The latest anniversary celebration for the playstation made me think of some of the early titles and got me thinking of something.
WHAT ? is the best japanese FPS?
When the 32 bit consoles came out there where many attempts and I don’t remember many standouts. Crime Crackers, Space Griffon, Kileak, Beltlogger 9/Brahama Force, Deadalus/Robotica etc? Not great
It doesn’t have to be 32 bit generation either.
Best I could think of was Jumping Flash 1/2 PS1 (and argubaly not a FPS) or Breakdown Xbox (also not a shooter).
Also as I looked a bit there are plenty of first person COCKPIT games that are good so it seams the in person on foot fps is harder to nail
from these developers.
I am not well informed on what may have came out in the modern last 15 years to see what spin has been put on it. In fact last sort of things I can remember are more third person shooters like Devils Hand or Quantum Theory. Maybe there is a simple series game that is cool?
I have a few answers, none of which anybody is going to like. The first is, light gun games are technically first person shooters and Japanese devs were absolutely the best at those. Some, using controllers like the guncon2, even allowed player controlled motion. So there’s that.
Second answer is Gun Buster, which is basically a pseudo 3D light gun game with movement for arcade but much closer to an fps. Also it looks great.
Third answer is a game I worked on that got canceled. It is the best-feeling Japanese fps that I personally have played but of course I would feel that way, I was narrative director but also giving a lot of advice on game feel. Unfortunately nobody else will ever get to play it and I’m not supposed to talk about it.
Assuming you are talking about orthodox First Person Shooters as they would be intuitively understood by the Western layman, it’s probably either Counter Strike NEO or Gundam Evolution (which was basically Overwatch NEO), both from Bandai Namco.
Resident Evil 7 & 8 are definitely the most successful Japanese FPS. Your mileage may vary on Metroid Prime, which was co-developed by US and Japanese teams to be published by a Japanese company.
Breakdown has some amazing moments but unfortunately is an overall slog to play because of how the AI can stun-lock you in to existence. It’s hard to recommend because so much of my memory of that game is pain and not in the fun/intentional way.
