphics. What it has is a completely believable environment, which is an underwater city inhabited by mutants. How did they accomplish that? By providing great details and atmosphere, instead of generic corridors stolen from a scene in Aliens like in other games. The creatures you meet in it can be used to attack each other. And you can customize your character too, although there's no multiplayer.

Game developers should realize just putting out a shooter with dark corridors and ugly monsters is not enough. Shooters should have a good story and a great environment. The creatures and enemies should be more life-like in their behaviour to try and immerse the gamer in the 3D world instead of the game being nothing but an interactive movie, which is what many Xbox shooters in the past suffer from.