Having played a lot of third person shooters and dabbling in first person shooters before, I was expecting to have a pretty fun time with this game. However, I realized that there are actually many differences between the two POVs. Mainly in the field of view; despite not having your character take up space on the screen in an fps, you actually see less than in a first person game because you’re limited to human vision, whereas in third person you can see all around yourself. I thought playing an fps would be more immersive and easier to aim, but it’s actually harder sometimes because you have to direct the aiming crosshairs a lot more than if it was third person. Playing first person is also more disorienting in practice than on paper; most of the time you can’t see the rest of your body, so it’s really hard to tell how much of you is exposed when you take cover, plus you can’t see anything when you’re crouched behind something. Even though we see in first person in real life, I don’t think games can represent it accurately unless it’s VR. I understand that it’s realistic if you lose sight of enemies when you hide behind cover, but in real life you have other acute senses to help you keep track of where enemies are. Even with surround sound, it’s easy to get really confused when you’re in a firefight surrounded by enemies. So I prefer third person perspective because it’s easier to see where my character is in relation to the environment, plus I enjoy being able to control an animated character instead of a floating disembodied camera.
Despite all this, I acknowledge that I just need more practice. I could tell when I played this game that it was really high quality and well developed. I guess I’m just not into the genre.
I do also want to say that I wish there was less combat with human enemies at the beginning and more survival instead. That’s the part I was excited for so when it was only a tutorial I was a little disappointed. I think this game has great graphics but the visuals are so desolate and lack any color due to the winter setting that it became really hard on the eyes. I lost interest in this game after an hour and a half or so, so there’s probably more variety to this game that I missed out on.