Add to the above that the actual game wasn't that good, and on a post-Turok and Turok 2 era it just didn't make a splash, sadly. Still, it did things people noticed and re-introduced later on in other games, in a better way.
Then you had a slew of games that didn't really veer off the tried and true formula of the last decade.
Games such as Blood 2: The Chosen (1998), which had little to do with the
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| Blood 2: The Chosen |
original Blood and introduced multiple characters (a trick it picked up from Hexen, only did it better) and had actual 3D graphics, and, unless I'm mistaken, was the first game to introduce dual wielding weapons. We haven't heard from Blood since, and at this point we likely never will.
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| Sin |
Or Sin (1998), which was based on the Quake II engine and created a 90es future cop B-movie story, complete with charismatic oversexualised female corporate CEO villain Elexis Sinclair and the main character's name being Blade. Sin had one expansion and an episodic pseudo-sequel, last seen in 2007, and is now presumed MIA.
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| Requiem: Avenging Angel |
Then you had Requiem: Avenging Angel (1999), that tried to marry the supernatural with the sci-fi, having the main character being an angel called Malachi who weilded a variety of high-tech, supernatural and conventional weapons. Apart from some smart (but potentially game-breaking) weapon design, this one wasn't particularly memorable and is only mentioned for posterity.
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| Daikatana |
Speaking of not particularly memorable games, I gots to mention Daikatana (2000). Daikatana was designed by John Romero, one of the original Doom creators and entirely too full of himself rockstar game designers. Daikatana isn't memorable as a game, but is extremely memorable as a flop. Hyped to hell, when it finally landed it turned out that the sci-fi mystical mythological plot was a mess, NPC pathfinding and AI was atrocious, game design was full of ideas that might have looked good on paper but simply didn't work or even mesh well together, level design was mediocre at best and weapon design was broken. Combine that with an extremely boring first level (and game in general), and you have a recipe for failure. It single handedly vindicated John Carmack (the Carmack-Romero "rivalry" was the reason the latter left id Software), ruined Romero's career and made gamers wary of the hype beast...at least for a while.
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| Unreal |
On the other hand, Unreal (1998) was built on the Quake II recipe: one lone survivor on a alien planet, against overwhelming odds. Where it differed? Well, for starters, you weren't a marine: you were a prisoner, whose transport had crash landed on the planet Na Pali. Your gender wasn't set in stone: you got to choose male or female, and what your model looked like (though you never really saw it). Unreal also featured genuinely scary and pseudo-supersmart enemies (the reptilian Skaarj), an engaging atmosphere and an interesting story. The gameplay wasn't anything new, but the weapon design was: the Unreal weapons were iconic, interesting, were more than variations of Doom weapons (like so many games' were) and all had an alternate way of fire that gave the players, effectively, twice as many weapons and combos. One example: the Shock Rifle would normally fire one concentrated, instantaneous beam of plasma. Its alternate fire would shoot one slow-moving, devastating ball of plasma. Now, if you shot that ball of plasma with the primary fire beam... boom. Shock Rifle indeed. Or the rocket launcher that would primarily shoot one rocket at a time, or would keep loading rockets as long as you kept the alternate fire button pressed and unleash up to 6 of them at the same time, either in a spread angle or as a tight cluster formation.
The graphics were (forgive the pun) unreal for its time, and the various iterations of the Unreal engine have become a staple in the gaming industry to this day. If you're on the younger side, chances are you're not familiar with
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| Seem familiar? |
Unreal, Unreal 2 or its multiplayer-focused editions (the Unreal Tournament reboot is still being developed in conjunction with the community and is available to all for free), but you're likely familiar with the Unreal/Unreal Engine's logo and visuals. Unreal had one expansion (Return to Na Pali), and one rather forgettable direct sequel in 2003 (Unreal 2) that included NPCs you could interact with, one hub area (your spaceship), various environments and an impressive array of weapons old and new (including one of the best flamethrowers in gaming), but was, ultimately, mediocre in everything except its stunning visuals.
Of course, that's just the single player side of it. Unreal was a big boss in multiplayer, starting with Unreal Tournament and culminating in Unreal Tournament 2004, but more on those games later.
