Ruined My Life

I’ve decided to compile a list of what I feel are the most influential first person shooters released on PC as well as consoles. This first installement covers the years of 1993 on to 1998, however all of 1998 isn’t included, which will be continued in a later installment.

I know this has been done a millions time before, however this is the list that matters to me and if others feel the same, great!  As stated, this list is purely subjective from my point of view, and all are free to agree or disagree with it. I don’t feel comfortable ranking these games, instead I’ll present them in a chronilogical orders and let you readers decide how they should be ranked.

Wolfenstein 3D

Who can forget their first experience with Wolfenstein 3D? I can still remember it clearly to this day, heading over to my buddy’s house as a kid to check out this “amazing” game his dad had gotten from a buddy at work. Loading the game up on his blazingly fast 386 cpu, the main menu screen popping up with it’s awesome midi soundtrack. As soon as I first got in the game, nothing else to that date had prepared me for such an awesome gaming experience. I also remember the disappointment that I experienced when I learned my friend’s dad got the game on 3.5″ disks and I only had 5.25″, with no way copy them to 5.25″. Keep in mind in the early 90’s computers were not near common place in a house hold, often costing $2000 and up.

While Wolf3D may have not been the “first” FPS game, it is the one that brought it to the main stream of FPS gaming. Battling your way through the game, killing countless nazis, taking countless (or so it seems) left turns had never been so fun. From the first time one would play the game, you could only see where this genre could and did go.

Doom

Good old Doom, the first FPS to bring the joys of Deathmatch to the masses. Not only could you work your way through numerous levels of hell demon slaying, but now you and your buddies could get together and kill one another. Back in these days there wasn’t any fancy internet multiplayer, instead users would have to dial into DWANGO to frag one another from their homes across the country. This led to ridiculous phone bills, but hours upon hours of fragging zen. If you were lucky enough to have enough friends or be in a commercial or educational institution you could take advantage of the network play.

With Doom gamers were first introduced to Mods of their favorite game. I remember the first mod I ever played allowed me to joyously walk about the levels killing countless Barney the Dinosaur enemies. The thing I find most amusing about Doom was the awesome soundtrack laid over the game as you mowed the baddies down in countless swathes. Doom started the FPS multiplayer craze and it only became more awesome as it went.

Quake I and QuakeWorld

Where to begin with Quake? This was my first real foray into online FPS gaming, sitting at home on my sweet 28.8kbps connection, playing against the myriad of other dial-up users. These were the days of “HPBs” viewing “LPBs” as cheaters, the infancy for “3D Game Engines” and most importantly the infancy of online FPS gaming. Quake’s network code was originally designed to be played over a LAN, however at the time of Quake’s release, internet was becoming more and more popular. With this increase in popularity the desire to play games via TCP/IP became evident, and in late 1996 QuakeWorld was released. Before the release of QuakeWorld, games were played via IPX emulation with such programs as the great Kali. From QuakeWorld came a server browsing program called QuakeSpy which later grew and turned into what we now know as GameSpy.

With QuakeWorld we saw perhaps the first major online game modification, the grand daddy of them all, Team Fortress. Team Fortress ditched the beloved deathmatch formula for a more structured, team-oriented, capture the flag approach. Team Fortress was a huge success, giving players unique classes with a variety of weapons and grenades (oh how we miss the grenades TF 2 Developers), and still kept to the roots of the fast paced, twitch, deathmatch style of gameplay. While Team Fortress wasn’t the only mod avaliable for QuakeWorld, it is by far the most popular, spawning spin offs of the original mod for later Quakes, Unreal Tournament and not to mention the wildly succesful Team Fortress 2.

Goldeneye 007

Whether you love or hate FPS games on consoles, one cannot deny the impact that Goldeneye 007 has left on the genre. Goldeneye 007 not only had quiet possibly one of the most refined split screen multiplayer modes seen in a game yet, but also was one of the first FPS games on any system to encourage and reward players to use stealth to their advantage. However where Goldeneye 007 shined was in it’s four player split screen mutiplay.

Many hours as well as money have been spent playing Goldeneye 007 in impromptu challenges and tournaments with friends. While my first love was always Team Fortress not everyone had internet access, let alone a computer, but to play Goldeneye 007 all you needed was a Nintendo 64, 4 Controllers and a moderately sized TV. Many of a day’s wage was lost in a Goldeneye 007 tournament pool, however even more was won from my friends. Hardcore gamers and casual gamers alike could grab a controller and have a blast chasing one another around, not to mention healthy selection of maps, options, and characters that could be chosen to play with.

Half-Life and Counter-Strike

Half-Life rushed on to the scene introducing gamers to the story driven fps. No longer was your goal to kill hundreds of enemies, find a key, unlock door with key and proceed to the next level, now you had a reason to turn off a piece of scientific equipment before slaying a baddie. Half-Life came out of nowhere, from an unknown company founded by a couple of ex-Microsoft employees, however since the day of Half-Life’s release Valve is a name known by gamers right up there with Blizzard. While the idea of story based FPS gaming may seem rather tired by today’s standards, Half-Life stuck you in the shoes of Gordon Freeman. Heavily scripted game sequences gave the game a truely cinematic feel without disrupting the game play to show a pre-rendered cut scene.

As great of a game that Half-Life was in it’s self, perhaps the greatest accomplishment that came from the game were modifications, most importantly Counter-Strike. Mods are what brought Half-Life it’s staying power, whether it was Team Fortress Classic, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, or Firearms, Half-Life would have never had the staying power it has had without the prior. Counter-Strike was and still is one of the most popular FPS titles ever, people are still playing the original, as well as having professional competitons, nearly ten years later now. Counter-Strike sucked gamers in with it’s quasi-realistic gun play, tactical objectives, and close knit tactical teamwork. Counter-Strike also brought upon the prospect of a third-party modification becoming an official commercial product. Half-Life and it’s mods are still played for tens of thousands of hours a day, ten years later, and will probably stay the same for another five years.

In the next part of this series, we will kick off from the end of 1998 untill 2001 or 2002. I’m trying to keep these articles limited to five games each, to allow myself time to polish them without feeling rushed. So keep an eye out, and feel free to share your opinions.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Computers, Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.