From Jason Rybka,
Your Guide to Video Game Strategies.
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Definition: A first person shooter, commonly called FPS in the gaming arena, is a game in which the player sees the action on the screen as if he or she were looking through the eyes of the main character he or she is playing. As suspected, the shooter section of the term indicates that the majority of game play in these games will require the use of rifle or pistol type weaponry. While first person shooters are widely popular across multiple platforms, there are variations of this type of game, such as tactical first person shooters, where the gameplay is less run and gun and more strategy based via the shooter element. The term FPS can also refer to 'frames per second,' but in Video Game Strategies this does not apply unless we are specifically referring to the frame rate of a video game.

Examples: Halo 2 is one of the most successful FPS titles on the Xbox console from Microsoft. Killzone is quite possibly the most realistic FPS on the PlayStation 2.