In Search of a Kid-Friendly First-Person Shooter

In today’s child safe episode of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter Truthtellah becomes truthseekah, searching for family-friendly first-person games for a very special little boy.

Are there any kid-friendly first-person shooters on consoles? Or even first-person adventure games?

I own a Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, GameCube, Wii, PlayStation 1 and 2, and an Xbox 360. The little boy of the house (11 years old) took a liking to me playing Doom on the PS1 and wanted to play, and he seems to control it decently. My only problem is, I don’t really like him playing something with that much blood and gore. He can move around fine, but without the Invincibility cheat, he’d be dead rather quickly. So, I’m trying to find another first-person game on the consoles that I have which has some kind of cheats to not die or the game itself has no dying, and something with a little less blood would be appreciated, as well.

He is bound to a wheelchair, and due to various health issues, he doesn’t get to go out very much. So, I think playing a first person game like that allows him to feel empowered with his movement. Thus, I’d love to find something more appropriate(or simply different) for him to play in the first person. Too many first-person games are simply violent, and while a game with shooting isn’t much of an issue(he’s a little boy, and shooting is awesome to him), the blood and gore just bothers me a bit. And it is hard to find games today which still have those classic cheat codes for invincibility or infinite weapons, making it difficult for him to get to play for very long without dying. A simply exploring-based adventure game would be amazing. Though, I’d even take a cheat-laden shooter with a little blood over no other games at all, as a little variety could help quite a bit; a kid can only play one game so much until they get a good bit tired of it.

I mainly use the Wii and Xbox 360, but any recommendations for the other consoles I listed would be much appreciated. It just gives him such delight to get to run around in a game like that, particularly in first person, and I’d love to see him have a wider selection than simply an old, somewhat inappropriate PS1 game.

Thanks for any suggestions! 🙂

About Speak Up on Kotaku: Our readers have a lot to say, and sometimes what they have to say has nothing to do with the stories we run. That’s why we have a forum on Kotaku called Speak Up. That’s the place to post anecdotes, photos, game tips and hints, and anything you want to share with Kotaku at large. Every weekday we’ll pull one of the best Speak Up posts we can find and highlight it here.

Image: Water Warfare for WiiWare