No. Every single example of a game within the genre is horribly derivative and not worth playing.

Portal ain't a FPS. It's a puzzle game in first person. I'd say Metroid Prime, although more of a FPA, brought some innovations to the genre, in terms on non-linearity and such. I wish some more traditional FPS series would take a look at what the Prime games do and rethink their approach.

You don't pay for innovation, you pay for the same Shooter over and over, just with slightly differing stories.

Innovation costs money and offers huge risk to most developers, and investors demand a game that is guaranteed to sell, lest funding be pulled/stock be sold/etc. Creating an FPS is all about establishing a cool looking brand name, making one game that's very average, and once the name is out there, branch it out into, not only a sequel that's just like the first, but other games that use the title and are loosely tied to the first. You'd also be a great developer if you take a pre-existing feature in another game, like the ability to rewind and fast-forward time, create your own name for said system, and add maybe a few new visual effects or differing options and make it a recycled "innovation."

Oh, and multiplayer, clearly every Shooter needs this, even if it is thrown-together and lackluster.

Ura-

Wow...

***Far Cry 2?***

Portal.

What about L4D? It's still point and shoot, the The Director Mechanic is pretty damn interesting. Of course, it's solely a way for the AI to kick your ass and pile shit on you then take it away just so it can scare you again later, but since Half Life 2 came out with the gravity gun and made physics and integral part of the FPS genre, there hasn't been much change.

Just wait for Valve to do something new.

Saying that portal isn't a FPS is just splitting hairs. It was done in first person perspective and you used a hand held item to shoot at points on screen. It was a first person shooter in the very essence of the phrase. The fact that there were no guns with actual projectiles to kill mutant aliens is a moot point.

Whether or not FC2 will be good is still in question, I have my hopes, but whether or not it will amount to more than "travel here and shoot", "travel here and obtain item", "now travel here and shoot" remains to be seen.

Mirrors Edge seems to be a shining example of taking FPS's in the right direction. Letting the player interact with their environment seems to be the next logical step. Graphics have been mastered enough to be able to maturely display and relate the content directors want and voice acting and story telling can now be told in-game a lot easier and more entertainingly that just intravenously injecting users with cut-scenes every 30 minutes.

I think finally making invisible walls and unconventional obstructions a thing of the past is the next big thing, in relation to environmental interaction, you know?

For example: imagine playing through Resistance and being able to blow open ANY door on the street and run inside the building to take cover. Then climbing some stairs and blowing a hole in the wall and jumping across to the neighboring building.

Or being able to pick up a car door off the ground and use it as a shield. Tripping over in mud, ditches, wet weather. When you go up against a wall and want to peak around a corner, show the characters hand on the wall or something.

I just think the next innovation should focus on drawing the player more in to the world created in the game, rather than getting the game to look better or give the game more weapons.

But now I'm just rambling.

"Speaking of innovation I really like how Uncharted mixed in the shooting with tomb raider game play,"

Isn't that what Tomb Raider is? You shoot people in Tomb Raider, you know?

Uncharted was a good game, but there was absolutely nothing innovative about it. It was fun and that's what games should be. I could care less if it's innovative. As long as I'm interested in what I'm doing, I'm good.

Do I really have to live up to Skribble's, RS's, and Alex's comments? because I can't.

Break it down.

first
person
shooter

Change up any of those words for something else and you've probably done something innovative, because most developers of those types of games haven't realized you can make a first person game that doesn't revolve around shooting aliens or foreign war troops.

Halo 3's online interface is very much innovative.
For cereal... I like COD4 much better and hardly ever play halo, but come on, stop being such "l0lz M$ sucks" tools. Gamers are getting worse than emo kids with their snob mindset.

You cant deny that every introduction to the Halo series innovated in the console FPS genre, and the sharing, party, and ranking system in halo are very much unrivaled.


inb4: "console games suck"

Does it really matter how innovative they are if they're just fun? I don't think every game to come out has to sport some kind of new, never seen before gameplay mechanic to make it good.

Anyway, you could generalize just about every genre of game and claim it's not innovative because of recycled gameplay mechanics that define the genre.

There can be innovation however, it's pretty tough to stray from the usual formula when the genre's fanbase already has certain expectations. Then there is the whole "Will it Blen... I mean Sell" factor...

I for one welcome change... Just that not everyone else does...

The closest thing to original FPS is the shooting portions of Mirror's Edge, assuming that will be as awesome as it looks...

If Portal doesn't count as an FPS, then the reason you don't see "innovative" FPSes is because the definition is so rigidly defined you can't have any innovation -- introducing something new makes the game no longer qualify as an FPS.