Back into single player, now we can talk about Half-Life (1998).
Half-Life redefined the genre, and to a large degree set major stones in the structure we know as gaming this day. And it did it, largely, oh so subtly. It all started with an unknown developer, Valve, releasing their game through Sierra, the earstwhile colossus, already waning at the time.
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| Half-Life |
The actual game built up with a slow start, on the tram heading deep into the underground Black Mesa facility, a normal day at the hazardous materials lab for mute protagonist PhD holder Gordon Freeman. Until it all goes tits up, and you're set up to open up a portal to the alternate dimension Xen, which is itself a dimensional crossroads of sorts. From there, Gordon must navigate the labs in the aftermath of the destruction, with headcrab aliens (strongly reminiscent of Alien's facehuggers) both attacking him or turning his former colleagues into headcrab zombies in search for the surface. And then the army shows up. Huzzah, you're saved! But...wait...why is the army killing all survivors? Why are they so keen not to leave any witnesses? And just who the hell is that gaunt man in a blue-grey suit and briefcase shadowing your steps along the way?
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| Half-Life |
Though it used a heavily modified version of the Quake engine, said engine wasn't overtly impressive, though it did things with light and lighting that were phenomenal for its time. Where Half-Life completely won over gamers was with its amazing design: gameplay, level design, enemy design, weapon design (from the lowly crowbar to the prototype Gauss Rifle), story design and atmosphere...they were truly groundbreaking for its time, and still holds up immensely to this day. Even the mute protagonist wasn't by stinginess or inability to give him a personality and voice. Gordon was a tabula rasa, a blank slate that instead of throwing out some exposition or throwaway lines every now and then, was there as a vessel for you to experience, interpret and react to the unfolding plot in your own way, giving players a front row seat to the plot.
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| Opposing Force |
Add to that its moddability (easily on par with the previous king, Quake and Quake II), and you had a Classic On Arrival. It's no wonder that mods such as Team Fortress moved from Quake to Half-Life (with a brief pit stop on Unreal), and it's no wonder that mods such as Counter-Strike became a reality (fun fact: CS was initially a fan mod before Valve bought it and hired the guys who made it to make it a new, official release). Apart from a ton of mods, Half-Life was succeeded by two expansions and one sequel and its expansions so far (more on those later down the line). First, the traditional expansion Opposing Force that retold the same story, but through the eyes of Adrian Shephard, one of the US Army Marines sent to Black Mesa after the accident. Second, the standalone expansion Blueshift that did the same but through the eyes of one of Black Mesa's security guards. Blueshift is unique in that it was criminally short, and the only truly bad game Valve has put out so far. It was also known as Blueshit among gamers when it came out. 'Nuff said.
If you intend to experience this classic nowadays, I suggest doing it via Half-Life: Source (that updates the engine to that of Half-Life 2) or even the Black Mesa unofficial, standalone reboot. Oh, and that studio that created it? Went on to bank the release of their sequel on their own platform, which was none other than Steam. We all know how that turned out.
Let's do a rapid-fire round of other notable late 90es/early 00es games before we go to the Next Big Thing™.
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| Kingpin: Life of Crime |
Things kept moving towards the direction we know today with a little game called Kingpin: Life of Crime (1999), another game built on the Quake 2 engine. Kingpin was set in a grimy 1930es-esque urban environment, and included more realistic damage models, grittier tone and weapons, adult language, and (greatly influenced by Strife) included hirable thugs-NPCs, pawn shops to sell stuff and buy better gear and ammo, and hub areas. A crime-revenge story with no good or bad guys, (they were all grey, including yourself), no-brainer little touches (such as being able to modify your weapon with a silencer, or having to holster your weapon to not be treated with hostility from NPCs), Kingpin truly was ahead of its time. It was greatly bashed by non-gamers and PC critics for its language and violence (remember, it was the time where "violence in videogames" was enough to trigger old bags of bones seeking re-election from a conservative base to go into full-blown outrage), and unfortunately did not receive the right kind of attention and sales figures it deserved.
