When I read the title I just thought "Oh my god, just another one..." There are already too many games on the market that include your idea. If you want to have real success with a FPS, then you should take care of a good gameplay first. When you've done that, you have an average shooter. But if you want to make a game *everyone* is talking about, shooter-fan or not, then you must do the following:

1) Forget the standard-setting. No one is interested in a WorldWarII-shooter anymore. And - no, terrorist hunting is "out" as well.

2) Go for details. Not just in graphical terms, but especially focus on physics if you are going to create a shooter that plays in our time.

3) You need a background-story. The more action you have, the more important the story becomes, because at some point the player is definitly going to ask for the reason to fight the main-character has. A good example for this would be "Frontlines - Fuel of War".

4) Presentation is everything! No matter whether it is a sci-fi game or a shooter in our time, presentation can make or break a project. With presentation I mean manly UI-components. How do the panels look like? What do I see during the time it takes to load a level? What's the "confirm" or "cancel"-sound like? All those things together form the presentation of your content. Look at games like "Command & Conquer 3" in order to see what I mean.


Altogether: do something no one did before. It might appear that the violence-element makes the people play the game, but actually it's the gameplay. The best example I know is "God of War" on the Playstation 2.


Greetz!




Alan