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In this entry, I am going to write about one of my favorite genres of game: first person shooters. Mainly, the most influential ones. The ones that have made the gaming industry the way it is today. Note that this is not a top ten countdown, because it's not. I'm just writing this in no particular order.
DooM: This is one of the first mainstream first-person shooters to hit the market, and it had an impact on every FPS since. With its then cutting-edge graphics (2.5d!), LAN capable network playing, and its ability to be customized, this gem can be said to be one of the most important games of the early 90's. Maybe even more than that, since Gamespy reported back in 2004 that industry insiders had voted this game the greatest game of all time. This game was so influential that most first-person shooters were called "Doom clones." until about mid-1997. This game has a rather-cliched storyline about a lone space marine blasting his way through hordes of generic monsters, however, in those days, people didn't really didn't care about the story. They were interested in playability, and this game is easy to jump into and play, but it takes skill to get through the harder difficulties. So many gamers got their first exposure to FPS with this game. I'm one of them. Man, playing this game brings back memories... Anyway, even though it is extremely old for a game, (15 years old) the community for this game is still alive and very much so active.
Remember that community that I just mentioned? Well, they managed to port this game to everything, from cell phones to iPods to TI-86 calculators! It also has a movie based on it. Not that that's saying much, as every good game has the franchise raped by a bad movie and the most awesome part of the movie was the first person perspective at the end, but it still shows how much of an impact this game had.
This game's legacy lives on in the third installment in the series, DooM 3, which is in itself is famous for being one of the scariest, and literally the darkest, FPS to date. No really, I could glue a crosshair onto a black sheet of construction paper and say that it is a typical moment in DooM 3. Except for the pissed-off Imp that jumps out of the shadows and hits you with fireballs. But if you caught me on a bad day, I might just do an impression of one for you. wink
Quake: This is another beauty made by id Software. This is not the first first person shooters with truly 3d graphics (Descent takes that title), Quake is the more influential one by far. This game had 3d models for players, power ups, and monsters, as well as having truly 3d maps. And it was like a 3d version of DooM; it kicked serious a**. In speaking of which, there is a mod for DooM that makes everything 3d, Quake style. There are other reasons as to why this game was influential. First, it was the first time in gaming history that a game's soundtrack was made by a mainstream musical band. For this one, it was Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails. In fact, possibly as a thank you to Trent for his help, id Software put the NiN logo on the ammunition for the Nailgun.
But mainly, Quake's legacy is what made it so influential. A lot of games started as mods for Quake, such as Team Fortress. Its engine has also been in a lot of games. Half-life, the best selling FPS of all time, runs on a heavily modified version of the Quakeworld engine. The modified engine was then modified and given modified Havok physics and renamed Source, the main engine for Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. In other words, if Quake had not been made, the world would not have Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Portal, or any game by Valve. Indirectly, it lead to the creation of Steam, because if Quake did not exist, Half-life and other games would not exist, and there would be no Steam.
In addition, it lead to the founding of a major event in the world of FPS: Quakecon. Originally made as a huge LAN party where people could own each other in Quake without lag, it expanded to become a staple in the industry of FPS games, and the meeting place of many professional gamers. So yes, like its daddy DooM, Quake spawned a dedicated fanbase that is still active, 12 years after the game was released.
Unreal: Enough talk about id Software now. In 1998, when the market was dominated by Quake, id Software received their first real competition, or rather unreal competition. (That was bad; I feel your pain) Then relatively obscure Epic Megagames (now known simply as Epic Games) had been working on a new engine in one of the founder's garage. Literally, this game started from a "garage developer". The engine was compiled in one of the main developer's garage. This game was made by Epic and another gaming company named Digital Extremes, both of which are still around today. When this game was released, critics praised its beautiful outdoor scenery, intelligent AI, revolutionary engine, and amazing gameplay. To give you an idea how good the AI was, I'll give you a few examples. Enemies will dodge your attacks and work together in taking you down. For example, some enemies will rush you while others stand back and fire upon you from a distance. That, and it is so freaky to have an enemy see the rocket aimed right at him and dive out of the way before giving you an energy blast to the face.
What makes this game influential is not its style of gameplay, but rather what came in the install with the game. In addition to the game itself, Unreal came with its own scripting language, Unrealscript, and its own level editor/creator. What does this mean? It means that the game has more mods, and therefore more hours of gameplay, than most other games. This tradition continued with later installments in the series. I'm not kidding you, I played UT2004 for five years just because of all the mods that made gameplay interesting. The modding community of Unreal lead to the beginning of many careers in the gaming industry, and lead to the birth of a series with some of the most hard-core and dedicated fans in the history of gaming.
