Does that make me strange?
 
I've noticed that nearly everyone seems to have one or both of these and spends a lot of time playing it.  Despite my limited gaming time, I like to try and stay involved with what's current... The trouble is I just can't fancy either of them.  Why?  Both titles have recieved very positive reviews critically, so they can't be that bad as games.  Could it be that I'm not a first person junkie?  Well, my main game of late has been Left 4 Dead 2, so that can't be entirely it.  The setting?  A realistic 'war' setting?  Well, back int he day I played through Medal of Honour and spent hours upon hours playing multi-player at work on it, I played Batttlefield 1942, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein as well, not to mention Counter Strike and Tactical Ops, so that's not it...
 
So why?  
 
Well to start with, I'm in a console phase at the moment, more of my gaming time is spent on the 360 just now.  I think it's partly the easy access and less general faff with playing 360 games - I can't get enough gaming at the moment, so I have to make every minute count.  Now despite owning a 360 for over two years now - I still don't really feel as comfortable with a pad as I did with a mouse and keyboard for FPS.  Gears of War and the sequel got me into it a little bit - they are very good games for people who are trying to make the transition.  And Left 4 Dead, the lack of many projectile firing enemies and the use of the melee button seem to make it a good intermediatary game for people moving mouse - pad.
 
I am getting better too!  I feel much more comfortable on it than I used to.  At the same time, back in my Unreal Tournement days, I used to win games telefragging and free-shooting with a sniper rifle.  I used to take UT very seriously.  I played as one of the female model robots - because the female models were smaller and harder to hit - and I modified it so I could use the boss-guys voice taunts because they were more frustrating and likely to make people get annoyed and make mistakes.
 
I even organised a league at our software development company, with regular matches at lunchtimes and breaks... Although that had to stop - the amount of shouting and swearing going on through out the building put paid to that and even dished out a few verbal warnings.  A guy called Mike and myself were probably round about the best at the game - but we were saddled with arguably the two worst players in the game on our team.  I ended up trying to make this situation fairer, but tweaking the bots to be slightly better and when one of our weaker players couldn't play - instead of postponing having a bot... I got a bit rumbled when teh bot head shotted an entire team trying to get the flag before they'd ever seen him... Great days....
 
The last FPS I actually played through that isn't Left 4 Dead was probably Doom 3.  I really enjoyed that game.  It was very atmospheric - a must to play with the lights off, escpecially with surround sound or headphones.  Great graphics, fun gameplay and intersting level design.  I particularly not the depiction of Hell itself, it's so good I'd play through it again except I lent it to someone and they lost the CD's....
 
I wonder partly - is it the fantasy setting?  Realism vs Fantasy?  I have enjoyed both to a degree, back at work when we weren't playing UT we played a lot of multiplayer Medal of Honour.  The trouble with that was it was very prone to hacking and cheating.  I actually accidentally cheated by choosing a skin none of the other players had downloaded - this rendered me 100% invisible... Something of an advantage, until we worked out how you could force a skin onto all enemy players.  Then there was the teleporting, frustrated at not being able to get good sniping positions, I ended up working out co-ordinates and teleporting up into inaccassible areas.  All in all UT was a better experience I think... 
 
I suppose ultimately, I've done so many hours of FPS over the years I'm a bit bored of it.  I did wonder whether this was partly because I view games slightly differently now, because I have an anti-gaming wife and a young child (Who loves playing 'Hedgehog the Fox') but then I do stay up late for a game of Left 4 Dead or the sequel so that's not it.  I can only put it down to tiredness of the genre, running around, kicking in doors, sniping people, charging through with a shotgun... I've been there and done that, and bought the T- Shirt dozens of times over.  What makes Left 4 Dead different?  Well, the gameplay is different, surviving a zombie apocalypse plays very differently to storming a terrorist hide-out.  The co-operative play is really well designed too, anyone interested in game development should play Left 4 Dead and part 2 and listen to the dev comments, it tells you a lot about player-centric design, which in my mind is the way forward.  
 
Ultimately I suppose there is one factor above all else - George Romero understood it, the makers of Dead Rising 'get it' and that is, 'Slaughtering Zombies is great fun, and probably always will be!'