Quake became a name synonymous with gaming at one point. This was a game that no one thought could ever exist. Similar things had been attempted and done rather well, but no one had ever gone in and created an entire three dimensional world of polygons from the ground up. John Carmack and Michael Abrash worked their fingers to dust in order to bring this world to life and Quake spawned a new era of gaming.
At this point, the world had become even larger than before and new giants of the era began to arrise. Unreal and Half-life emerged and became some of the most legendary games in the genre. Unreal brought Arena fighting to a whole new level and joined Quake as one of the most beloved 3D First Person Shooters ever created. Unreal Tournament in both its 2004 and 2009 editions were ported to not only PC but consoles as well and are still played in small tournaments to this day. Unreal Gold was released as a full package of the game and it's still amazing.
First Person Shooters had some trouble, though not devoid of success, with the console scene. Doom had been ported well to consoles, for the most part, but by and large, consoles were not the greatest medium for the genre. The controllers on the consoles seldom could do them justice without either a great deal more buttons or, as the future proved, a way to both move forward and aim proficiently. Even before this was very well implimented, we still had the Nintendo 64 with two titles to add with the Turok series and 007: GoldenEye.
GoldenEye should have never worked in the first place, according to the developers. This game was lightning in a bottle and all of them knew it when they found out it became one of the more successful titles of the console. Thanks to the semi-smooth multiplayer elements of the game, players were able to customize their own death battle experiences and it became common place to find this played in many circles. While it was one that did not age well at all, many will stick by this game no matter what.
Half-life, on the other hand, exploded far BIGGER than Unreal, even if it never had a promised third installment. Ironically enough, Valve created Half-life and Steam. It is because of Steam that you can play the majority of the titles in these FPS articles and even some Sega Saturn titles. It is also because of Steam that we never got a proper Half-life 3. Half-life 2, Team Fortress Classics and 2 and Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead 1 & 2 are still played to this day as well. Sven's Coop and Garry's Mod are ways for you to even customize your own content and levels. All of these games' DNA can be traced back to Half-life. This game is a mega hit in its own right, it's just a shame we never got answers on its main character, Gordan Freeman's ultimate fate. We can still play a barrage of amazing games as a result, though.
One title that had a very welcome return to form with its greatest title was Wolfenstein! Return to Castle Wolfenstein was released in 2001 to grand displays of both gameplay and graphics of the time. It used the Quake 3 Engine and brought back so many large staples of the genre! It is still popularly considered the highest point in the series to this day, although, The New Order is also a contender for that title. RtCW brought about much more of the occult to the Wolfenstein series, even going so far as to add a flamethrower, dual wielding chainguns and a Tesla Gun for lightning effects. While it does have some unwielding stealth sections that people consider a lowpoint in the title, this is still a solid First Person Shooter.
Quake had an amazing release, but its sequels are seen as lesser titles for more than one reason. Quake 2 was not even supposed to be Quake 2 in the first place, but in lieu of a better idea and because John Romero no longer on the creative team, they just stuck with it. It was seen as much more mundane and flavorless. Quake 3 Arena just went and skipped all of the storylines altogether and smashed the entire "Doom-verse" together. Doomguy, Quake's Ranger and Quake 2's Bitterman were now all in one game.
When you talk about the First Person Shooter genre and Quake, unfortunately, you must also inevitably talk about DaiKatana. Marred with bad AI, bad decisions and poorly planned levels, John Romero wanted to make his masterpiece akin to Doom. What he created was one of the largest falls from grace in gaming history. It joined the many failed Quake clones out there. Yes, they're Quake Clones now. This nickname didn't stick as the name "First Person Shooter" had actually been coined around by then.
Friends could now LAN party it up with an entire army of titles that came from so many sources. Even the Half-life vanilla Death Match servers were active for a good while. Tournaments sparked off in the 90's but they were so commonplace by the end of the 90's that, by the 2000's, you could literally go to any major city and the chances were that there was going to be a Gamer Party to some capacity. With the advent of the internet, Death Matching went world wide.
We could go straight into Halo, as it slammed into the Xbox scene and we could go into FarCry, Metroid Prime, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Bioshock, Painkiller, TimeSplitters, and any number of other First Person Shooters that shifted the tide of the run-and-gun shooters. However, we're going to focus our energies on some of the most awesome FPS series and most recognizable of the genre. This is a wide category of the gaming world, so stay tuned!
