Headshot: A Visual History Of First-Person Shooters

Megalith

Megalith

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Here’s a gander at FPS games throughout the years. My personal list is F.E.A.R. (mechanic: slow-mo), Halo (engine), BioShock (storytelling), and Crysis (graphics).

…there have been many high and low points throughout this long, violent, gory history. Minus '90s cult favorite Descent's (because I personally consider it a flight combat shooter), these are the shooters that pushed the genre forward or held it back. Many of us encountered at least one that truly spoke to us, but together, these titles made it cool to shoot pixel-rendered dudes, dudettes, mutants, and weird alien creatures in the face.
 
The best players in all three of these multiplayer-focused games took to getting around in... unconventional ways. I already mentioned how in Tribes you could fly across the entire map in seconds, but Quake III and Unreal Tournament had gravity-defying maneuvers of their own. You couldn't be competitive at Quake III without mastering rocket and plasma jumps—which entailed shooting downward (with rocket launcher or plasma gun) just after jumping to propel your character upward. (There was also plasma climbing—same principle, but at a particular angle while standing next to a wall.) Similarly, every serious Unreal Tournament player had to know about impact jumping and telefragging, where if you teleported on top of someone they'd die.

All three had massive longevity and thriving competitive scenes. Even now you can still find matches online with little fuss. But times were changing, and the genre was moving in a new direction—one that was less arcade-like and more realistic. The new FPS crop came with a lower skill ceiling, and they were built around maps that were simpler.
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Ain't that the truth...
 
Only main bs i see now is kids who need rechargeable shields.

I prefer map awareness and also straight survival skills. You can really sre a difference in mentality too in mobas and stuff with kids who like being glass canons who always bitch if a tank doesn't protect them all the time. Just learn to juke. It keeps you alive.
 
If it was up to me FPS genre would've died out after we discovered System Shock II and DeusEX

It's not worth to make any lesser games than those two.
 
While the author did a great job he did miss one important feature of FPS games in the early days.

You could use the same tools the devs used and create your own maps to play on your own servers. This was another very big selling point and made those old games last forever (and the reason why we can't do that today).

They did forget the Novalogic series that brought us voxel based maps. Meaning very large outdoor maps (granted being a sniper meant no cover as you always showed up as a black dot in the distance...)
 
To me FPS gaming went sort of like this.

First there was Wolfenstein 3D, which I spent countless hours on, on my 286.

Then there were the single player / death match ID titles like the Dooms and the Quake's. All cool for the time in the 90s, but in retrospect kind of boring and one dimensional. There were some later copycates here, like Unreal, which is really only notable because of its Engine which later became significant.

Then along came Half-Life and revolutionized single player story driven FPS:es, and created the model everyone else has used since.

Then Counter-Strike came out as mod for Half-Life and again changed everything. For the first time multiplayer FPS:es were actually interesting.

Then Deus Ex came out, borrowing heavily from Half Life but adding in role playing elements.

After that things were calm for a while, with all the titles coming out either copying the old school boring death match style (Like Halo, Crysis, etc.), the Half Life story style (games like Metro 2033) the Counter-Strike team based style (Call of Modern Battlefield: Online) or Deus Ex (Fallout 3, S.T.A.L.K.E.R, among others).

The only notable new thing in the last 15 years or so has been the massive Battlefield simulation type games, like Red Orchestra, ARMA, etc.
 
Zarathustra[H];1042139544 said:
To me FPS gaming went sort of like this.

First there was Wolfenstein 3D, which I spent countless hours on, on my 286.

Then there were the single player / death match ID titles like the Dooms and the Quake's. All cool for the time in the 90s, but in retrospect kind of boring and one dimensional. There were some later copycates here, like Unreal, which is really only notable because of its Engine which later became significant.

Then along came Half-Life and revolutionized single player story driven FPS:es, and created the model everyone else has used since.

Then Counter-Strike came out as mod for Half-Life and again changed everything. For the first time multiplayer FPS:es were actually interesting.

Then Deus Ex came out, borrowing heavily from Half Life but adding in role playing elements.

After that things were calm for a while, with all the titles coming out either copying the old school boring death match style (Like Halo, Crysis, etc.), the Half Life story style (games like Metro 2033) the Counter-Strike team based style (Call of Modern Battlefield: Online) or Deus Ex (Fallout 3, S.T.A.L.K.E.R, among others).

The only notable new thing in the last 15 years or so has been the massive Battlefield simulation type games, like Red Orchestra, ARMA, etc.
Click to expand...

I would put duke nukes 3d in there also.

Personally it probably won't register for people but I think soldier of fortune probably impacted a lot on how to do modern motif fps.
 
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