Electronic Three is a time of the year where I think about video games. A lot. I am manly/nerdy enough to admit that over the past week I find myself thinking about E3, video games and so forth. I enjoy E3 every year, especially at the moment when I'm not in school or have a job. My schedule for the past week has been my sitting down at the computer, trawling through scads upon scads of E3 previews and listening to the Bombcast until my ears bleed. Many of the games I keep an eye on over these last few E3s have been those of the shooting variety. I enjoy my shooters. First-person, third-person,-second person; whatever you got. It's a genre which, through the films I watch, I find myself at ease with. It's my fallback genre, reliable and can hold my interest for 10-15 hours of gametime. There are plenty of shooters to be had as well. The two biggest games at this year's event are big, military first-person shooters. There are a good smattering of other shooters to choose from too, especially at the press conferences. Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3, Resistence 3, Ghost Recon: Future Solider, Halo 4, Far Cry 3...

I think I have just about had it with the glut of games piling into the shooter genre (bar Uncharted and Mass Effect as both have other reason to why I actually play them). Often times when people say that they have had it with a certain style of game, I usually don't agree with them. Having a sequel not change the core gameplay much isn't something that worries me with video games. I find myself a bit impressionable sometimes. Sometimes when a person is arguing a point (in, say, an article) I find myself just agreeing with it until I actually stop and think about it or somebody says otherwise. This is not how I am feeling now. At a point with the E3 previews and videos, I just could not watch another shooter being played. No more. So far this year I have played Bulletstorm and Crysis 2, both of which I think have used up the last amouts of my love from the Bank of FPS. I am just so tired pf the dyed in the wool style, 8-10 hour, set piece every 10 minutes, shoot dudes in the face video game. It's strange how quickly my mind switch "Yes Shooters" to "No More, Please", and I didn't even play any shooters in the last week.

In terms of innovation and shaking things up some, I don't know what I want next. If I did, I wouldn't be typing this blog but instead I would be snorting cocaine and buying yachts. Battlefield 3 seems like the same old business. People think of it as a revolutionary messiah because they are tired of Call of Duty but it still seems like the usual Battlefield fare. It may look purdy but it's all your usual business. An off-kilter game even like Bulletstorm didn't rile me up that much. A game really does have to part ways with the tropes of the genre for me to really get invested (like Borderlands but I have other problems with that game).

Seemingly, my answer seems to be play less shooters. I know. Working on that. It just worries me about the industry at large (or even through a community like Giant Bomb) about how these grafted, stiff formulas are still finding our way into our game consoles. There isn't wrong with that, mind you, but I don't want the industry to get stuck in a rut or have things go haywire when the current shooter loses it's appeal. I know some people have been feeling this little strain of fatigue (especially after the shooter-heavy E3 2011) so I am asking the community, who else has seems to have been diagnosed with a case of "Shooter Fatigue"?

I'm thinking of getting this blog moving on a semi-regular basis but we shall see. Maybe I'll lose interest like with my "fantastic" reviews... *ahem*. Ah, they're alright.