In addition to mods, working with the engine itself is fairly simple. It was well liked by gaming companies that wanted to make a game but did not have the budget to write their own engine. You should see Wikipedia's list of games made with the Unreal engine, from 1.0 to 3.0! They range from Unreal Tournament to Gears of War to Splinter Cell to Lineage 2. And those are just a few examples, and some of them are still in development! So as of late, Epic's 1998 gem is making unreal profits for them even though work on the game stopped 9 to 10 years ago. Me, I'm looking forward to the day Epic wants to make the third installment of Unreal (I want to find the people at Legend Entertainment who were responsible for making Unreal 2 and show them just how appreciative I am that they made a crappy followup to an awesome game... with a flak cannon. Seriously, how can you call it an Unreal game when you think that a crappy shotgun, rocket launcher, and grenade launcher is better than the Flak cannon or any of the other unique weapons of the franchise?)
Half-Life 2: Like I said before, Source is a heavily modified version of the Quakeworld engine. So what makes this game so influential? First, as I said before, it comes with integrated Havok physics. What I failed to tell you is that Valve took physics to a new level and decided to include it as a gameplay element. Up until that time, most FPS's used their physics engines for little more than ragdoll physics, if they even had that. This game radically changed that. It used it's new engine to give the players physics-based puzzles, random objects that you could pick up and throw, and finally, the feature this game is most famous for, the Gravity gun. This gun allows players to throw anything at opponents, and so much more. It allowed you to make quick barricades, stack stuff to make it to normally inaccessible places, and even catch enemy grenades and throw them right back at the enemy who threw it! Also, the fact that they included in-game developer commentary starting on Lost Coast. It shows just how much work it goes into playing a video game. Finally, this game's engine was used in Portal, also released by Valve. If you've played this game, you know what I'm talking about when I say that it is one of the best games ever made.
Marathon: If you have not heard of this game, I don't blame you. This game, released 1 year after DooM, had an interesting storyline with literary value, lots of weapons, and invented freelook as we know it today. The downside: it was released for Macintosh. PC gamers have not had much exposure to this classic. So, why am I even writing about it? Here's why: the studio that made this game is named Bungie. That's right, the guys who made the award-winning Halo franchise made this game. There are many references to this franchise in Halo, and even speculation that the unnamed cyborg in Marathon is in fact Master Chief. It's influential not because of anything to do with the game, but that it kept its developer alive long enough to create the flagship game for Microsoft's video game console. When I heard that Bungie left Microsoft, my first thought was, "Yay! I can look forward to a new Marathon game!" But what I like so much about this game is that it has a coherent storyline that... well, I really can't summarize the story line, so go download Aleph One, the open source version of the game, and play it. You won't regret it.
System Shock 2: I was debating about whether to include this in the list. First off, not a lot of people on this site have ever heard about it, and it's technically a FPS-RPG hybrid, like Deux Ex. Then I found a few reasons. This game's release was overshadowed by Half-Life. Its developer, the now-defunct Looking Glass Studios, whose other major game was Thief: Deadly Shadows. So what are my reasons? Well, System Shock 2 is known for being one of the scariest games ever made (#9 on GT Countdown). Modern gamers have said it felt like a DooM 3 clone, but this was made back in 1998, whereas DooM 3 was made in 2004. System Shock 2 also lives on in one of the best games released in 2007, Bioshock, which had the same developers and writers. Is that influential? I think so. Also, fans of this series are looking forward to the next installment of both series, Bioshock 2 and System Shock 3. That, and it's in the same genre as Deux Ex, one of the best things to come out of that unholy abomination known as Ionstorm, if not any game developer. Good enough reason for it to be on this list.
Goldeneye 007: This game was made by Rare for the N64. That's the thing that makes it so cool! IT COULD RUN ON THE N64! The real reason it's on this list is that it showed how a FPS should be done on consoles. It was based off a good movie, had kickass singleplayer, frantic multiplayer, and had enough weapons and interesting gadgets to make even James Bond drool. (RPC90 whore!) I just realized... I just complimented a game based on a movie. Hear that strange noise? That's the sound of HELL FREEZING OVER. I have a formula that applies to most games: Good/Decent movie + video game adaptation = A piece of s**t game. Goldeneye 007 breaks this formula. This game shows how to do a movie-based video game the right way. Anyway, it also hearkens back to a time long ago when consoles could not connect to the Internet. There was nothing more entertaining than to have four people sitting in front of the same TV, playing the same game, and hearing them taunting, arguing, and cursing at one another. crying *sniff* Good times, good times. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go all nostalgic over in the corner, and remember all the good games I've played.
Unimprezzed · Fri Mar 14, 2008 @ 07:17pm · 0 Comments |
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