Modern shooters position you, the player, in one of two positions: inside the poor protagonists orbital bone, or so far away from the aforementioned orbital bone that every bone in the human (or otherwise) body can be seen. These two positions are commonly referred to as ‘first’ and ‘third’ person perspectives. Now I don’t know about you (really, I don’t!), but the lack of a ’second person’ perspective in video games has always struck me as odd. Do all developers harbor extreme prejudices against the ordinal number that corresponds to two, possibly as a result of being scared by a very large number two when they were younger? Perhaps. Does two’s ordinal number refuse to be featured in any game on legal grounds? Possibly. More likely, though, is that developers haven’t fully considered the sheer brilliance of a second person shooter.

Before we delve (headfirst!) into what makes the concept of a second person shooter so bloomin’ meritorious, let’s deal with what a second person shooter actually is. Quite simply, it is a shooter where you play from the perspective of another character looking at you. For example, a second person Halo 3 would look a little something like this:

In this particular screenshot, you could be playing as any one of the three people that the large, rather crudely drawn, yellow arrows point to. Since this is a second person screenshot, you see yourself from the first person perspective of someone else (from now on called the ‘camera person’). If the camera person decides to turn around and wander off to a different area of the map while you’re still floundering about in a Warthog for example, you can’t see your character … at all. In fact, in order to ever see yourself, you have to be in front of the camera person. Not only does this completely nix all existing Halo 3 strategies and tactics, but it also means that you have to walk backwards, facing the camera person at all times, else he or she will simply shoot you in the back, and that just won’t do.

If the camera person dies, all you will see is the roof of the area you’re in, since the corpse of the camera person will most likely be looking vertically up. Alternatively he or she might be looking face down, in which case you will be staring at the grubby flooring of the Halo 3 multiplayer maps for the rest of the game. Try winning a match of Halo when all you can see is an up-close-and-personal view of Rat’s Nest’s coffee stained passages, or the highly trampled and heavily eroded footpaths of Valhalla. ‘Tis not easy!

Already you can see why the second person shooter brings words such as ‘brilliance’ and ‘meritoriousness’ to mind, and all this before I’ve even told you about the ground breaking story telling applications the second person perspective has!

You may remember that early on in the original Gears of War [Warning: this next part has a spoiler, so if you haven't played the original Gears of War yet, you may wish to stop reading] Anthony Carmine is killed by a Locust sniper shot. Playing as Marcus (or possibly Dom if in co-operative play), you see Carmine get hit and collapse, dead, to the ground. Now that’s pretty good storytelling, but what if Gears of War was a second person shooter? You would, again, be playing as Marcus or Dom, but from the perspective of Carmine looking at you. As Carmine turns his head (and subsequently your character goes out of his field of vision making the game nearly impossible to play a much more visceral experience), you would see the Locust sniper bullet coming towards Carmine from his perspective. The screen would go black as he falls to the floor. Of course, since the designated camera person never changes, you have to complete the rest of the game with your television displaying nothing but a black screen, but so worth it for the increased immersion, right?

As you can see, the second person perspective would add significantly to both the gameplay and narrative aspects of modern shooters. It is such a good idea, in fact, that I may start an internet petition about it. Maybe even a website! Secondpersonshootersareactuallyprettygoodactuallyactually.com has a certain ring to it, though maybe too many ‘actually’s. Or maybe not enough ‘actually’s! Regardless, I think we can all agree that the second person shooter is the most revolutionary and fantastic idea ever and is most definitely not incredibly flawed in every conceivable way.

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