Well, 1st person shooter don't show your player in action. It pretty much only shows the guns. Third person is like you see your player in the game move and do everything. I don't think there wil every be a second preson shooter on the count of there is no such thing as second-person anywhere.

Would the sight jacking in the Siren games be 2nd person. If you are not familiar with those games, sight jacking is where you press a button on the controller and you can actually see what an enemy nearby sees, and this will help determine whether you are safe in your hiding spot/path that you are walking, or whether you are seen and need to start running.

ive never heard of a "2nd person shootee"

How is it any more "in action" in RE4 than any normal 3rd person view.

2nd person shooters... lol awesome.

You narrate.

There is actually a second person shooter on the PS2, believe it or not. Lifeline was the name, and it was actually pretty fun. Sold really really poorly. Kinda rare title.

I never played Psychonauts.  Sounds like one I should get my hands on though.

@TWRoo: Actually the RE4 is first person gameplaywise.

It's a matter of whose view you control the character. Your view is being a part of the action, like first person, but you don't actually take part, when 3rd person is outside observer that don't take part in the action.
In the end, the discussion we're having is only about semantics.

2nd person in a video game would be like 2nd in literature, very rare and very tricky. Wkipedia was a good description of 2nd person applied to literature:

Probably the rarest mode is the second-person narrative mode, in which the narrator refers to the focal character(s) as "you", therefore making the audience feel as if they are characters within the story. Because of this, second-person pieces often have an accusatory nature with the narrator often condemning or expressing powerful emotions directly at the person whom they are referring to. A small number of novels have been written in the second-person, frequently paired with the present tense.

There are a few examples in litereature but not books people are generally familiar with. Motivational and instructional books sometimes use 2nd person "you need to get off your fat butt and exercise". Interactive children's books often use 2nd person.

One game that comes to mind as using 2nd person is Wii Fit when sometimes you see the game through the eyes of the instructor, as for example when you do the balance exercise and the figure on the screen becomes "you" because you are controlling the red center of gravity dot. When the figure is just demonstrating how the exercise should be done but in no way controlled by the gamer, it would not be 2nd person even though seen through the instructors eyes.

The most common use of the 2nd person in gaming would be text adventures:

You stand at a crossroads. East of you lies the castle. Directly west of you is the dragon which wants to eat you.

>Go east

You cannot go east. The drawbridge is up and the castle guards are mocking you. The dragon which wants to eat you draws closer.

>Use pepper on dragon

Thinking quickly, you tear open the packet of pepper and throw it in the face of the dragon which wants to eat you.

"Thanks! I needed some seasoning," says the dragon, coating you liberally in pepper before devouring you head first.

You die.

UNDO, RESTORE, or QUIT?

You are absolutely correct and I am very ashamed of myself for not thinking of those great old games. I think I played every Infocom game ever written from Zork to Hitchhiker's Guide including Leather Goddesses of Phoebus.

This is the classic example of a 2nd person perspective, the 1st boss of Battletoads, you see what the boss sees, but the controlled character is the toad, that has to pick up the rocks and throw them to the boss...

2nd person view does exist, because even when it looks like a 3rd person perspective, you can see through the antagonist eyes the damage... that's the reason why this view is not used in shooters...