"The golden age of FPS"

[Daft Flores]

I really love all those FPS from the 90s. I spent many moments of my childhood playing games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom I/II, Quake 1/2, Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior, Heretic, Hexen, etc (and it's amazing to play these games even today, after 15-20 years).

But my question is: which game do you think marked the end of this "era" of FPS and the beginning of a new one? Was it Half-Life (1998)? Unreal (1999)? Quake III Arena (1999/2000)? Or other one?

[🌎Earth]

Half-life.
That's when people started wanting more games that start off with slow walking, 30 minute intros, required tutorials, brainless puzzles, linear level design, obvious paths and secrets, etc.
It was a good game but yeah it pretty much killed the industry.

[Daft Flores]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Earth:

Half-life.
That's when people started wanting more games that start off with slow walking, 30 minute intros, required tutorials, brainless puzzles, linear level design, obvious paths and secrets, etc.
It was a good game but yeah it pretty much killed the industry.

Interesting points.

I found this timeline chart of FPS: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b8/FPSChart.svg

Looking at it...what if the "turning point" wasn't Half-Life, but 007 Goldeneye (1997)? It was released only for N64 (and so far, the "house" of FPS games were computers), but I see a lot of elements there too that distance from those classic games I mentioned earlier.

[🌎Earth]

True, but with Goldeneye and Perfect Dark you were dropped right into the action, and there were many different ways and strategies to complete missions, and except for a select few, objectives didn't have to be beaten in a certain order. It still had the "play how you want to play" attitude. The level design was amazing too, and even linear levels like Dam&Datadyne central still had tons of exploration to do. You also gotta love easter eggs. And most importantly, in my opinion, SPEEEEEED. You still moved pretty fast.

[AN BIFFED ELF!!!!]

Halo. When that came out, everyone wanted to be Halo as if it just invented the genre for the first time.


I hate Halo.

[Micky C]

Would people agree that SiN was the last 90's style game?

[Lobstersaurus]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Earth:

Half-life.
That's when people started wanting more games that start off with slow walking, 30 minute intros, required tutorials, brainless puzzles, linear level design, obvious paths and secrets, etc.
It was a good game but yeah it pretty much killed the industry.

At least Half life was innovative and changed ♥♥♥♥ up, which I view as a good thing.... The FPS industry is held back now-a-days by us consumers , who are trained sheep that buy the next "COD" game or "Madden" game that is shoved down our throats even though the game is just a carbon copy of the previous game released. This encourages many large companies to keep things stagnant, focusing soley on the profits instead of making a good game.

[Daft Flores]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Micky C:

Would people agree that SiN was the last 90's style game?

Good call, I forgot Sin in my original post. Yeah, I guess it was one of the last games from this "golden era". I'm sad the the "Sin Episodes" project failed (but then again, Sin episodes tried the emulate Half-Life 2 appeal, instead of the old "Sin", or something new).

Besides Sin, 1998 had other games that were obliterated by the success of the original Half-Life, like Shogo and Blood II, both from Monolith (and very flawed games) and Heretic II (never played this one).

The only one that resisted was Unreal, that manged to gather a large fanbase at the time too.

[AN BIFFED ELF!!!!]

Heretic II was third person so...

What about the games from 1999? Requiem? Redline? AVP?

There's a lot to owe to Tribes also. For a long time, it was the only very playable game on dial-up.

[Daft Flores]

Thanks, I've never played Heretic II, I thought it was a FPS too.

As a big time fan of both Aliens and Predator franchise, when I first bought AvP (which is now renamed as AvP Classic) I had the highest hopes...but I never really got into it I want to give it another try someday, here on Steam. But I think it deviates a lot from the feeling of the "classic" games.

Though there's an obscure game from 1997 called CHASM: THE RIFT. I remember I bought it after seeing it on a list of "worst of all times". It's a total Quake ripoff, with some of the ugliest cutscenes ever made, but it was not that bad - and I think it was one of the first games that you could shoot limbs and dismember enemies (which became very popular after SOLDIER OF FORTUNE, in 2000). For those who also love these oldschool FPS, it's worth a try (but I don't know where you can find it nowadays).

[Micky C]

I heard the level design was a huge problem in Chasm: The Rift. Not only was it excessively maze-like, but it also didn't leave much room to dodge projectiles and placed enemies right around corners. The levels were also incredibly flat when they should have used more height variation to take advantage of the 3D (?) engine.

[Daft Flores]

Yeah. I think all FPS have at least one moment were you enter a wide area, an open space, to show the visuals. There is no such things in CHASM. 90% of the game takes place in narrow (and repetitive) corridors/rooms.

[Sc0ttyz23]

Yeah there were a lot of good FPS games back in the day like Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Half-Life, etc. I kinda wish I could say the same these days.

[Medic Main]

It's time to kick some alien ass and chew bubblegum....And I'm aaall outta gum.

[bobafett_h]

I would agree that GoldenEye 007 and Half-Life were the two games that probably changed the FPS genre the most. GoldenEye especially showed it was possible for FPSes to run well on consoles and also use good story, level design, gameplay etc without resorting to the over-the-top violence of the FPS games on PC at the time.

Half-Life on the other hand was technically brilliant (in regards to graphics, AI, etc.) but also the storytelling was more detailed and interesting than other games I can remember playing before it. The gameplay was linear for the most part (at least when compared to things like Far Cry), but still far more open to exploration and choice than any COD game has been since.

[AN BIFFED ELF!!!!]

The Fortress of Dr. Radiaki deserves a mention for a lot of firsts (including humor and innuendos way before Duke3D did), though its technology and coding implementation obivously didn't age well, with the really REALLY affine wall drawing and the inprecise player movement (just like Quake2 haha!). People (well, retro kids more like) often don't get its B-movie satire and lump it as low quality trash in the same sentence as actual low quality trash like Nerves of Steel. There's a reason why your weapons sound high quality with guns reloading (manually!) and shell casing sounds firing at rats that say 'mmm dinner oww! thank you'. They knew they weren't going to compete with Doom 2 so they lampshaded on themselves to make up for it. It did get a good review score from PCGamer at least :P It's a serious case of SeinfeldIsUnfunny.