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| Soldier of Fortune |
In part, this was both alleviated and exacerbated by the release of Soldier of Fortune (2000) a few months afterwards. Soldier of Fortune was a by-the-numbers shooter using id Tech 2, that would be utterly forgettable save for one feature: a targeted model damage system. This meant that if you shot a terrorist in the head? It would explode. You shot them in the arm with a shotgun? No more arm. Shot them in the leg? They'd soon be bleeding out on the floor, missing a leg. Many a player found themselves shooting the crap out of already dead enemies, amputating limbs and morbidly testing this system. This was more of a gimmick than anything else, of course, and didn't really affect the gameplay in a significant way. Disarming (heh) an enemy was nothing more than a flashier death animation rather anything else. Still, it was a good gimmick, and its (for the time) ultra gore both lured those that wanted it, and repulsed those who were scared of it. There is literally nothing else of significant note for this game and its sequel, Soldier of Fortune 2: Double Helix in 2002.
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| Return to Castle Wolfenstein |
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| Wolfenstein (2009) |
Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001) was the first sequel to the original, and it was nigh unrecognisable to its predecessor. It introduced a cool, long plot that included mostly occult elements, but at the same time kept the Nazi-super science angle that was present (but represented in a limited way) in the original. The game was good, but truth be told it wasn't a benchmark game, and didn't really raise the bar in terms of gameplay. Except it did, through the multiplayer mode Enemy Territory, which soon followed the example of Counter-Strike and became a standalone, official game. Of course, at the time it had to compete with Day of Defeat (the other multiplayer WW2 mod, this time for Half-Life). But I digress: as a single-player affair, RtCW was a good, atmospheric game that did well, but not really an unmissable one that stood the test of time that well. It was followed by the totally missable Wolfenstein in 2009, a game that's since been buried (you can't really find it for digital purchase anywhere nowadays, unless you manage to find a sealed boxed copy with a Steam code that hasn't been used, or a used console hard copy). It was also followed later on by Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014), the quasi-prequel Wolfenstein: The Old Blood (2015) and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (2017), but more on those later.
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| Red Faction |
Roughly at the same time, Red Faction (2001) took a look at Soldier of Fortune's damage model, and figured: what if you could do this to the environment? Lo and behold, the first game with (almost) fully destructible environments was born. Was that pesky wall in the way? Shoot a rocket at it, and there was no more wall. You weren't sure how to get past in indestructible wall? Shoot rockets at the floor and tunnel underneath it. The game itself was a little formulaic in design apart from that, and despite a cult fanbase and two first-person sequels and one third person one (Red Faction II in 2002, Red Faction: Armaggeddon in 2010 and the third-person Red Faction: Guerilla in 2009), it never really became an AAA franchise. Poor sales of the last game made THQ drop the series altogether, and after they declared bankruptcy and shut down it's unlikely (but not impossible) that a sequel or reboot is forthcoming.
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| Serious Sam: First Encounter |
Around the same time, in 2001, Croteam developed and distributed a proof of concept for their upcoming game which was picked up and released shortly afterwards, called Serious Sam: First Encounter. Serious Sam had a lot more arcade-y feel, and carried DNA both from Duke Nukem (Sam is basically a raven-haired, more PC Duke) and games like Turok (with their large open environments). But more than that, Sam carried over influences from actual arcade shooters: weapons didn't need reloading. Enemies would swarm your (and be killed by you) by the dozens, plural. Some silly weapons, and enemies both silly and "terrifying". Both the tone and colour palette were light, and the "plot" formulaic and forgettable. But oh my god, was it fun. If you're looking to delve into it, keep in mind that the Serious Sam franchise is needlessly indeterminate when it comes to naming each installment. For example, the sequel was called Serious Sam: Second Encounter (2002). Then you had Serious Sam 2 (2005), rather than 3. Then HD remasters of the first two games, in 2009 and 2010. Then Serious Sam 3: BFE in 2011, and an upcoming Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass, set to be released in 2019.
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Avp, Avp 2, AvP reboot,
Alien: Colonial Marines
and Alien: Isolation |
Back in the olden days of 1993, there was an arcade and console Final Fight-esque beat-em-up called Aliens Versus Predator. This combined two different Fox franchises into one game, in an expanded universe that was a baby step to what, for example, the MCU has become now. Despite the non-plot, the game was great, and proved that gamers were quite keen to both play as Predators, and versus Xenomorphs.
