Insecter War (3DO, 1994)
Resident Evil: Village -- in the same veins as Resident Evil 7
I also have a few opinions, plus reasoning, regarding the edge cases on your list, so please bear with me.
Also added Lucky & Wild (arcade, 1992); an edge case, but it still counts since you're in complete control of the car's speed (accelerator must be held down to move, brake allows a complete stop) and its position on the road (steering wheel).
That is a
hard edge case! I think it's like calling SEGA's
After Burner a third-person shooter, if only a little bit more valid since you also have control of forward movement.
The problem is, from what I can see of the game, you can only move forward and steer sideways, you can not backtrack nor even turn. That is very limited movement. According to Rule 2: "Player movement must be controllable", this game technically passes, but in practice the player has no
freedom of movement.
I think we can compare this forward movement control to overhead run 'n gun games (e.g.
Ikari Warrior,
Jackal) as opposed to vertical scrolling shmups. Or, even better, "driving action" games like
Spy Hunter - which had very similar movement control: gas pedal to accelerate, steering wheel to
slide left/right.
I don't think any of the games mentioned (
After Burner,
Ikari Warrior,
Jackal,
Spy Hunter) can be considered to have controllable movement in the same manner as, say,
Gauntlet or
Robotron 2048 or
Bosconian do, even though those games limit the player to a small, enclosed area.
== My personal conclusion:
Lucky & Wild is not an edge-case FPS, it's more of just a first-person version of
Spy Hunter, for 2 players. Still, I think you should keep the entry since the game's quite unique, though personally I think a description like: "Outlier; Passes the bare minimum for 'controllable movement'; Imagine
Spy Hunter in first-person" or something along that line more appropriate for disambiguation purposes.
One more to add: Paranoia Scape (PS1, 1998).
Technically, you don't shoot things; you instead use two pinball-flipper-like bones to launch energy balls at enemies. As far as I'm concerned, though, close enough.
I 100% agree with this. I don't really think the technicality of "shooting things" ever had much grounds to it. An FPS where, thematically, you throw stuff at enemies would still be an FPS proper.
What's important, I think, is the existence of a ranged weapon, which leads to "move and aim" (more general phrasing of "run and gun" - not the genre, the mechanics) gameplay loop.
== Less edge-case, more of just "bizarre" .
Finally found another entry for the list: Bionic Battler (Game Boy, 1990)
Also qualifies as a first-person brawler, in a somewhat similar vein to The Super Spy.
One more:
Maken X (Dreamcast, 1999)
An edge case in the same vein as Breakdown, being mostly a first-person brawler, but with some projectile weapons. The PS2 version reworked the whole thing into a third-person action game.
I have seen
The Super Spy mentioned as an FPS a few times, mostly from people listing Japanese FPSes, but I have never been able to understand how it could be an FPS. We do not consider
The Legend of Zelda a top-down shooter even though it has bow and arrow, we do not consider Capcom's
Armored Warriors - an arcade beat 'em up - a shooter even though it has ranged weapons. And I think that's because in these games, ranged weapons have limited usage and fill the same role as spells/special attacks, while melee combat is the core feature.
If we were to categorized
Bionic Battler,
The Super Spy, and
Maken X as (edge-case) FPSes, by the same merits
Dungeon Master,
Ultima Underworld, the entire
The Elder Scrolls series would also be (edge-case) FPSes, and I don't think I can agree with that.
Breakdown gets a pass, however, because even though it's primarily a brawler, gunplay is featured plenty. The gun has perfect auto-lock-on and the player never really takes aim, but well, so do many third-person shooters (
Armored Core,
Mega Man Legends,...).
== My suggestion is that you make a separate section for these; otherwise, please add a note to their (except for
Breakdown's) entries to clarify that they're not really FPSes, but first-person action games - that happen to have ranged attacks.
Breakdown doesn't seem to have an "edge-case" note even though you said I was, I think you should take this chance to add it.
Out Live: Be Eliminate Yesterday (PS1, 1997) is a curious edge case: although it does revolve around shooting things in first-person, and does grant full control over your character's movement, the actual combat appears to be a mixture between a turn-based RPG and an FPS. There is not really any aiming involved: when you're within range, you just select Attack and let the RNG determine if it's a hit. However, everything in between attacks, i.e., the positioning of yourself and the enemy, is handled in real-time, so movement technique is still key to gameplay.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrq4u4pDvsgIts predecessor, Out Live (PCE, 1989), is a more traditional turn-based RPG in the guise of an FPS, with you trading shots with enemies in typical Wizardry-style random encounters.
Apologies, but I don't think you've watched the PS1 video fully. The video explicitly states that enemies move when you move. This makes the game entirely turn-based. "Movement technique" is thus only tactical skills.
You can see this kind of game system, where you move and do battle on the same map but everything is turn-based, in old RPGs like
Ultima 1 &
2 or in classical roguelikes like
NetHack and
Angband. This game is just that, switched to a first-person perspective. The game thus fails to be a "shooter", as I think it's a tad difficult to be a turn-based shooter - you'd just be a strategy game instead.
If you would like to protest that enemies seem to move at the same time as you do, this was also the case in those other games I mentioned, too. They
seem to move simultaneously because it takes so little time for the computer to decide, compute, and "animate" their movements.
Out Live: Be Eliminate Yesterday's turn-keeping system is little unusual, however. It keeps track of simulated time and your actions consume different amounts of time, so how much enemies get to act in 1 move depends on the "time" that your last action cost. Another example of this rare system being used is in the mainframe/terminal game "genre" Star Trek (https://www.mobygames.com/game-group/star-trek-variants).
If you asked me how this is different from a "time moves when you move" game like
SUPERHOT, well, everything's on a spectrum:
SUPERHOT's really an action-puzzle, not an action or action-adventure games like the vast majority of FPSes are. However,
SUPERHOT's movement is a lot more granular (i.e. smooth, not grid-based; it also makes actual use of 3 dimensions) and attacks occur at the same time, instead of [Attack -> Attack complete -> Other units take their turn while the attacker can not act].
SUPERHOT also requires hand-eye coordination, pushing it a lot closer to an FPS experience.
On that same spectrum of [Tactical turn-based <--> Action], the only thing
Out Live: Be Eliminate Yesterday has going for it would be that (a representation of) time actually measures into its action economy.
Also compare pausable real-time systems (e.g.
Baldur's Gate) - a system suited for strategy games and used by virtually no action games: Assuming you currently only have control of 1 unit, a simple change of implementing a forced automatic pause whenever you are idle would bring the
pacing of the game close to that of the "time moves when you move" system.
Between the turn-based nature, the lack of FPS gameplay experience (even compared to grid-based ones, the adrenaline isn't there), the fact that the entire system is far more suited for a strategy game than an action game, so I think it's safe to say the game is definitely a tactical turn-based game and not a hybrid of any sorts.
By the way, compare
Carmine for the PC-98, lots of similarity, doesn't have a system of "time-cost" though, AFAIK.
== My suggestion is that this entry should either be removed, or kept as disambiguation i.e. an example of what's
not FPS, not even edge case, but could be mistaken for one. In the latter case, maybe add
Carmine (PC-98, 1986) to the list, too.
