I could never get into most FPS games. Not because they're "western and manly" but for the fact that they are the most fucking underwhelming game genre on the planet no one will ever admit to. Here comes that sweet, sweet autism spike! Ohhhhhh yeahhhhhhuuhh.
FPSes are my life's video game honeytrap. I can't even begin to describe how sickeningly deceiving the genre is. It's like wrapping over stale moldy Already Been Chewed chocolate with caramel and nougat filling with a fresh yet cheap chocolate coating and then biting into the fucking thing. Gameplay is like this: You have weak ass weapons, a melee and a pistol, to start off with, and then you gradually get new weapons that are increasingly powerful until 30% into the game you're stuck with the same fucking thing to kill and progress through Blandia, the Magical World of Bland Brown Bullshit Samey level design. Maybe it's me, and the dissonance of sensory deprivation and restraint because the first person view of things limits me only to what I can do because there are a limited amount of actions you can only perform in a video game, but when I think action FPS I think of doing all sorts of crazy ass shit and using virtually anything at your hands to survive and meet the "you must be this badass to pass" level to continue into the next level/part of the game like it's a damn action movie. I think of shit like Demolition Man, Commando, Cliffhanger, Die Hard, They Live, and Rambo when it comes to what can be of FPSes, but the reality is that everything plays out instead like the fucking climax of Cobra and loops it over just to meet a five hour movie mark.
Hell, let's get into some games I'll commit heresy by saying I hate. I hate Half Life. There. That's going to get a mob ready to try and dox me to the ends of the earth now, won't it? I hate Half Life and can't even get into it because of the fucking story. The mechanics? I love it, they're revolutionary, I love how you can interact with the world and how there are at least several different paths you can take going from point A to point B in a realistic setup that doesn't feel tailored to be solely gameplay designed. What turns me off is the story. You're stoic not talkative bland Whitey Scientist, not fucking Not-Schwarzenegger, but some guy in a research lab at least 2000 feet underground, and are stuck there for most of the game because suddenly aliens from a dimensional time space research experiment goes heywire and everyone dies but you. You get a fucking crowbar and take on not just the aliens but the US Gummimint.... because you're just that awesome? Because you wear an H-VAC suit? That's some Gary Stu writing right there. Then the aliens somehow take over the earth and have gotten a deal with some guy at the CIA, and things just get more fedora atheist edgelord from there on out. At least in Doom, you can ignore there's a story. Hell, you can even get a bunch of fucking mods and probably play what can be a different kind of game if you're not satisfied with what you got!
As for the culprit that I can say is probably partially responsible for my hatred of FPSes, I think that would have to go to Quake II. I don't know how people like that game. Everything feels rusty, blocky, samey, and it's pretty much the antithesis of the current day design of FPSes in that there's aboslutely no known motivation for you outside of the damn manual. In fact, it feels like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the NES. Sure, it's not as bad as that game, but it's an absolute fucking slog.
I'm absolutely aware of good FPSes out there, and Doom in general has always been the pinnacle of success, but this is one genre that needs some major polishing. It's not shit, but it's sure covered in it.