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First Person Shooters
Ok, just so we can isolate the argument here, what do you guys think were the ground breaking FPS's and for what reasons? How do you feel about the console vs PC debates in shooters? Do you think if Microsoft made online games cross-platformed (i.e people playing Halo on PC and Xbox playing each other online in the same server), would it would unify them? Would this be a bad thing?
Comments
Wolfenstein 3D - Invented the genre. At the time, there were no other games like this. Rym doesn't like it, but I think this game is still fun. Wolf3D : fps :: Super Mario Brothers : platformer.
Doom/Doom2 - Wolfenstein 3D, while being the first fps, was more of a maze game than a shooter. Before Doom you have fp, but Doom added the s. Lots of weapons, shooting up and down, fast reflexes, conserving ammo, etc. all came from Doom. Doom 2 added even more weapons and was a revolution in level design. Also, the Doom games were the first to have any sort of death match. Few people had the stuff to actually get it working, but it was there.
Quake - Quake was the first fps to actually be "real" 3D. Of course nothing is "real" 3D on a flat screen, but you know what I mean. Quake was revolutionary in that it was the first generation of the modern fps rendering algorithm. Duke Nuke'm 3D was the last game created with the older style of rendering, and it was a serious competitor to Quake at the time. DN Forever makes it seem like a joke, but DN3D was actually a great game. Anyway, Quake was the first game with 3D polygon rendering as we know it today.
Quake 2- Quake 2 was a vast improvement over Quake 1. Quake 1 was revolutionary in its algorithm, but wasn't actually very playable. Quake 2 was the game that changed that. The algorithm was improved, OpenGL/Direct3D had finally been figured out, and modding hit its prime.
Quake 1 and 2 Mods - Mods like Weapons Factory, Action Quake, Capture the Flag, Team Fortress, MegaTF, etc. paved the way for every other mod to come since. Not only that, but those mods were some of the first team-based multi-player fpses ever. Before Quake mods, there were no teams in fps games. These mods complete dominated the multiplayer and LAN party scene for years.
Goldeneye - There were many console fpses. Turok, Quake, Quake 2, Doom for SNES, etc. Goldeneye was the first to be playable and fun. This game did three things right. First, it provided an easy way to get the multiplayer experience in a time when not everyone had fast Internet connections or LAN parties. Second, it had more of that glitchy fps goodness than any other game. Nothing makes real fps gamers laugh like a guy having is hand stick through a door, making explosions with giant gas tanks or playing with cheat codes to make crazy shit happen. Goldeneye is still the best game to pull all these sorts of entertaining shenanigans. I remember spending lots of time having fun doing weird shit in the Facility map. Lastly, as I already said, it was playable. Try playing Quake 2 for the N64. It's not actually a playable game. Goldeneye was the only playable console fps for a very long time.
Tribes 1 - This was revolutionary in many ways. First off it was one of the first fpses to include vehicles that didn't suck ass. It also featured large outdoor environments rather than indoor mazes of most previous games. Also, no game before this let you play with 128 players on one server.
Half-Life 1 - A revolution in the single player fps, and one of the greatest games ever made. The engine of HL wasn't anything spectacular. It's just a bunch of semi-obvious improvements to the Quake 2 engine, although great improvements they were. Until HL1 single player fpses were mindless shoot 'em ups. Playing the single player quake is more akin to Gradius while HL1 single-player is more like King's Quest. This game had a deep and cinematic plot, actual puzzles and skill-based tasks other than shooting in a maze required to proceed. What really made the deal was that all of these things were seamlessly integrated with gameplay. HL don't' have no cut-scenes bitch! You know what Gordon knows, you see what he sees and you hear what he hears, nothing more. This was the first and perhaps still the greatest cinematic fps experience that exists.
