First person games and shooters being two distinct entities, I'm not tired of the occasional and tactical use of weaponry (e.g. Mirror's Edge, DE:HR), but I *am* tired of the masses associating gaming with things related to the shooter culture.
Thank you so very much, last year's VGAs, for introducing us to the concept of real-life and onstage teabagging... If this is what Spike TV thinks gaming can be reduced to, then I'd say it's time we found ways to excise the stereotypical FPS game from the cultural spectrum - at least for a few years.
I'm tired of people holding up Halo or Gears of War as having done or tried new things with the first person perspective, I'm tired of devs defaulting to first person because it'll sell more, I'm generally tired of Activision, Infinity Ward and D.I.C.E. all being willing to sit on their laurels because of their acquired fanbase...
Shooter mechanics can be used inventively. The Portal series is proof of that. I'm just sick and tired of hearing that "gaming" as a term describing an activity automatically conjures up images of overly muscled white guys (and the token Latino) in Future Armour shooting up the Belligerent Aliens of the Year (TM) or Non-Specific Terrorists (TM).
Yes, I get it. The first decade of the twenty-first century was culturally marked with warfare against the Middle East. Also, I *still* get that some scriptwriters haven't gone over the Cold War yet, or else we wouldn't have things like the Modern Warfare series' frankly unimaginative plot.
I just hope we could get over these facts as a cultural force and, you know, embrace new things. The odds of that happening are pretty short, though, seeing as there's always going to be people willing to fork out sixty bucks for what'll essentially be a multiplayer map pack, for them.