So, when Rebellion released their own first person shooter take in 1999, called Aliens Versus Predator, old-timers were hopeful, middle-schoolers were apprehensive (due to the recent mediocre takes on shooters in the Alien franchise) and the new kids were like "huh"? But in reality, we needn't have worried: Rebellion delivered an amazing experience. Far from the travesty of the films of the same name (which came after the games), AvP was an excellent shooter that made stellar use of the three different characters on offer: the titular Alien and Predator, and the link in between, the Marine. All three characters went roughly through the same levels, retelling the story from different viewpoints (not quite Rashomon, but close), each playing to its unique strengths and having the game be quite different depending on which character you played. The Marine was standard shooter fare, with the added elements of horror and shock scares (complete with heartrate-punishing motion detector). The Alien was a glass cannon, agile hunter that could stick to walls and ceilings and had to resort to hit and run tactics. And the Predator was a versatile...well, predator, with a variety of devastating weapons and abilities.
The game was followed by the equally excellent Aliens Versus Predator 2 in 2003 (this time developed by Monolith), the critically acclaimed Aliens Vs Predator reboot in 2010, the controversially bad Aliens: Colonial Marines in 2013 and in the superb (but not a shooter, more like horror hide and seek) Alien: Isolation in 2014, that saw a lone woman (playing off the plot of the first film's Ripley) try to progress through a ship while hiding from a lone, ultra smart Xenomorph.
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| NOLF & NOLF 2 |
Now, let's take a step back, into the swingin' 60es. Except, not really. We'll just take a look at The Operative: No One Lives Forever (2000) and its sequel, No One Lives Forever: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way (2002). The NOLF games (as they're known) are quite beloved. One partial reason for that is the nostalgia factor, and that they've never been re-released (and due to an extremely complicated rights situation, no one has much hope for a re-release). But the main reason, if we're honest, is that Monolith produced absolute gems in these games. A tongue-in-cheek homage to 60es spy films and TV shows, James Bond and the 60es aesthetic (brought to the cultural forefront at the time thanks to the Austin Powers films), NOLF starred female empowered character Cate Archer, and had an equally silly and engaging plot, with villainous organizations, henchmen, baddies, espionage and of course a wide array of spy gadgets masquerading as ordinary items. Monolith brought their rather impressive shooter experience to bear, and with its story-driven campaign, excellent humour and the subject matter being so much more than a novelty, the NOLFs were a runaway success, both to critics and gamers alike.
I promise you, we're working towards the Next Big Thing™. Have patience for just a little while more. Some of the games mentioned above were essential building blocks for the Next Big Thing™, and some just happened to implement elements near-simultaneously to it (such as the one below). They are however essential in building our narrative towards it.
Command & Conquer: Renegade...I legitimately have trouble wrapping my head around this one, even 17 years after it came out. When Westwood Studios, a studio of world-wide fame for its sublime real-time strategy C&C games, one hopeful (but ultimately unmemorable) action RPG in Nox and one exceptionally ambitious and, to this day, best film-to-game adaptation adventure game in Blade Runner brought out a first person shooter in 2002, it divided gamers. Divided them in the way that C&C fans cried "A what?" and shooter fans cried "By whom?".
Westwood Studios had two established universes courtesy of their C&C main franchise and Red Alert offshoot franchise. The former was set in a not too distant future where a new meteorite-borne, spreading crystalline resource called Tiberium was slowly poisoning the world and had divided the world between the UN-type, military-based Global Defense Intitiative (GDI for short) and the militant super cult, Brotherhood of Nod and its charismatic and mysterious leader, Kane. Both GDI and Nod were locked in battle for control of Tiberium and, subsequently, the world (in a plot that had strong parallels to the Dune book/film which Westwood had adapted to RTS game form years earlier, in the first RTS game to be made).
The latter was a bonkers alternate timeline where Albert Einstein travelled back in time, assassinated Hitler, and through the butterfly effect gave rise to the Soviet Empire. This was a universe that came to include trained attack bears and dolphins, tesla coil defense towers, time travelling commandos, heavy bomber zeppelins and mind control psychics (and that's excluding the Japanese faction from the 3rd game in the series).