Half-Life 1 mods (Counter-Strike) - Because HL1 was such a popular game (rightfully so) and because it was an improvement upon the Quake 2 engine and Quake 3 was still not out, HL1 grabbed pretty much the entire mod community from Quake 2. Action Half-Life was quite popular for a time, as was Team Fortress Classic. That was until Counter Strike came out. CS was the first real objective-based team tactics multi-player fps. It was free to anyone who had Half-Life, and anyone who was going to like CS almost certainly owned Half-Life. Also, we had passed a breaking point. It was now easy enough to setup a server and easy enough to find a game on the Internet without 3rd party tools. It still sucked compared to today, but it was easy enough that thousands of people managed where maybe a few thousand managed before. The use of real guns, buying weapons with money, not being instantly respawned until the next round, etc. were all revolutionary. Also, the fact that it was one of the first fpses to reward tactics as opposed to just reflexes was amazing. The fact that CS is still one of the top games is no coincidence.
Unreal/Unreal Tournament - These games really weren't that revolutionary themselves. There wasn't much new in them except for the fact that they were the birth of the Unreal Engine. The Unreal Engine raised the bar in graphics and sound quality for fpses forever. Also, the AI of the bots in Unreal are still light years beyond those of other games. Look more at the piles of games built on the engine to see how important Unreal is rather than looking at the original games themselves.
System Shock 2 - I know this is an important game. I just never played it. I think I'm a worse person for it. All I know is that it combined fps and RPG elements like nothing else.
Tribes 2 - As Quake 2 is to Quake 1, Tribes 2 is to Tribes 1. The vehicles, the huge outdoor maps, the advanced weaponry/armor/equipment and the servers with shittons of players were all present. This time, they actually worked. People don't remember this, but Tribes 2 sold out at first. When is the last time you heard of a PC game selling out? Also, the fact that this game was one of the first to include built-in support for clans, forums and the other things, which fps communities formerly had to make themselves, was a nice touch. Tribes 2 also was one of the first games to have an automatic patching system that worked properly. HL1 had one that worked poorly. This was also the games downfall. The developers released so many patches so rapidly which drastically changed and ruined the gameplay. They actually were dumb enough to answer the requests of the fanboys in the forums, something CS was smart enough to never do. If not for that, we might all be playing Tribes 2 or 3 today.
Soldier of Fortune - This game was groundbreaking in only one way. It had a great system of "realistic" damage. You shot a shotgun at a guy's leg, it flew off and he fell down. You shoot a rifle at a head, the head explodes and the body falls over. Shoot in the foot, he says ow! Set on fire? He runs around burning. Definitely scratched the itch of those with a desire for gore.
Natural Selection - Natural Selection is a gamer fantasy come true. Every gamer at one time or another imagined some combination of RTS and FPS that would be totally awesome. NS is still the only game to really make this fantasy a reality. It helps that the theme of the game is marines vs. aliens. It helps double that the game has a huge helping of that wacky glitchy fun that give Goldeneye and CS their charm. Don't forget that it is also a free Half-Life 1 mod.
Halo - What is Halo good for? It doesn't have anything game or graphics wise that other games didn't have already. The gameplay is very similar to Goldeneye or a simplified UT. The single-player is useless. Halo did one thing right. It helped the XBox kill PC gaming. PC gaming is not easy. It requires a large investment of time and money. This is why you see people like Fatality making money at PC gaming and not console gaming even when PC gaming is going the way of the dinosaur. Halo made it easy. It created an fps experience that is easy, but not as good as the PC experience. Halo was like a magnet picking up all the loose iron filings that were stuck to a PC fps. As PC fpses died out, people opted for Halo rather than another PC game. Halo is a lot like Windows in a way. It made the fps experience easy, popular and mediocre. I find it ironic that the XBox and Halo made by Microsoft has been mostly responsible for the demise of PC gaming, thus making switching to Linux or Mac a much less painful proposition.
Half-Life 2 - After a long drought in fps innovation, Valve saved the day with HL2. I hate saying it, but the single-player of HL2 might be the best there is. Everything HL1 is, HL2 is more. I think what does it the most for HL2 are two things. First, the physics algorithms of the Source engine. Using the gravity gun, seeing objects react in a realistic fashion or simply putting a can in the trash are still amazing. Also, this was the first time in which you have puzzles in a game that consist of realistically acting real-world objects. No more hunting for the blue key. Now you put the fridge in the elevator to live up the ramp.
