by Zachary Foster

Created on: June 24, 2007   Last Updated: January 30, 2012

There are many genres in video games and many people may not understand which is which, especially casual gamers. This a guide to explain what each genre is, what it involves and what are some popular games in that genre.

FPS

FPS stands for First Person Shooter, this means that all the action takes place from your characters point of view. FPSs are one of the most common of all genres, they involve lots of action and are usually fast paced. From your characters view you must proceed through a level picking up additional guns and eliminating anything which gets in your path, you can tell how much ammo and health you have by looking at the various meters and numbers on your HUD (heads up display) this will usually be in the corners of the screen. In most FPS's there are two types of play, Single player where you play on your own and Multilayer where you play with and against friends. Some popular FPS's at the moment are Half Life 1 and 2, Resistance fall of man, Halo 1 and 2 and Fear. As FPSs are common you can get them on almost any format but they don't work particularly well on handholds so avoid the DS and PSP as they are harder to master

RPG

RPG stands for Role Playing Game, this means you play the role of another control of another character which you can usually level up in various ways. This allows a degree of customization and the ability for you to play in a number of different styles. There are many different types of RPGs. The most common is simply turn based game play where your character and there allies take turns exchanging blows with the enemies on screen, another is a action RPG where you move around attack enemies in real time making the gameplay seem more smooth. Even a FPS can have RPG elements like upgrading your weaponry and increasing certain traits the more you use. RPGs usually have great stories and characters and take a lot longer to beat but they rarely have multilayer. While not as common as FPSs, you can find RPGs on almost any console but if I had to choose a console where you could get the most RPGs I would have to say the PS2 Some popular RPGs are anything in the Final Fantasy series, STAR WARS The Knights Of The Old Republic 1 and 2 and the Star Ocean series

RTS

RTS stands for Real Time Strategy, this means rather than controlling a single or a few characters you have the entire control of a whole army and command them from a birds eye view. In a RTS your goal whether against the AI or a Human opponent is to build units to gather

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