What exactly is a tactical shooter?

So recently I was trying to give Tactical Shooter a clean-up, and then I started arguing with myself over what exactly constitutes a tactical shooter.

The bare-minimum of the idea is that a tactical shooter is realistic. However, how realistic does it have to be to make it a tactical shooter seems to be a subjective issue. Different people seem to have different ideas on what is a tactical shooter, and I am just not sure.

I've seen people call Insurgency realistic, and I've seen people call it arcadey. I've seen people call Counter-Strike realistic and tactical, and I've also seen many call it run-and-gun and unrealistic. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, it has many realistic gunplay mechanics and the combat looks similar to the large-scale ARMA battlefields where you go prone and shoot at moving spots in the distance, but is it a tactical shooter? Wikipedia says Rainbow Six Siege is a tactical shooter, but is it still a tactical shooter if it isn't even near the simulation like Squad? Just how tactical and realistic do you have to be to be a tactical shooter?

edited 3rd Aug '17 10:15:13 PM by Wuz

If professional game catalog sites can't make up their minds, what hope do we have to sort it out?

I see a Tactical Shooter as a style of game in which the majority of the emphasis is placed on the planning and execution of a battle, rather than the simple killing of enemies. Usually, to enforce this, such games will have much more realistic consequences for messing up, such as PCs being killed or disabled by a single hit, enemies fleeing if not boxed in, objectives that are failed if you don't take them all out quickly and/or stealthily, and so on. Tactical shooters are almost always also team-based, for obvious reasons, and should have comprehensive campaigns as opposed to being focused on team vs. team multiplayer.

edited 4th Aug '17 5:02:57 AM by Fighteer