Black Kat's FPS Strategy and Buying Guide For First Half Of 2014

There's a large rumor out in the FPS world where camping is a real skill. However, that is beyond false. 75% of gamers today rely completely on camping, 10% Run-n-Gun, 5% don't know what they're doing and the remaining 10% rely on hacking/glitching the game. First person shooters have always been based on simulation of real combat, and the reality is that your enemies won't come to you. In the history of FPS gaming, when the first official tournaments came out back in the day of PC gaming, all FPS games included what was called a "Camp-meter". Camp-meters were used to punish people for hiding and not moving actual distances (so those of you who just move from corner to corner, you're dead). Officiated tournaments defined true skill as running and gunning, and all original FPS gamers will back that up.

Basic fact: People will know where you are after you shoot. If you're looking to really show your prowess and get top stats, always keep moving. But don't just move anywhere. Use everything in your arsenal and, like in the military, move with a purpose. Learn the maps, the sounds that people's footsteps make on different surfaces, the most popular camping spots, vantage points, your weapons and most importantly, your enemies' habits. In any shooter game, constant motion keeps your opponents from finding you easily, as long as you know their habits. 70% of all campers stay in the same spot, looking over the same places all round, and are the most obvious and popular places. 20% will shift between the same places, but sometimes in less common spots. The remaining 10% are a mix of random campers and people who hide in the darkest corners that almost no one would think of.

If you ever watch top-ranked players in any FPS game, you'll notice they're always moving just barely seen, but only by those they are about to shoot. Running certain paths, and having contingent paths allow you to be unpredictable, and able to check your forward, rear and flanks without having a blind spot and being caught off guard. The biggest thing about this is that you have to pay attention to everything. What you see, radar, spotting popular camp spots and sound. It sounds like a lot, but it's no different than driving. The biggest mistake most players make is concentrating only 1 or 2 aspects of these 4, developing tunnel vision.

You can bet that if you can keep a cool head and take it seriously, you can show up any player, and look like a complete boss to all of your friends.

This can never be stressed enough. If you're wondering why everyone is so good with the same weapon you're using, here's the answer. They learned how to use them. Every weapon has its own behaviors, power, etc. If you want to be proficient with it, practice, practice, practice. But practicing is useless if you don't pay attention to how the weapon performs. So take some time out for yourself to experiment and become one with your weapon. You'll be surprised which ones actually fit your style, and set you on the path to pwnship!

Battlefield 4: A pretty fun FPS for those who like to use large and heavy vehicles for those times the gun just doesn't work. Includes new innovative system for exiting your burning vehicle, grappling walls, swimming, breaking falls, sneaking onto and killing enemies in their vehicles. Great game for beginners, does not require too much skill.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2: Despite the release of the new Call of Duty: Ghosts, this is more of the game to be going for in the franchise. There are many great maps and variety of weapons and killstreaks. Unlike its Infinity Ward protégé, it has a much larger cache of weapons and strategical game modes, including the ever popular Treyarch trademark, Zombies mode.

BioShock: Infinite: Great single-player FPS that really hits the steampunk bone, and wonderful story. It places a wonderful and unique user interface for a fun and interesting gameplay that almost sets your mind into making it feel like you're making face look like a tactician concentrating on a game of Battleship.

Counter-Strike: Source and CS: Global Offensive: Two great titles that give great compliment to the greatest shooter game that ever came to being. Counter Strike has been one of the longest running games that brought out the popularity of online FPS gameplay. Outside of the classic setup and easy-to-learn controls, PC gameplay brings you a whole new dimension to the games with modded servers across the board. From official format, to zombie modes and even the ever popular Gun Game.

If you need in-depth help with specific games, Go Online and search. YouTube has been and is still (somewhat) a great source for help and tips from experienced gamers. Granted, there are few out there nowadays that are actually useful and not full of crap, but it is still a wonderful source.

Thunder Gaming has been a long time advocate of clean gaming, but features many videos of skilled players. Whether it's finding out how to play Call of Duty, or identifying who is hacking and who is not, TG has been a wonderful grouping of players who can show you a good time.

There are many great titles that end up major flops, and definitely do not compliment the original games nor the hardcore gamer. These are some of the games that you should probably avoid if you don't want to hit a rut and feel like you just killed your wallet and want to kill yourself.

• Call of Duty: Ghosts

Of all the Call of Duty games, Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare series has been the hype of the franchise. However, their newest creation, Ghosts, does not even hold a candle to its predecessors and to even Treyarch's productions. This game truly defines "Beating a dead horse" as it comes with the same gameplay with less variety, and the ability to bore any serious players in no time flat. Even with the new game mode, Extinction, where you fight off an alien invasion, it barely brings the game from a crap to crappy rating and gives the feeling of how lazy IW has been getting as of late.

• Battlefield 4

The Battlefield franchise has been its own category since its biggest release, Battefield: 1942. Despite its new additions to the abilities you can have to realistic warfare, it follows CoD: Ghosts in dragging the extremely large yawns from even the most hardcore fans. Also, like its predecessors, this game requires constant patching and like BF3, will probably continue patching even after the next game comes out. However, like all the other games in the franchise, it's no more than a game with large maps for people that are new to the genre, and are not as hardcore.

• Dead Island and Dead Island: Riptide

Of the many zombie shooter games out there, DI was one of the most innovative in terms of ideas, but has one of the worst deliveries. The graphics leave much to be desired, and the online play leaves you with much lag. Aside from the poor p2p connections, you're also looking at a game that's fairly quick to beat, and replaying the game becomes far too easy with the ease of obtaining items to create over-powered (OP) weapons.

As you've noticed, many FPS games are coming up with some of the most detailed and large maps, but then why does everything look like crap, still? Simple answer, Microsoft. As many of you know, the new generation of consoles have released, causing a so-called "console war". However, we all know it wasn't a war as it was a massacre. The Playstation 4 has far overtaken the Xbox One.

Now what does that have to do with graphics? Microsoft, in lieu of creating a system that can out-do the Playstation 3 in performance and specs, they have decided to spend that money to pay off game developers to lower the graphics of their games that are multi-platform so that there's no obvious difference in quality. Deja Vu. The exact same thing they did with the Xbox 360 and PS3 war. The reason you have so many 720p games on next gen systems that released 8 years after the commonization of 1080p televisions is all because Microsoft chooses to payout devs to make lower graphics instead of making a better system.

Fun fact: On the release of the new generation systems, Microsoft and Sony released the same number of systems into the market. PS4's were sold out until January two months prior to its release. At the same time, on release date till the present, you can walk into any store and pick up multiple Xbox Ones at ANY TIME.

If you want epicly good graphics, start shelling out the $1,000+ for a gaming computer, and from a developer who is not paid off for PC versions as well. (Only 30% of multi-platform games are paid off by Microsoft to lower graphics of their PC counter-parts)

Here's the ultimate strategy to win any FPS:

LEARN HOW TO AIM!!

If you can't hit your target, you'll never pwn no matter how many strategies and tips you receive.