TAG Ten: Ten awesome first-person perspectives

The first-person perspective has been a part of gaming since the mid-1970s, allowing the user to see the game through the eyes of the protagonist.

Examples of first-person perspective can be found in all genres of gaming, from adventure and RPGs to sports and racing games. In 1993, Doom introduced the world to the first-person shooter and gaming was never the same.

In this edition of Tag Ten, I take a look at ten of my favorite first-person perspectives. This isn't a list of the ten best or the ten most impressive views, but rather is ten that I've enjoyed throughout my years of gaming.

Mirror's Edge (Xbox 360, PS3, PC - 2008)

Faith was one of the best characters of 2008

Released during the 2008 holiday season, Mirror's Edge was a solid IP whose sales took a massive hit due to being released at the wrong time.

A first-person parkour game that sometimes (frustratingly) forced you to fight, Mirror's Edge scored major points for its fast game play, beautiful environment and creative effects. As Faith, you ran, tumbled and jumped your way through a playground of building rooftops, hallways and city streets. Build up enough speed and the edges of your screen would blur. You could literally hear the wind whistling past Faith's ears.

No other game has given me the same sensation of vertigo as I jumped over 40-story gaps at breakneck speed.

Myst (PC - 1993)

Was this ship important? I have no idea

Myst came out when I was five years old. So while I never actually came close to figuring out what the hell I was supposed to do in the game, I remember it having a profound effect on my young gaming self.

See, Myst was my first foray into a 3D environment. Even if it was just a series of point-and-click screens, it blew my five-year-old mind. You mean you can go FORWARD instead of just to the right??!?!

I still have no idea what Myst was about, or what I was trying to do on that island and it really doesn't matter. As they say, you never forget your first.

Star Wars Episode 1 Racer (Nintendo 64 - 1999)

Moments before crashing... again

The Star Wars nerd in me still bristles at the mention of Jar Jar Binks or Jake Lloyd, but podracing is still a pretty sweet concept.

Episode 1 Racer was a wickedly-fast racing game that had you blasting through various Star Wars locales at 800 km/h. While the default view was a trailing camera, the first person view planted you in the cockpit, bouncing along behind (or in Neva Kee's case, in front of) two rocket engines.

Never mind that it was damn near impossible to navigate the twists and turns from this view. Racer let you learn exactly what it would look like to crash directly into a wall at twice the speed of sound.

NFL 2K5 (Xbox, Playstation 2 - 2004)

This is the closest any of us will get to playing a down of NFL football

Lots of sports games promise to put you in the game.

NFL 2k5 actually did it.

Sporting a $20 price point, 2K5 looked like a serious competitor to Madden when it released in 2004, so much so that EA snatched up an exclusive licensing agreement with the NFL, forcing 2K Sports to cease production on the franchise.

2K5 touted a first-person football mode (which was also in 2K4) that let you see the eyes through players on the field. In truth, it wasn't much more than a gimmick mode, but the real tragedy is wondering how it would have evolved had 2K Football not bit the dust.

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare (Xbox 360, Playstation 3 - 2007)

Still gives me goosebumps

Killing your lead character in a game today seems as common as pushing X to not die (I love you QTEs), but when Infinity Ward did it in Modern Warfare, it was a total blindside.

By now, most of the internet is familiar with the story. As Sgt. Paul Jackson, you perform a harrowing rescue of a downed teammate. You breath a sigh of relief as you fly away, thinking that the mission is over, until a freaking nuke goes off in the middle of the city, leveling the city and knocking your chopper out of the sky. As you crawl out of the wreckage, you collapse onto the ground and die, staring at the mushroom cloud in the distance.

It was shocking. I spent the next few missions thinking that Jackson had somehow survived and we would rescue him from the debris sometime later. It never happened. Jackson was dead, and you had experienced his dying breath through his eyes. Wow.

Star Wars Trilogy Arcade (Arcade - 1998)

Even poorly-pixelated, Vader is intimidating 

When I was young, I went to Gameworks for one reason; to pump quarters into Star Wars Trilogy Arcade.

The first-person flying and shooting sections were okay, but the real treats were the lightsaber battles against Boba Fett and Darth Vader.

Following visual queues on the screen, you moved the joystick to block and swing. The controls would vibrate when you made contact, making it feel like you were actually making contact. It remains to this day the best video game lightsaber experience I've ever played.

Doom 3 (Xbox, PC - 2004)

You're going to be shooting at him a lot

Doom 3 was filled with cheap, jump-out-of-closet scares and I didn't play it unless it was the middle of the day and all the lights were turned on.

The monsters weren't just scary, they were huge and they were out to kick your ass. You could be walking down an empty hallway, then turn around and see a hulking mass of teeth and claws running at you at full speed.

Halo might have been the predominant shooter on the Xbox, but there was something special about back-peddling at full speed, unloading a full clip into a helldog that wanted to snack on your face.

Fatal Frame II (Playstation, Xbox - 2003/2004)

Oh Japanese horror

One year after its Playstation predecessor, a director's cut version of Fatal Frame II released on the Xbox with an option to play the game in first person.

How scary was this game? In order to hurt the ghosts, you have to take pictures of them with your camera. The better -- and closer -- the picture, the more damage you did. In other words, it was beneficial to let the ghost get as close as possible before snapping the shot.

This is the gaming equivalent of seeing how long you can hold your hand over a candle.

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (Nintendo 64 - 1996)

Just like the movie!

Three Star Wars games in one article? Absolutely. If you don't like it, start your own gaming blog.

