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Picking The Top Ten FPS Titles Of All-Time
Thanks to GameSpot for its 'TenSpot' feature selecting picks for the top ten first-person shooter (FPS) games of all-time. The article argues: "So what makes a first-person shooter good? Is it a cohesive story and a well-designed campaign? A creative multiplayer mode? How about a devastating arsenal of weapons? Or fiendishly clever AI enemies? The games in this list exhibit one or more of these qualities and have all affected the way shooters are made in a tangible and lasting way." It goes on to identify top titles such as Duke Nukem 3D ("...good-natured attitude... great level design, and solid engine"), Battlefield 1942 ("...an excellent game made better by retail expansion packs"), and, naturally, Doom ("one of the true classics of computer gaming.")
Is anyone else getting tired of these monthly polls that rank the top games, FPS, strange NPCs, in-game music, text-based games, etc. etc. of all time? How many times must we slice and dice the past? Contemporize! :)
They did mention Marathon, and that Halo is the current version. They even talked about how great it was. Probably not exactly what you were looking for, but it is there.
I had to look up the dates, but heres the list of games that I played way too many hours on, in order. .
1992 Wolfenstien 3D
1993 Doom
1994, Heretic, Rise of the Triad (Overlooked as Doom came out before it and took most of the credit for FPS games)
Then later that year Doom2 came out.
1995 Hexen
1996 Terminator Skynet (My favorite at the time) and of course Quake.
1997 Quake 2, Hexen 2, Shadow Warrior, Blood
1998 Unreal, Tribes, Half-life, SiN, Blood2,
1999 Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament
2000 Soilder of Fortune, Heavy Metal Fakk2 (That one collected Dust, But I Finally went back and finished it), KISS Psycho Circus (Didnt play this one much, but it was lots of fun)
2001 Return to Castle Wolfenstien, Serious Sam, Red Fraction, Tribes2(Many patch problems, but damn if it dont run great in 2004!) Max Payne, Ghost Recon
2002 BF1942, UT2003, SoF2, MOHAA, Serious Sam 2
2003 Call of Duty, XIII (Didnt get into this one as much), Unreal2.
I still find myself playing CounterStrike and Tribes, with some Mohaa, Serious Sam1/2 action. Don't think all my choices are all mainstream.
But the first game that kept me playing for hours was Duke Nukem 3D on ipx lan parties, so that has to be my number 1 choice.
Then Tribes lasted over 4 years, then Counterstrike going on 5.
I question the value of this poll. How many people can honestly say they have played most of the FPSs in existence (or at least most of the ones on the list) and are therefore in a position to judge which one is the best? People will vote for the only game on the list that they've played, so it'll simply boil down to "which game is currently the most popular?" and of course, the winner will be something that was released within the last year. This, in my opinion, is a subject best left to objective videogames reviewers.
Besides which, "best" is poorly defined. Are we talking the most fun games to play right NOW? Or the games that were the best at the time they came out? Or the games that were the most influential?
qntm.org
That was truly one of the best first person shooters I ever played - incredibily atmospheric, and for the time had some very nice graphics.
For those of you who didnt play it (no excuse at all), its rather closely linked to the whole Star Wars (it was called that in '77, and so thats what im calling it) - not to mention the fun of running around Imperial Instalations being chased by Stormtoopers shouting "Stop, Rebel Scum!"
For a game released in early 1995, there wasnt much to touch it (apart from Doom) - you could Jump AND Crouch - pretty much a full year before Duke Nukem 3D.
Never heard of a game called Decent. Sounds decent.
I've played *Descent* before though, and that was a good game.
Fading into history, one letter at a time. :)
The ______ Agenda
Decent and Decent 2 were revolutionary for their time, creating an experience so original (and nauseating)
Yes, nauseating. Almost all succesful FPS games of today are constrained to 2 dimensions of play. Sure you can jump, and fly in some games, but for the most part they are simplified to 2d.
Decent was an attempt at marrying legacy flight sims(falcon, wing commander, etc) and games like Wolfenstein. It was very confusing, and quite frankly it didn't work.
Imagine trying to explain to people that you need a PC because the Mac keyboard won't let you strafe down-backwards-left while rotating up-right and firing.
You still can't explain it to people...much less enjoy doing it in a game.
Counter-strike, TFC, Doom, Tribes, Everquest, all of these are popular because they appeal to our nature. Plane contsrained first person perspective is natural and engrossing. If we were a species of fish, or birds instead of homo-sapiens...maybe decent would be more popular(and thus more copied) than it was. But we are for the most part 2-demensional beings, and we like our games that way too.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Some people have no taste
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