InDis’ Top 5 Most Influential FPS games

Ok, so FPS games have been around for years now. It’s likely the most saturated genre in videogaming today.

It seems that even though the game market is flooded with dozens of FPS games every year, it’s still the most played genre of videogaming in North America.

Whatever the case, whenever the conventional gameplay becomes stale, A new FPS comes along to add just the right amount of kick to hook people once again.

That got us thinking about the top most influential and genre defining FPS we’ve seen since its conception

 Starting with:

 

NUMBER 5: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Sure, the game is relatively new (2 years old to be exact), but this is a game that not only rejuvenated the Call of Duty series, but gave new life to the entire shooter genre in general.

Infinity Ward took its ninja like programming skills and turned a very tiresome WWII shooter into a fast-paced, modern affair. Just when people were beginning to think “Great, another WWII game….can’t wait to storm Normandy AGAIN!” Infinity Ward came through and gave people a reason to care again, but that is not why it is influential.

COD4: MW did and almost perfected what few shooters tried to do before it. It combined a fast-paced, twitch-like shooter with RPG style level-ups and loot grabbish carrots on the end of a totally irresistible stick of awesomeness no racial slurring pubescent gamer (or responsible adult) could turn down.

The perk system added incentive to try out different variants of play styles as well as teach you how to customize your loadout depending on the situation. Weapon upgrades were always right in front of you, yet just out of reach, giving the game that “ok just one more match” feeling that drives us gamers to keep playing for that next item of pimpage we can use on our bullethose of choice.

Even when you’ve reached the level cap, the game put you in quite the dilemma. Do I stay at the top level with all my rad perks and sweet loot, but get ridiculed by peers and other random basement marine for not “Prestiging”? Or do I start all over again from level 1, but know I’m THAT hardcore!! Hence, always dangling that carrot in front of you.

Infinity Ward truly knew what people wanted when they developed COD4: MW. They knew us gamers have ADD and the best thing to keep us playing is keep giving us something new. It worked, as pretty much every game since has tried to include something similar.

NUMBER 4: 007: Goldeneye

To many gamers out there, Goldeneye is the Don Mega of all console FPS. It came around at the perfect time. FPS games were booming on the PC and besides a few mediocre PC ports the genre wasn’t exactly taking off on consoles. Enter 007: Goldeneye on the N64.

The game was developed by Rare from the ground up to be a console specific FPS. It wasn’t quite as twitchy as the current PC games but it made sense on a console. It slowed down gameplay a bit and made good use of the controller for its time (although using face buttons to move around felt pretty cumbersome), but most importantly, it added to home consoles what PC gamers have been bragging about for years: multiplayer.

Goldeneye was the first console FPS that let you and up to 3 friends battle it out for anything from the last beer in the fridge to bragging rights. It gave the same level of competition as other games such as Madden or the ever beloved Street Fighter series. In fact, Goldeneye even had it’s own Sagat……Oddjob, I’m looking at you.

Goldeneye quickly became the go-to game during get-togethers or random dorm battles across the nation. Going back to the game now it doesn’t exactly hold up. It’s just slightly easier to look at then your Aunt Bunny in a bikini contest and it has a framerate that would make Lair feel like it accomplished something. For the time, however, it was revolutionary. It truly offered console gamers something equal to its PC brethren. Sadly, no other devs could unseat Goldeneye, until our next game…….

NUMBER 3: Halo: Combat Evolved

Ever since Goldeneye was released, no other developer seemed to want to take advantage of what Rare did. Developers were still enamored with trying to mimic PC shooters on a console, which didn’t really work in the past. Because of this, no other game had grabbed gamers like Goldeneye did back in 1997. Not until 5 years later anyways.

In November of 2007 Microsoft launched its first console, the Xbox, into the market. Alongside its launch was a little known game called Halo. Bungie Studios did exactly what Rare did years before: they didn’t focus on recreating the PC experience on a console. Rather, they built the game to work on a console from the beginning. Again, like Rare, they slowed the gameplay down a bit to make the game more playable on a pad, but also did much more to capture the hearts of FPS heads everywhere.

