IGN's Readers Say Battlefield 3 is the Shooter of the Year
Did you vote in our shooter polls? Here's a breakdown of the results.
Australia, December 3, 2011
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by Stephen Lambrechts
IGN AU
Last week, we asked IGN readers around the world to tell us how they felt about the huge crop of first person shooters released in 2011. Whatever your FPS preference is, chances are you got your fix this year. And if you didn't, what's the deal? Why are you so hard to please? I guess that's a topic for another poll.
Thankfully, we got an enormous number of votes telling us exactly what you liked about this year's shooters. Around 45,000 votes were cast for each category and the results speak for themselves!
Battlefield 3 is the poll's big winner, with the game's clinching of the Best First Person Shooter of the Year poll, with 51.01% of the vote, beating out its closest competitor Modern Warfare 3, which had 19.57% of the vote. Battlefield also secured the highest votes for Best Weapons (30.61%), Best Competitive Multiplayer (54.32%), and Most Graphically Impressive FPS (63.94%).
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 did steal the love from Battlefield 3 in a couple of categories though, with the highest number of votes in the Best Co-Op category (31.95%), and though it didn't win the Best Campaign Mode poll, that honour went to the FPS/RPG hybrid Deus Ex: Human Revolution with 28.35% of the vote, it did overtake Battlefield 3's 13.34% with 19.79% of the vote.
Despite having twenty shooters to choose from throughout all of the polls, the majority of attention went to Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3. Thankfully, many people still showed their support for the other shooters of the year, with Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Crisis 2 and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary getting some loving too. As mentioned before, Deus Ex received top votes for Best Campaign, as well as third place on the Best First Person Shooter of the Year poll, with 10.99% of the vote.
Crysis 2, which arguably suffered from being released earlier in the year, and thus not being as fresh in people's minds, did commendably with the second highest number of votes (15.63%) in the Most Graphically Impressive poll. It also performed admirably in the Best Campaign Mode category, with 13.08% of users giving props where they're deserved.
Aside from title-specific polls, we also invited readers to vote on other aspects of the genre, such as what they want to see in its future, and what they think is most important about it. When asked about where they would like to see shooters evolve, the highest number of votes (42.24%) went to the improvement of artificial intelligence, over such things as graphics and interfaces. It's nice to see that at the end of the day, people will always value solid gameplay over bells and whistles.
Deserved more votes, but still did admirably.
When asked how important online is in a first person shooter, 49.42% of voters said it was everything to them, and the main reason they play shooters in the first place. Surprisingly though, when asked what's most important about shooters to them in general, readers gave the highest amount of votes (35.22%) to the option of 'A fulfilling and well written story mode', which conflicts with the results of the previously mentioned poll.
Funnily enough, when asked whether they were primarily single player or multiplayer FPS fans, the results were incredibly balanced. The majority of voters (53.99%) said they liked them both equally, and choice between single player and multiplayer was also right down the middle, with 23.17% declaring they prefer single player campaigns in their shooters, and 22.84% declaring their preference for multiplayer.
And finally, when given the opportunity to vote on which kind of campaign layout they prefer, the majority of IGN readers (55.74%) chose the option of 'larger levels that can be approached in different ways', clearly signalling that linear campaigns are starting to wear thin. Open world shooters were also preferable to linear, rollercoaster-style games, with 27.02% of the vote.
