Well a friend of mind asked me for some tips in playing FPS’s and while i was typing what started as a short tip sheet, it kept gettin glonger and logner till i realized it could probably fit in a post. Now of course for the newbie out there, a FPS or First Person shooter is a game where you play from behind the gun. Examples of first person shooter games are, Call of duty (the entire series), Rainbow six, Unreal, Half Life, Counter Strike, Bioshock, crysis, farcry etc. Alot of people find these games extremely hard to play because they require you to be constantly focused and require quick reflexes and sound thinking. Now while I am not a professional gamer (at least, i havent entered enough gaming tournaments to be considered a professional gamer), I have been an avid gamer for about 15 years and so i guess I am pretty qualified to give tips that I think will improve your fps playing.

1. Turn down sensitivity on the controller. Alot of gamers think that you should turn up sensitivity, but thats a bad strategy. Why, because when you turn up the sensitivity, the slightest touch of the mouse (or controller) throws off the aim and means you will more than likely miss your shot. However with sensitivity turned down when you move the mouse it will not move as much and therefore u get a more consistent shot. It takes alot of getting used to, but when you have done it for a while you will realize the many advantages that come with it.

2. Never stop moving… ever. Unless you are sniping somebody and are in a very secure spot (hopefully with backup), you must always, always be moving. It makes you a harder target to hit, and will make snipers hate you. If you are in a gunfight: jump, crouch, strafe - until somebody dies, but until then, never stop your movement.

3. Never move linearly. In other words, moving just up down left and right will more than likely end up with you getting shot because it becomes predictable and easy to shoot at. Instead, start moving, up left, and down right, and around.

4. Run away. If you are in a fight with somebody who has a bigger gun, or u are out of bullets, or is just in a general negative situation, run away… but

5. Never turn your back on somebody you are fighting. So when running, look at them.

6. Know your environment. If it even means to die a few times walking around the level and getting pwned, ensure that you know the level so good that you can tell exactly where u are just by the position of the coffee mug being on the left or the table or on the right of the table. That way, when you need to run away, you can run properly, when you are strafing you wont strafe into a wall and you will be able to make a pretty good guess of where its likely somebody would be sniping you from if somebody is sniping.

7. Use grenades. Grenades help by forcing people to run away, providing you with good covering fire. Giving you time to reload or allowing u to hurt multiple targets which can then be taken down with 1 or 2 bullets. If you are running into a room and not sure about whats happening in there, throw a grenade into the room and then run in. If you are being attacked by multiple ppl it will force them to split up. Before you go around a corner into a courtyard that you know will more than likely have people in there, throw a grenade in there first.

8. Dont waste your grenades… These are very powerful and will help out greatly in fighting because they can do all that is listed above.

9. Set buttons that you will use frequently close by. Crouch, jump, grenade, switch weapon, reload… These buttons should all be within arms length because you will more than likely have to use them regularly. Dont put useless buttons close, for example you really dont need the use button to be something close because more than likely you’ll be in a relaxed enough environment that you can simply move from fight mode to just press it and it wont get you killed. Flashlight is another waste of a button. Especially if its on a level where chances are you wont be using it (which is what happens 90% of the time). Maybe during story mode you will use it, but in multiplayer, i guarantee you, you will be using it much less than you think

10. Reloading is slow, dont do it unless absolutely necessary and you are in a situation where you can reload. Alot of people have the habit of reloading in the middle of a firefight and then of course getting their heads shot off because they reload and forget they are doing everything else (also remember to refer to rule 2, reloading doesn’t mean your character will stop moving, you are free to reload and jump skip hop and anything else you want to in the middle of the reload). The best way to do this is actually to switch weapons instead of reloading, and only save reloading for times when all your weapons are on empty. If you are in a firefight and your rifle runs out of ammo, switch to your side-arm and continue pumping led, if the guy still isnt dead and you need to reload, throw a grenade (force him to take his attention off of you), and then proceed to do your reload. If you dont have grenades, switch to your side arm, keep firing but run away while you are firing and then when you are safe (behind a wall, crate, etc.) do your reload then. If all else fails, rush in kamikaze style and use melee attacks, chances are you might surprise your opponent so much they will leave you just that opening you need to take them out. But dont stand in the middle of the damn courtyard and reload.

11. Walk. Yup thats it, use the walk button. This is important especially in games like call of duty, and counter strike etc. Walk enables you to have that element of surprise, it enables you to move around without being detected and it keeps your weapon steady. If you are going after a sniper, it will more than likely make sense to walk to that sniper becuz if you run he will hear your footsteps in quick enough time to switch to a secondary weapon, throw a few grenades, or relocate and pull his knife and stab the crap out of you, the possibilities are endless. When you walk, you can go right up to that camper and pull your knife, and have away with him in anyway you want… you can even add a victory teabag or something, just to let him know just how pwned he is. However you dont want to walk in a fast paced game such as Unreal however or when you want to get somewhere pretty fast (duh!).

12. Dont stay in zoom mode. This is a very n00b (please note the difference between n00b and newb), mistake that people make. They imagine that because they are using a sniper rifle or a rifle with zoom on it, you should stay zoomed so that you will always be ready to fire… RUBBISH. When you zoom in you make your total viewing area smaller, making it easy for somebody if they are skilled enough to just go into your blindspot and just kill you.

13. Use a silencer - This goes mostly for games like counterstrike where you are trying to be covert. If you have a silencer you can easily kill people and nobody would be the wiser. You can miss a shot at somebody and they wont realize that somebody was shooting at them, giving u enough time to try another shot. You can take out a member of a team storming your base and their teammates wont realize because they didnt hear the shot. Silencers make u ninja-riffic.

14. Headshot, Headshot, Headshot. This is probably the most important tip you can get in the fps world. A headshot almost guarantee’s you a one hit kill, and if it doesnt you will take off at least 95% of your opponents life and the next bullet that hits him will finish off the job. Always aim for neck and head, if they are wearing a helmet, dont worry, it wont do them much help anyway. Practice aiming for the head, make it be second nature to aim for the head. Chest, arms and leg-shots dont do as much as a headshot will do.

15. Bigger isnt always better. What the hell are you doing with a sniper rifle in a one-on-one fight with somebody. Why the hell would u need a rocket launcher in a room with a 10×10 radius (a small room), all thats gonna happen is you will kill your opponent, and yourself (if you happen to live, i guarantee you are gonna die by the time the next guy enters the room), and that means you will lose the kill point anyway, back to square one. Pick the right gun for the right occasion… shotguns are not effective in a large area such as in a desert, or where the person you are trying to kill is a half a mile away, pick a rifle for that. If you are playing in a small area such as in an office building or on a ship, shotguns will be very effective. However once there’s some distance between you, its useless. Rifles (especially sniper rifles), arent very effective in close combat. However there are balanced weapons such as a M4A1 carbine or a AK47 that are good in ranged or close combat but they are also much harder to aim effectively.

Bonus. In team games, work with your team. Being a lone ranger doesnt normally get you anywhere. If its a team of 5 and 4 of them decide that they want to be run and gun fighters. Stand back and become a healer or a sniper, chances are you will serve your team much more with that role than by just being like everybody else. If you have a team member who is a great sniper but doesnt have much use in firefights, then dont bother sniping too, let him do that work and you just do the up front fighter.

These are the things I think will make you a better shooter and help you to turn your killing ability up. So try them out and tell me what you think.