Does Frame Rate Really Matter?

The fast-growing popularity of shooting games, with powerhouse titles like Call of Duty or Battlefield, certain standards are to be met by other shooters that come after it. FPS, or frames per second can be considered as one of the standards that are important to shooting fans. In fact, Framerate is probably an important part to enjoying a gaming experience, especially on the PC. 

Gamers are constantly tweaking their settings, lowering unimportant graphical do-hickeys all in an attempt to get that oh so important 60 fps. To me, and I bet to some of you out there as well, the obsession (couldn't think of a better word) over high frame rate is somewhat unnecessary. I mean, I do enjoy a shooter, especially CoD at 60 fps because a high frame rate is required to play such a fast-paced game. But other games look good, even great and sometimes better in the movie-like 30 fps instead of 60 fps. 

One of the games I feel look the absolute best on 30 fps is Tomb Raider. Arguably the best game of the year without the name "Last of Us" on it. Tomb Raider was made to give that cinematic, movie experience and bundle it into a game. Naturally, it would look good playing on 30 fps. Tomb Raider at 60 fps does not look terrible but it does, to an extent, look unrealistic. Perhaps it's because anything on 60 fps reminds me of fast paced shooters. And Tomb Raider is definitely not one of those games. 

Basically, gamers shouldn't really put a great importance on frame rate. Unless your game is having seizures frame rate wise, you don't really have a huge problem. 60 or 30, doesn't matter as long as we can get either one. Personally, I'd rather play on 30 fps to give me that cinematic feel to the game. Unless of course, it's a shooter. I can make an exception for shooters.