Steam - The second thing HL2 brought was Steam. Prior to HL2 Steam was a joke. Nowadays it is pretty much the only thing that matters in PC gaming. It is a platform for digital distribution of entertainment software that actually works. No more waiting in line at File Planet for CS patches. No more video game magazines to get demos because downloading 700MB takes too long. No more do gamers have to have a vast knowledge about computers in order to install a mod or change a configuration. Also, without the need for retailer cooperation Steam is able to sell independent games for a low price. Most of the money in video games these days is from casual games, like those on cellphones. Steam is able to offer innovative games like Defcon for a mere $20. Compare that to the $30 PopCap is charging for Bookworm Adventures. The only PC gamers left today fall mostly into three categories: people in countries where consoles are hard to get, casual gamers who might play poker or bejeweled and MMO players. All the "real" PC fps Gamers have Steam as their last refuge, and a great refuge it is.
HL2 Episodes - Episodic gameplay has become a reality, and it doesn't suck.
The future - Team Fortress 2, Portal and NS2. This is where the awesomeness will be. TF2 has a risk of failing, but NS2 and especially Portal are guaranteed to do the job. I really expect Portal to make huge waves throughout the entire gaming industry. Also, the Wii seems to actually be capable of decent fps gaming. Red Steel and Call of Duty just seem to be poor implementations of what is actually possible. Wait for Metroid: Prime Wii and we'll know for sure.
You really never got that on PCs until recently with good voice chat, outside of LAN parties.
These games are not earth-shaking behemoths like HL2 or the Quakes by any stretch of the imagination, but they are the first and second MMOFPS's respectively. WWII Online was the first to make a massive battlefield with no loading times and have fights that involved supply lines, heavy armor, aircraft, and troops all at once in battles that had player numbers in the hundreds.
Planetside streamlined much of what WWII Online brought to the table, and made it more playable and user friendly, while still having a heavy focus on squad- and platoon-based objectives. While lacking an endgme, the graphics were a jump from WWII online, and are on-par with many of the MMO's that came out several years ago.
They fill a niche that no one has seemed to really nail down the golden game for yet. Huxley had promise, but turned out to basically be a massive chatroom with instanced 64 player maps. Sort of like a fancy Tribes, but not truly MMO.
Again, while Planetside and WWII Online are not going to be the shining beacons of gaming, they certainly trying to break difficult ground into the FPS world.
The Battlefield series basically took Counter-Strike, made it big, made it more strategic, and gave it vehicles. While BF1942 has sort of died out, BF2 is going strong with a large mod community and BF2142 is doing fairly well. In-game voice-comms, squad and force command, and teamwork are important to this game. Again this series fills the want of gamers who want 'big' FPSs but aren't satisfied with the current MMO's.
Then they took related maps, all the China or Middle East ones, and made maps that connected them together. Then they would have 'wars' where the winner of each battle would dictate how much they progressed, or were knocked back, from map to map.
They were on their 6th or 7th tour at the time, and its apparently really well organized. It certainly seemed like a pretty cool idea to me.
That's not what this post is about, though. Mostly what I meant to say was that it sounds cool, but probably would involve way too huge of a time commitment to one thing for me.
What I do remember is that the gun would automatically adjust it's shot up or down depending on what altitude your target was currently at.
Hexen introduced aiming up and down.
Doom is also key in that it introduced multi-player action to FPS games.
Believe it or not, I still have the book and software I purchased years ago to make custom wad files.
To be honest, I would still much rather play multi-player Doom/Doom2 than any of the newer games. My main reason is for the simplicity of the system.
It may not have "mattered" until Quake but Hexen did introduce the concept.
Hexen also added the "chicken" mode....
http://gnomeslair.blogspot.com/2006/12/history-of-fps-pictorial.html
After the final, I went to the student center for some disks, came back and copied the game, and played the heck out of it all Christmas break. That was one of the happiest Christmases I can remember.
Since then, I haven't found an FPS I like better than Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Halo is okay, but I'm not really that interested in piloting the vehicles and I don't like being required to drop weapons.
But nothing is quite like that Doom Christmas. Every year around this time I think of being happily immersed in Doom and how happy I was that I wasn't going to have to analyze whether another hypothetical horse syndicate required 10b-5 disclosures.