The first-person perspective is a great way for players to immerse themselves more in a world. This viewpoint is predominantly used in shooters, such as Call of Duty and Battlefield, as well as in some RPGs like Avowed and Fallout 4. VR can make first-person viewpoints even more immersive, and if the following games had the support, players may never take their headsets off again.
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VR chat aside, the following first-person games don’t need peripherals to make them enchanting, even if they are linear. Sometimes, all players need is a unique world to help get lost in the experience, and the following are some of the best out there.
Fit the 9 games into the grid.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim
I Used To Be An Adventurer Like You
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Released
- November 11, 2011
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Bethesda Game Studios
- Platform(s)
- PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is the best example as far as open-world fantasy RPGs go. The game can be played in third-person, but players will lose immersion if they play it this way, thanks to the more awkward character animations. As bleak as it may seem to explore a world mostly covered in snow, the land of Skyrim has plenty to keep players engaged, from seeing dragons flying overhead to witnessing a magic spell enticing them to come near a shrine to pray at.
Even though the game looks dated, even with remastered versions, there is no fantasy RPG that will give players as much freedom as The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim does. This applies to building characters too, as players can shoot arrows, swing axes, or cast spells, all while enhancing various skills and getting the best loot to create the ultimate hero.
Cyberpunk 2077
V, This Is Your Life
Cyberpunk 2077 is a great sci-fi RPG equivalent to The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. Players can create their character, V, and then enhance them with cybernetics along the way to help boost skills. They may learn to do more damage against particular robots, or hack into an enemy’s body, or, in turn, block enemies from hacking into their own body.
How they build their character is up to players, as missions can be tackled in a myriad of ways. As fun as the shooting gameplay and hacking mechanics are, players may find themselves just walking around Night City in awe of everything. There are cyberpunk games, and then there is Cyberpunk 2077, which uses style on a whole other level, from the brightly lit neon signs to the old school vendors just trying to make a quick buck; everything is brimming with life.
Resident Evil Village
An Amusement Park Of Highlights
Resident Evil Village is the eighth main game in the Resident Evil series, which is sort of like a collection of the best the franchise has to offer at this point. There were homages to Resident Evil 4 with the upgrade system, a charismatic vendor, and the vague European country. There was a mansion like the one found in the original Resident Evil that wasn’t filled with zombies, but the vampiric denizens were just as terrifying.
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The comparison list could go on, but Resident Evil Village was also its own breed of horror, perfectly enriching players the more they explored each new set piece. Thanks to the first-person perspective, they were able to drink it all in, as it is one of Capcom’s finest-designed worlds.
BioShock Infinite
God Only Knows
The original BioShock is the better game overall, which helps create an atmosphere of pure horror below the waves, but BioShock Infinite is the world that players will want to explore more. The game’s star, Booker, is hired to find a girl, Elizabeth, and bring her home. He’s sent to a floating utopia in the sky called Columbia, and all of the flying buildings are connected via rail systems.
Players can use a hook they find early on to zip around from platform to platform, and the sense of inertia is unreal, along with the greater feeling of adrenaline players can get snapping between on-the-ground and on-rails combat. Even though its citizens are a bit wild, and this utopia isn’t perfect, no player would deny wanting to visit Colombia in a heartbeat.
Destiny 2
An Intergalactic Tour
When Destiny 2 launched in 2017, players could continue their journey as a Guardian and explore planets and moons within and out of reach of this galaxy. There was Titan, Saturn’s moon, which had a series of platforms built on it, like oil rigs, in an endless roaring ocean. Jupiter’s moon, Io, had a lot of craggy surfaces, but the various greens and yellows in the canyons helped make it colorful.
The deep reds of Nessus, the emptiness of Earth’s Moon, the destroyed apocalypse of Earth, and so much more helped decorate an expertly crafted shooter from Bungie with controls almost too good to be true. These spaces may have been limited in terms of size, but they certainly kept the gameplay variety flowing in Destiny 2.
Indiana Jones And The Great Circle
It Belongs In A Museum
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
- Released
- December 9, 2024
WHERE TO PLAY
Indiana Jones fans probably thought they would never get a game as harrowing as the movies, and they were dead wrong when they got Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. While a first-person experience may have seemed wrong for an Indy adventure initially, this perspective worked well. In first-person, players could explore locations leisurely, like the sprawling streets of the Vatican, which in turn housed various indoor locations and tombs, each packed with clues, treasure, and Easter eggs.
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In combat, things stayed in first-person, too, between using Indy’s fists, his whip, or his guns, while climbing up buildings, or swinging from Indy’s whip temporarily changed the perspective to third-person. This hybrid perspective style is what helped the game thrive, giving players the movie experience from Indy’s point of view, like they never imagined possible.
Metroid Prime
Deep, Dark, And Atmospheric
- Genre(s)
- First-Person Shooter, Metroidvania
Like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, no one thought a first-person Metroid game would work, but they were wrong when Metroid Prime hit the GameCube. Easily one of the best games on the console, it set famous bounty hunter Samus Aran on a distant planet filled with a lush jungle and expansive ruins. True to form, players still progressed through power-ups, whether that involved new ammo types for Samus’s blaster or the ability to drop bombs in her Morph Ball form.
It’s one of those games best experienced with headphones to fully soak in the atmosphere of the haunted ruins filled with bug-like entities and larger-than-life bosses. It’s not the most exciting shooter ever made as Samus wasn’t constantly bombarded with laser action, but its more laidback style helped accentuate the vibes, differentiate it from other shooters of the early 2000s.
Halo: Combat Evolved
Ring Worlds
The king of all shooters, to this day, has to be Halo: Combat Evolved. It’s another game from Bungie, almost a decade before Destiny 2, with Halo: Combat Evolved being the blueprint for console shooters going forward. Not only were the controls great on the original Xbox, between button placement and the actual movement, but the sandbox design of the levels was mind-blowing in 2001.
It was something of a marvel back then, and the rest is history. Being able to see this ring world, the titular Halo, from end to end as players explored on foot or in a vehicle, via third-person, was mesmerizing. Surely, the upcoming remake, Halo: Campaign Evolved, will make the environments look even better, but even without it, Halo: Combat Evolved still plays and looks like a dream, with dated graphics and all.
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