RPS Game Categories
Action
Action includes all sorts of shoot-'em-ups and arcade-style games. Most anything where the entire goal of the game is to kill or destroy can be classified as "action". While there may be the occasional puzzle to solve, again, the real focus is laying waste to everything in sight.
1st-Person Action
The 1st-Person Action is really a subclass of the general Action game. I think it's necessary to make a distinction, though, because of the great popularity of this particular subcategory.
First-Person Action games present the view of the character you play. When your character turns, the view turns as well. The most well-known 1st-Person Action games are Doom and Quake.
Adventure
The main goal of an Adventure game is to solve a series of puzzles and complete a variety of quests. Fighting and combat may occur, but it's really incidental to the true meaning of the game. Adventure games used to be all text-based (Zork being of the best-known), but nowadays are graphical (King's Quest, Space Quest, newer Zorks, and Myst).
Combat Simulator
The Combat Simulator can also be considered a sort of 1st-Person Action game, but differs by having your location being within a vehicle of some sort, whether this be a tank, robot, plane, or space ship. It is also sort of a Flight Simulator, except the point of a Combat Simulator is to kill and destroy. Best known Combat Simulators are X-Wing, Wing Commander, and MechWarrior.
Flight/Driving Simulator
A Flight/Driving Simulator is a game designed to mimic the controls of an airplane or racing car. The entire goal is not to crash.
Sim
The Sim-style game was pretty much begun with SimCity, in which you design the layout of a city and build it along. Many other Sim type games have come out over the years. The point of a Sim is to build and thrive in whatever system the game provides. This category is akin to Strategy, but Strategy games imply some sort of conflict or conquest. Sim games usually don't have those elements, instead they are merely a reflection of some real-life system.
Strategy
Strategy games are usually macro-level games in which you rule a vast empire and deal in large numbers, instead of individual units. Most Strategy games involve some sort of conquest of land or planets, and the elimination of rivals. The majority of Strategy games are turn-based, though this is not necessarily a prerequisite. In general, Strategy differs from Real-Time Strategy by being large scale, and focusing on empires more than battle tactics. Examples of Strategy games include Civilzation, and chess games.
Real-Time Strategy
The Real-Time Strategy game involves the control of individual units in real-time. This is not a turn-based game, instead everything happens all at once. The granddaddy of all Real-Time Strategy games was Westwood Studio's Dune II, and Command & Conquer solidified Real-Time Strategy's foothold in computer gaming forever.
Role-Playing Game
The computer RPG is part Action, part Adventure, but differentiates itself by allowing the improvement of characters as you play, most commonly through "experience points". Players advance in levels, becoming more powerful as they kill things or find treasure. Some RPG's involve a 1st-person perspective, and some allow playing multiple characters at once. For the most part, RPG's are real-time as well.
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