As a kid, I was definitely a tomboy. I was sick of playing house, wanted to kick a soccer ball around with the guys, highly competitive, etc. When I started playing video games, I wanted to be as hardcore as all my friends, though even in my endless attempts to overcome any remaining girliness within me, I couldn't bring myself to love the FPS. Counterstrike did nothing for me, and I knew I was a hopeless case with Unreal Tournament. Eventually I learned those heartwarming lessons of being true to yourself, my friends would still respect me despite my inability to play FPS, I enjoy being a girl, etc.

2007 actually produced a few titles that have actually piqued my interest in the genre again. A friend brought over Metroid Prime 3 one weekend, and the sheer smoothness of the motion controls amazed me. Of course, my skills were not as slick. I flailed around cursing while trying to pinpoint where people were shooting me from; don't get me started on my aim. I soon put down the game, not out of boredom or lack of enjoyment, but because I got pretty motion sick. It made sense to me why, considering all the spinning and years of motion sickness in the car, but it surprised me somewhat to experience it from a video game.

While not a shooter in the traditional sense, Portal definitely seemed like a better starter for the FPS genre, especially with my undying love for puzzles. Besides, beyond the turrets, nothing really shot at me, so there would be less spinning involved. My boyfriend let me play his copy on the PC, and I within a few levels, the game quickly won me over ... until disaster struck once again. It wasn't just the looping portals that got me, necessarily. Just walking and controlling my view unsettled my stomach, and despite multiple breaks, I couldn't manage to finish the game on my own. Doubled over in nausea and a little shame, I watched my boyfriend play out the ending for me.

I can watch others play first-person perspective fine. It's when I take control of a character that start having problems, though this brought me to admire shooters in certain ways. I think it's definitely a credit to well-executed shooters that they're so immersive. World-building and story are definitely immersive in their own senses, but the first-person controls of Metroid Prime 3 impressed me in how much of a physical presence I felt within the game. I find it a characteristic truly unique to video games; while you can create a first-person perspective with a camera in film, video games combine that viewpoint with control. It's that interactive quality that separates video games as an artform. No other medium, by nature, requires viewer/audience participation like video games.

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The same friend that let me play MP3 came back to school recently, so I've been watching him play on the 360 a bunch. When I was falling asleep mid-food coma, he asked me if there was anything I wanted to try playing. I looked on his shelf: Call of Duty 4, Ace Combat 6, Rainbow Six, Gears of War, Assassin's Creed, and Bioshock. Well, damn. I didn't feel like getting sick, but at the same time, there was Bioshock, just sitting there and emanating the aura of deco-porn. Maybe it'll be better this time. Maybe if I try the game with more traditional console controls, I'll be okay. My friend popped it in, and I started on easy mode.

It actually went really well. My aim is still atrocious, but I shot some splicers and wrenched just as many. Unsurprisingly, I can hax them vending machines and bots like no one's business. It felt good playing Jack and marveling at the remains of Rapture, which others have described in far prettier prose than anything I could conjure at the moment so I'll refrain from further description. I honestly can't pinpoint what changed my experience this time around. Maybe I took more time to settle into the controls, or it could be that I felt at home with controller more familiar to me than the keyboard or wiimotes and nunchuks. It didn't hurt that my friend walked me through and kept reminding me to not move my camera so fast, either. All I can say is that I'm looking forward to practicing with Bioshock and the possibility of a whole other world of games opening up to me.