The PS2 and Xbox were the first consoles to make dual analog sticks a standard. Bungie took advantage. They made dual sticks the default setup. It forced gamers to get used to using the left stick for movement and the right stick to control the aiming. Sure, it took a bit to get used to but once you had it, no other control scheme felt right. Bungie even simplified further by limiting the player to only two main weapons plus grenades thus alleviating the player of weapons management and more complex controls. That’s not to say a lot of weapons at once isn’t a good thing – Halo just wanted it to be simple. This setup caught on right away and many other shooters utilize not only the Halo control, but its design for the controls to this day.

Completing the pattern, Halo: CE also took a page from Rares book’O’Console shooters; it’s multiplayer. Halo not only let you and up to 3 friends play on a single console, it also let you hook up multiple consoles together via lan cable to have 16 players locally. Sure, it’s not the first time it’s been done, but Bungie’s control scheme, multiplayer options and ease of setup (provided you have enough TVs and consoles) earned a place upon the throne that is college dorm rooms and man caves everywhere. Goldeneye was finally unseated.

I didn’t even mention the large open environments, the vehicular combat or the two player co-op campaign mode, all of which were new to consoles. Either way you look at it, Halo: CE was truly revolutionary outside of the PC world.

NUMBER 2: Half-Life

In 1998, Valve introduced us to yet another chapter in the history of FPS. Before the game was released, FPS games pretty much put a zombie trance on the population of gaming. The games usually dropped you into a scenario, gave a brief description as to why you were there and you went from A to B blasting holes into everything that moved. Problem was, nothing really happened inbetween.

I will always remember the first time I played Half-Life. I went over to a friends house and we started it up. From the opening sequence I knew I was seeing innovation first hand. I couldn’t believe I was taking a train through a building while getting spoken to by NPC characters all while I was in control. I guess Valve thought that it wasn’t worth it to produce expensive CG cutscenes to tell a story when they can do everything in engine and let the player literally play out the storyline while it happens. These scripted events were something truly refreshing and I’m sure many can agree that Valve should be praised for introducing it so well.  Because of this, the pacing of Half-Life always felt right. It never took you out of the experience and really made you feel as if you were a part of the story.

Like our number one game, Valve opened up Half-Life through the community; releasing modding tools for anyone to take advantage of. Many of you have probably played or at least heard of Counter Strike, a totally different game built on the Half-Life engine. This was actually made by a member of the community, not Valve themselves. It also gave new life to the game after release with Team Fortress; another class based multiplayer FPS which could have shown up on this list.

NUMBER 1: DOOM

Yes, DOOM. This was a hard decision. Wolfenstein 3D was the first FPS to land but DOOM really set the standard and did arguably put the FPS genre on the map. I’ll admit Wolfenstein 3D may have stopped people from from playing Commander Keen 12 and Sierra point-and-click adventure 27, but it didn’t quite make us crave more.

DOOM came out in 1993 from ID software, back when shareware was as popular as a pre-order multiplayer beta is today. It featured the worlds first FPS space marine and, ok..why am I rambling on? who the F*%& hasn’t played DOOM?

This is why it’s our number one. It had the single player, but it also was the first time we could enjoy blasting our friends with a BFG miles away in the comfort of our own homes and our own dial-up connection. It consisted of both Deathmatch and co-op modes and for a lot of people it could very well have been the first time they’ve ever experienced such a thing.

On top of that it offered up mod tools which have become almost mandatory for PC game releases at the present time. People could create different skins, levels and so forth and distribute them to whomever they wanted.

Without DOOM who knows what an FPS would look like today? I’m sure we’d still have 13-year-olds telling us how much we suck and what our sexual orientation is, but would it have happened as fast as it did? Who knows really. All I can say is, I’m happy I played DOOM when I did and I’m happy developers to this day still follow in its footsteps.

Oh yeah…..and it was gory as hell!!

OK so there you have it. Interactive Distraction’s Top 5 Most Influential FPS Games.

So many games were left off, but we had to make the decision in regard to what we think had the biggest overall impact over the years.  The FPS genre has been around for what has seemed like an eternity and may even feel like it’s been played to death, but the games like above and the sales of the recent Modern Warfare 2 prove that it’s definitely here to stay. Hmm. Wonder what games will continue to help it evolve?