Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six (1998)

While Half-Life brought a new cinematic narrative feel to first person gaming, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six (Rainbow Six from here on) is the granddaddy of realism in shooters. Rainbow Six was released in fall of 1998, before the book by Tom Clancy was published.  If you’ve read the book and played the game you’ll know how the plot of each twists around one another but never quiet meet up together, this is due to changes in the book before publication.  Rainbow Six features all the gun porn any firearm nut could ever need, from the MP5SD all the way up to the Walther 2000.

Not only was the game chocked full of guns and their toys but the gameplay and movement were as realistic as games had come so far.  You moved at a realistic walking pace, there was no random jumping around with firearms, when you aimed it took a second or two to steady it to aim accurately and perhaps most difficult, one well placed shot meant a kill.  While many games up to this point had applied one shot kills to the head or with a railgun, this was the first time we had seen realistic damage from guns.  Let’s not also forget the real time strategy element of commanding and leading multiple fire teams through the game.  Since this original release the Rainbow Six franchise has been one of the most popular IP’s in gaming.

Starsiege Tribes (1998)

While many would be left to believe that the Battlefield series are the first shooter games that introduced players to large environments, vehicles, and infantry combat, Tribes brought all of the following together a few years before.  Starsiege Tribes was released by the now defunct Dynamix in fall of 1998, and now as freeware.   The first thing any player experienced in Tribes was the scale of the game you were in.  Instead of battling in hallways and common areas players now could battle on a planet surfaces that spanned kilometers, instead of fighting in a building that spanned a couple hundred feet in each direction.

To cover these large expanses of terrain players could use vehicles or, much more common, could use their jet packs to fly and ski across the map.  The Tribes Jet Pack, who can forget this wonder of game design.  Not since Tribes has such a innovative item been introduced, and sadly has it been utilized.  While Tribes featured vehicles to traverse the map, the majority of players simply preferred to use their jet pack to fly around the map while raining death down from upon with the disc launcher.  It really is a shame we haven’t seen a similar Tribes style jet pack implemented into more first person shooters, having a what feels like limitless vertical axis adds a whole new dimension to gameplay.

To really understand what Tribes brought to the first person genre, one has to have played it.  Not only were vehicles and large environments featured in this game, but players could also build bases, deploy turrets and sensors, and be able to access all battlefield information on their PDA.  Just think of all of the games that now use similar features, then realize Tribes did this all ten years ago.  Broadband was in it’s early days when this masterpiece was released.  If you’ve never played Tribes, do yourself a favor and download and play it.

Unreal Tournament (1999)

Unreal Tournament came racing out of the gates in autumn of 1999, bringing with it a rich, polished FPS experience. The game, originally designed to be played as head to head deathmatch, featured some of the most polished team gameplay as well as original and entertaining game modes seen yet with first person shooters. The game was best enjoyed online, however the Bots and their AI included with the game made fora very enjoyable offline experience. Unreal Tournament, like Half-Life, was a popular modding platform, which helped it remain a contender for years to come.

Perhaps the most influential features of Unreal Tournament were it’s introduction of the Domination and Assault game modes.  While most FPS had been Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, or Capture the Flag up to this point, Unreal Tournament added game modes that focused on controlling specific points on the map (Domination) and capturing the opposing team’s base quicker then the other team could do it (Assault).  The Domination game type has been given a new feature in the spotlight with the release of Call of Duty 4.  Terrific presentation, balanced weapons, new game play modes, and having AI Bot’s that were able to compete with other players all made Unreal Tournament a strong and influential FPS, however barely a week later a well known FPS titan would hit the scene.

Quake 3 Arena (1999)

As mentioned Quake 3 Arena came crashing on to the scene just ten days after Unreal Tournament was released.  Both games featured AI Bots for single play experience, but they were pure multiplayer shooters by design.  Gone were the days of looking for the red key to open the red door followed by searching for a blue key and so forth, now Quake was simply about killing those who oppose.  While there was a multiplayer mode, it consisted of battling bots on the game’s levels while progressing through tiers of maps to fight the ultimate boss, Xaero.

The multiplayer was a new, refined, minimalistic Quake which rewarded skill and reflex over weapon choice.  Just as with Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 featured perhaps the most balanced selection of weapons seen in a FPS to date. Level design in Quake 3 brought new, refreshing gameplay by the use wide open maps as well as the use of launch pads as seen in q3dm17.  While Quake 3 Arena was a terrific game on it’s own, the use of it’s engine is perhaps the most significant contribution that Quake 3 Arena has added to gaming.  The Quake 3 Engine (id Tech 3) was the engine Call of Duty, Soldier of Fortune 2, American McGee’s Alice, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and a multitude of other games ran on, thus giving the technology behind Quake 3 one of the longest life spans seen to date for an engine.

Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)

Halo, the great divider.  As a lifelong computer FPS gamer it’s hard for me to accept playing a FPS on a controller for a console with autoaim.  Not only does it feel unnatural, but it feels dirty.  However for one to deny what Halo has brought to the console FPS scene would be asinine.  Halo brought the console FPS out of the split-screen era and into the online era.  Now before I go any further, understand that Halo didn’t feature any online play out of the box, nor officialy, but what it did was enabled players to LAN together and play in 16 player games, a true first for a console, let alone a console first person shooter.

While many, including myself will be the first to argue that Halo brought absolutely nothing new to the table, and in fact stripped alot of FPS features away, the impact it made on console gaming is huge.  Not since Goldeneye redefined how a genre is played or would be played from here on out.  Halo brought together entire dorms playing it networked, friends would have little gaming parties where everyone would bring their own TV and console to hook up together for some Deathmatch fun.  No longer was the idea of LAN parties and Online gaming a PC exclusive, now it was avaliable to the average gamer playing a game from the comfort of their couch.  Including Halo 2 and 3 along with Halo clearly shows the reach that the original Halo had.  There have been well over a billion Halo games played online so far now, and many more to come.