Shadows of the Empire hasn't aged gracefully, which is a nice way of saying that it looks like ass today. It was one of my favorite N64-era games, in no small part because of the vehicle levels.

The on-foot levels featured a first-person camera, but it was only good for leading you off cliffs. The swoop chase and space battles were better, but the game really shined in its first level, the battle of Hoth.

Putting you behind the wheel (do they have wheels?) of a Snowspeeder, you were tasked with defending Ecko Base from waves of Imperial forces. It was a sequence straight out of The Empire Strikes Back, and it remains to this day the best representation. Trying to trip AT-ATs with your tow cable in cockpit mode was more than a little frustrating, but it made it all the more satisfying when you finally pulled it off.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 64 - 1998)

So many memories...

Look, there isn't much I can write about this game that hasn't been written a hundred times over on the internet. It is, quite simply, the best video game ever created, bar none.

Pressing C-Up on the controller changed your perspective from third to first person, allowing you to look around the sprawling environments. Equipping the slingshot, longshot or bow also snapped you into first person, turning the game into a stationary FPS.

There is so much I love about the feature. The noise when you zoom in, Navi yelling, 'look!' when there was an object of interest in the room, climbing to the top of Death Mountain to survey Hyrule. Everything about Ocarina of Time was awesome, including the view.

What are your favorite first-person perspectives? Let me know in the comments section!

Rock Band 3 Pro Mode looks intimidating

Rock Band 3 is right around the corner. I have absolutely no interest in the new keyboard peripheral, but the Pro Guitar mode that Harmonix is heavily marketing makes this game a must-buy.

Check out the video above, which details the two types of guitar controllers that you can use to play Pro Mode. Just watching some of the game play footage gave me the same 'holy crap' sensation I felt the first time I bumped up Guitar Hero II from medium to hard.

Watching the footage reminds you how hard playing actual guitar really is and how challenging some of the songs are going to be. As someone who has played guitar off and on for the last few years, I'm really excited to give this mode a try. It's going to kick my ass, that I'm certain, but the satisfaction I know I'll get from five-starring a song on Pro Mode is will be above almost any video game satisfaction I've experienced before.

Get Over Here!

Some of my fondest gaming memories involve the Mortal Kombat franchise. The fatalities, the karacters, the kontrols... OK I'm done. But really, I love MK.

Between the announcement of a new MK game that looks like it's getting back to basics and the excellent Mortal Kombat: Rebirth short film that made the rounds recently, my MK fanboy-ness is at a fever pitch right now.

The new trailer doesn't tell us a lot - actually it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know - but Scorpion has always been my favorite charater, so I've still watched it about five or six times. 2011 can't get here soon enough.

EA Sports MMA

Well, this is an unexpected turn.

For the sake of context, I spend my days writing for a mixed martial arts training website called TapouTVTC.com (follow the blog here!). I've practiced martial arts since the second grade and mixed martial arts in particular since high school. I haven't missed a UFC event in about four years, and I will passionately argue that MMA is a safer sport to compete in than boxing, football or Ultimate Frisbee (no, really). In short, I'm a little obsessed with the sport.

Prior to 2009, there was nothing in the way of good MMA video games. I played the hell out of UFC: TapouT on the originial Xbox, but not because it was good, but because I had no other options. Developers just hadn't found a good way to mix all the nuances of an MMA fight into a playable formula.

That all changed on May 19, 2009, the day that UFC 2009 Undisputed was released. I picked it up at midnight, played until about 5am, then woke up again at 10 to play some more. Sure, it had some faults (gotta love online opponents that could quit mid-match to avoid a loss), but it was exactly what the MMA gamer in me had craved for so many years.

THQ refined that formula with UFC Undisputed 2010, and while some of the excitement had worn off, it is still a game that I play months after release. When EA announced that they would be releasing their own MMA video game, I scoffed at it as a cash grab. The UFC had approached EA about doing an MMA game and been turned down, but now that there was proven success EA was ready to jump on board.

As such, my interest level was pretty low in the game. The graphics looked too cartoonish, the animations looked stiff and most of the best fighters in the world are in the UFC. I wrote EA Sports MMA off just as I've written off the NBA Live series in favor of 2K's superior product.

The reviews that have come out, though, have given me a lot of pause. Not only are they extremely positive, but some have gone so far as to say that it is the best MMA game on the market. Now, instead of writing the game off, I am extremely curious.

I'll tackle the demo over the next few days and maybe even give it a spin on Gamefly, but suffice to say my opinion has been severely swayed by the positive reception.

NBA 2K11 impressions

My relationship with the 2K NBA series has been a love/hate one. When I'm playing well, I can't get enough of it. When I'm missing open shots because I can't get the hang of the touchy shot stick, I'm controller-breakingly frustrated.

With NBA 2K11, though, it's been all love. Maybe it's because I'm playing with the stacked Miami Heat, but the controls feel a little more forgiving this time around. When I miss a shot in 2K11, it feels like it's my fault, not the controller's fault.

The big draw in 2K11 is obviously the Jordan Challenge mode. For a lot of older gamers (and by 'older' I mean old enough to have watched and appreciated Michael Jordan in a Bulls uniform), this mode must be a great trip down memory lane.

I, however, was 10 in 1998, and had no interest in basketball. For me, playing through the Jordan Challenges has been a great way to discover just how great Jordan was. I knew about the titles, about some of the big shots, about the dunks and the competitiveness, but trying to recreate them is a feat even in the virtual world.

I'm curious if younger gamers in their teens are having the same experience. Other sports games have been giving nods to the past, but props to 2K for going above and beyond the norm.