The Middle Perspective

You've tried it in first and consoles helped you grow tired of third but why did they decide to skip 2nd? That's the question Julian Oliver had been asking himself before he started experimenting with the idea of what a 2nd person shooter might look and play like.

If you ask the man himself he will claim that the second person as a displacement of agency and as a crisis of control - a Dislocative Media if you like. Forget dislocation, it sounds as if someone is suffering from dissociation. Still the idea of trying out a game but experiencing it through your enemy's eyes is a challenge to say the least.

While the creator himself claims: In this little experiment however, you are on the outside looking in, and to my great amusement, it's a complete and total pain in the arse. He then goes on to add, The object of the game? Shoot yourself to live! Now that would make a catchy... ehh catchline.

Now you are one of the lucky few that can get to try this little freak of programming out, by following the download/b> tab above. To find out what it is all about read on for the official comments by the creator but I promise you that may prove a challenge.

In this take on the 2nd Person Perspective, you control yourself through the eyes of the bot, but you do not control the bot. Your eyes have effectively been switched. Naturally this makes action difficult when you aren't within the bot's field of view; thus both you and the bot (or other player) will need to work together, to combat each other.

Here, both you and the bot (or other player) are really just a displaced projection of first person agency, outside the first, looking inward at it from the second and third perspectives. When you start the game you are looking through the eyes of a bot that is trying to find and shoot you. That bot is you. This bot is not very good at this, largely because it's really just a place holder for a two-player mode I'm currently working on; the bot will get lost and/or stuck on walls and will occasionally need a nudge to become unstuck. When you shoot the bot (you) it will flee, trying to put some distance between itself and the other you.

The Almost Intelligence I've given it is of an 'only just' quality and may improve after I've finished a 2 player prototype.

Controls:

W - forward
S - backward
A - strafe left
D - strafe right
LMB-CLICK and drag to aim.
< SPACE> to shoot

Stay with MegaGames for updates on what promises to be an interesting, if slightly troubling, idea.