Slideshow: A History of First-person Shooters in 20 Games
The long-anticipated release of Halo 4 and the latest Call of Duty, November is shaping up to be a great month for first-person shooters. Halo 4 We've decided to look back at the great FPS games of the past, so here are what we think to be the 20 most notable titles from the last 30 years. During that time, there have been …
This topic is closed for new posts.
Re: A major omission
Ah yes, i know that game. Something to do with hats right? I think there is a sub game included, something to do with objectives and shooting,
Re: A major omission
nah stuff TF2, TF1. If you cant conc jump from one side of 2 fort to the other (or from bottom of well to the flag room) then you're doing it wrong.
Re: A major omission
TFC even. I only played TF1 a few times.
Re: A major omission
TF2 is kind of a shame, it was so astonishingly well balanced and now it's just a bunch of random shit. I no longer can expect a soldier to have a rocket launcher, he probably has a laser rifle. Still good fun, but weird as fuck.
Left 4 Dead, why haven't I played that more? It's marvellous it really is.
Wot no Battlezone?
Wot no Scarabaeus (C64) (pretty impressive for such a slow machine).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHjXmwpUPCw
And TimeSplitters too!
Great shout on Scarabaeus. That was so ahead of it's time, and pretty spooky for my younger self.
And let's not forget TimeSplitters 2 by the UK's Free Radical Design. A great FPS on the PS2 made in Nottingham from the guys who gave us Golden Eye, and now known as Crytek UK.
Re: And TimeSplitters too!
So glad someone mentioned TS2. Great music, brilliant sense of humour, huge replay value - especially with the mapmaker functionality. Every five years or so it comes out of the box for a quick run through from noob to 100%, just like every 5 years or so I have to read all of Jane Austen again --- because nothing else comes close.
Far Cry/ Crysis
Isn't Crysis essentially a sequel to Far Cry?
I've played both & they felt linked IMO, gameplay wise anyway, despite being sold as a whole new story etc.
Deus Ex should be there for sure for the less structured gameplay sequence and cause/effect story implementation.
Re: Far Cry/ Crysis
They are pretty similar by all accounts, apart from the "Can it play Crysis" I don't think there is much special about it. I have the game, but no real fun.
Re: Far Cry/ Crysis
Far Cry 2 would be the sequel to Far Cry. ;-)
They probably feel similar because they were both FPS games made by Crytek and were set on islands. I see your point...
What? No Redneck Rampage?
When I was getting into computers and what-not, the common games were Doom and Duke Nukem, but when I was home I much preferred Redneck Rampage (designed by Xatrix Entertainment and published by Interplay).
HUGE levels, interesting concept, awesome hill-billy music and the additional cusspack .....
good ol' days.
Predictable
Predictable
I agree we have a large gap in the 80's and more credit should be given to those which helped form the genre. In no particular order:
3D Monster maze, Battlezone, Robocop 3D, Hostages, Novagens Mercenary series, Hunter (despite being 3rd person), Ultima Underworld (no UU, no System Shock!), Commander Keen (giving Romero his break before going on to form ID Software), Alone in the Dark (showing that 3D had advanced enough for true 3D characters to be used, and for atmosphere).
I'd much rather read about the changes in game design that made FPS's possible on the whole than jumping simply from one FPS to the next. Boring!
almost forgot
Soldier of Fortune, for introducing comedy deaths based on where you shot them. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think this was the first.
Re: almost forgot
It was the first FPS I know of to do that, Fallout had them too but thats RPG and third person.
BTW Isn't the Marathon picture actually from Marathon 2, the first one never had the sawn offs.
Re: almost forgot
I think you may be right. Also, they spelt Bungie wrong in the caption. Ha ha.
Rise of the triad!!1!
How could you have forgotten it? Also, yes, Heretic and hexen.
Re: Rise of the triad!!1!
Did I read somewhere that they're re-making Rise of The Triad? I only played the demo of the original, but it had some ridiculous cheat codes... SHROOMS!
Tribes!
Always overlooked, never bettered. Love that frickin' game.
I get that you were putting the firsts of each series in, but I'd have overridden that with Half Life, where the sequel is completely superior not only to its predecessor, but to everything else too.
And the inclusion of Halo is as predictable as it is dull. And Goldeneye? Come on.
There are so many FPS out there I remember playing, but I cannot remember the names of any of them. But then again I'm more of an RPG person. How long until an RPG list comes up?
I will admit I'm surprised I didn't see any Tom Clancy games (unless one of those was a tom clancy game and I'm a moron) I was quite a fan of raven shield, and I've heard good things about Vegas too.
Rainbow Six was in my shortlist but again was dropped due to a serious overload of FPS games released in the same era.
Half-Life, Unreal and Tribes all hit shelves in the same year as RS, which wasn't as significant imo. It's all subjective though I guess.
Hard to narrow things like this down to 20 titles with a fair spread of release dates.
Keep your eyes peeled for RPG sometime. ;-)
Rainbow Six introduced a strategic element of planning, as well as playing multiple people at the same time.
You could have also lead up to R6 with Hired Guns.
The article lacks any depth and fails to join the dots.
Please Enable JavaScript to use this feature
haha yeah right, keep dreaming
What about Maze...
... from Acornsoft on the BBC Micro in 1982?
Gak!
You lost me with the first sentence. Halo? Call of Duty?? These are the two series that more than any others have brought the FPS to an all-time low, and only seem acceptable because of the abysmal standards on consoles. (I played the original Halo all the way through on Windows, and could NOT believe anyone had made a fuss about it. Boring, repetitive, with uninteresting enemies and a dreary choice of weaponry...)
Also, your reservation about not including FPS games with RPG elements should have applied to Bioshock just as much as to Deus Ex. And when it comes to multiplayer, you lump together simple deathmatch games with more complex team-based ones like Battlefield. Tastes may be subjective, but clarity and consistency are not.
Re: Gak!
Out of curiosity, at the time you completed Halo CE on the PC, what was your favourite PC FPS? Personally, I'd played most of the games in this slideshow before Halo came out, and I liked Halo for the 'heavy' feeling of the protaganist (but appreciate some prefer faster movement), the balanced choice of weapons, instant access to grenades, being able to melee without switching weapon, being able to play with mates on the same machine, the vehicles, the plot, only being able to carry two weapons and not having to scroll through a list, and regenerating health- cos limping around on 11% health waiting to die, a la Doom, is no fun at all.
I have no doubt that each of these elements had been done before, but in Halo they were put together well. But as you say, tastes are subjective.
Re: Gak!
I also hated halo when it came out, it was just dull and soulless. I'm not a fan of games whose enemies take a ridiculous amount of shots to kill, I much prefer the realism of the ww2 games where a few shots max are all that's necessary, I get really, really bored otherwise.
I would add Spasim (1974) which was a bit like a proto multiplayer elite and Maze War (mid 70`s) which was a ground based multiplayer fps to the list of early fps`s as well.
Re: Gak!
Speaking of Elite there's a kickstarter going for David Braben to update ELite for the 21st century
Internet
Think I remember downloading Doom via anon ftp before the web. Greedily copying the zip file floppy and taking it home.
Borderlands or Team Fortess
What about Borderlands and Tema Fortress
This topic is closed for new posts.