Sadly, Renegade is based on the former, during the final days of the first game of the RTS franchise, and several years before the second game. The plot was meh at best: You assume the role of a GDI commando with the callsign Havoc, in a rather formulaic plot that takes you all around the world searching for scientists which have been kidnapped by the Brotherhood of Nod to develop Tiberium-enhanced super-soldiers for them.
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| C&C: Renegade |
Renegade was unique in that it was set in a game world we already knew, but from a different view, from a bird's eye angle. Now we were down there, exploring structures we'd built or destroyed, shooting at units we had trained or controlled (complete with little hitpoint bars) and, more importantly, entering and controlling vehicles we were very familiar with. Keep that bit in mind: it might have come less than half a year after the Next Big Thing™, but Renegade's open areas that included gigantic battlefields, explorable structures and vehicles were still a novelty that makes the Next Big Thing™ even more impressive for having those exact elements implemented, and it did them better at that.
And now, let's finally go to the Next Big Thing™, which is none other than...
Halo.
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| Halo: Combat Evolved |
Halo: Combat Evolved (2001) came at a time were the shooter genre was becoming a little bit saturated with games that were following a very similar formula: health packs, linear setpieces, an ever-growing arsenal of weapons. Halo, made by Bungie for Microsoft's X-box specifically to be the killer game for consoles at the time, did away with all that. Apart from a novel and genuinely interesting sci-fi story starring the Spartan super-soldier Master Chief and a kickass soundtrack, Halo included huge, open areas, friendly/allied troops, vehicles both ground-based and airborne, setpieces that could be approached dynamically, a new health system that revolved around a recharging shield with the actual health serving as a backup (a system that would later be copied by several games, most notably Call of Duty) and a limitation of 2 carried weapons at a time. The last one meant that no matter what your favourite weapon in the game was, you couldn't get too attached to any one of them: depending on the situation, you had to drop a weapon in favour of another better suited to what was ahead, or you simply had to switch one for another purely for reasons of ammo.
Let's be honest though: apart from the things mentioned above, Halo wasn't exactly the game that completely redefined the single-player shooter genre. It was great for its time, but not exactly Half-Life. It did however succeed in making the X-Box a success (along with Fable and Knights of the Old Republic), and it indroducing the above gameplay elements on its excellent multiplayer various modes was perhaps the main reason for that, and was likely the main inspiration behind Unreal Tournament 2004's beloved legendary Onslaught mode.
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| Halo 3 |
Halo was ported to the PC a little while after, and was followed by Halo 2 in 2004 (simultaneous release to X-box and PC, with the PC having a disastrous Windows Vista requirement that proved to be bullshit as it was almost instantaneously hacked away by people). The next cycle of the main franchise (we are excluding offshoots like Spartan Strike and Halo Wars) was entirely concole-centric with Halo 3 for the X-Box 360 launch in 2007 (mirroring the original Halo's for the original X-box's release), the mediocre Halo 3: ODST in 2009, the sublime prequel Halo: Reach in 2010, Halo 4 in 2012 and, repeating the pattern, Halo 5: Guardians for the X-Box One's release in 2015. There have also been various remasters over the years, in Halo: Anniversary and The Master Chief Collection (which included Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3 and Halo 4).
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| The Master Chief Collection reveal |
Oh, and a piece of very fresh, good news: a few days ago Microsoft announced that -finally!- Halo is coming back on PC, with a staggered release of the The Master Chief Collection, updated to also include Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach. This hopefully means that Halo 5 is probably not too far behind, though Microsoft are not saying anything about it. Given how they're bringing this flagship franchise over to the PC (including the upcoming sequel Halo Infinite) and how their other flagship franchise's newest iterations (Gears of War 4 & Gears of War Ultimate Edition) are already released for PC, Halo 5 and the other Gears games are probably just a matter of time. Keep in mind that Microsoft, in a pretty stunning move, are releasing The Master Chief Collection for both their Windows built-in Store, and Steam, which no-one saw coming.
Right, we've actually managed to surpass the previous entry in terms of length, so let's take a break.
Coming up next: war, horror and plenty in between.
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