Nada y Todo

The last installment of this list ended with Half-Life which was released in autumn of 1998.  Counter-Strike is included with Half-Life for brevity’s sake, but in actuality Counter-Strike would fall in between Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena.  Personally I feel this installment will cover the “golden-age” of FPS gaming if you will. This is where gameplay was defined, and has stayed for the most part.  Without further ado let us begin.

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.

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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 installment 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 chronological order and let you readers decide how they should be ranked.

Wolfenstein 3D (1992)

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.
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