Let us start with war.
When Medal of Honor came out in 1999, not a single non-strategy game had managed to translate the full-scale battles of two warring armies into videogame form. The chaos, the panic, the camaraderie, the pointlessness.
Medal of Honor aimed to be the first game to do that, and it succeeded.
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| Hidden & Dangerous |
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| Commandos |
There were other not purely strategy games based on WW2, of course, such as the often praised tactical gem Commandos (1998) and later on its 3D equivalent, the extremely buggy but still amazing for its time Hidden & Dangerous (1999).
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| Mortyr |
There were other shooters loosely based on a WW2 setting, in Wolfenstein and Mortyr: 2093-1944 (1999) most notably, but all revolved around a singular character's campaign, and didn't explore the subject too deeply or even realistically. Mortyr, for example, had you timetravel back to WW2 to prevent the Nazis from winning the war (which in this game's world they canonicaly had), to prevent the end of the world.
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| Delta Force |
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| SWAT 3 |
There were other "realistic" military or tactical shooters before that as well, of course. Most notable among them, the forgettable Delta Force (1998) and equally forgettable Delta Force 2 (1999), SWAT 3 (in 1999, transitioning to tactical shooters from the first two SWAT games that were closer to a Commandos-like gameplay, which themselves were offshoots of the adventure game series Police Quest) and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (in 1998, and the first game to be based on Tom Clancy's work, but definitely not the last).
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| Rainbow Six |
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| Rainbow Six: Siege |
At this point I'd like to expand a little more on the Rainbow Six series, as it's really the only one still kicking about nowadays, after several sequels over the years. Chances are you are even superficially familiar with Rainbow Six: Siege, for example, which is focused on tactical, multiplayer SWAT-based missions against real players assuming the roles of the terrorists. But all of these focused on smaller scale, tactical teams rather than full-scale war.
Medal of Honor, developed by former Dreamworks Interactive (now DICE) was the first to try and do all of that combined.
MoH combined traditional levels with stealthier missions and large-scale battles, which saw dozens of characters facing off against dozens of enemies on the other side.
It was trickery, of course. These characters would keep fighting each other to a stalemate and keep respawning on both sides till you, the player, turned the tide, an approach that persists to this day, to lend the player character a false sense of agency that's become tired by now. The technology wouldn't exist for several more years to do this in a more realistic way or on a proper scale, and even now it's not really used.
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| Medal of Honor: Allied Assault |
But Medal of Honor tricked us rather well nonetheless, with its large setpieces lifted off the history books, historically accurate weapons and locations and swarms of Nazis to shoot at, guilt-free in the knowledge that this was one war with undisputably bad guys on the opposing side. It spawned several sequels based on different theatres of war or indeed different wars (a whopping 14 across several platforms), with Medal of Honor: Allied Assault the ostensible peak of the series in 2002, in that it was the first multi-platform one, and culminated everything stated above to its best iteration. Saving Private Ryan being released a few years earlier and the game featuring that same infamous D-Day Normandy beach battle as the film definitely didn't hurt, either.
There were a few more games of note in the franchise, which after the mediocre Medal of Honor reboot in 2010 and the very badly received Medal of Honor: Warfighter in 2012 has been shelved by EA circa 2013. With the Battlefield series (also by DICE) filling that void for the publisher, it's hard to believe a resuscitation is on the horizon.
But this isn't necessarily a bad thing, as there are three franchises currently active that aim to bring war through the eyes of a real soldier to our screens.
The first one needs little introduction, being Call of Duty. But while we all know the Call of Duty series nowadays (regardless of how we feel about it), a step back into its history sheds quite a bit of light into its raison d'être.
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| Call of Duty |
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| Call of Duty 2 |
The original Call of Duty was released in 2003 under Activision by Infinity Ward, a new company that consisted entirely of (presumably disgruntled) people that had worked on MoH:AA. This transfusion of talent hurt the MoH series, but did wonders for CoD. Both CoD and CoD 2 (2005) were superb games, that did everything stated above for MoH:AA, only better, and featured simply amazing audio design and setpieces that elevated CoD leaps and bounds above its competitor at the time. Like MoH, there was no ongoing campaign narrative: you assumed the roles of different soldiers, across different theatres of war, and lived the illusion of being just one tiny yet integral cog in one larger, ongoing war effort.
Sadly, for many, this was the series' best moment right there.
CoD 3 (2006) was developped as a console exclusive by Treyarch (and being unique in that it is the only CoD not available on PC), and began an alternating 2-developer cycle, with games being developed by both companies in time for an alternating release. This lead to each having more time to churn out the next game in time for Activision's release schedule, but at the same time lead to varying degrees of quality. Since Sledgehammer Games tentatively joined in the cycle in 2011, this became even more pointed.
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| Modern Warfare |
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| Black Ops |
While the main gameplay of the series has remained largely uniform across its iterations, the focus has slowly but surely shifted from giving a sense of real war in a videogame, to cinematic campaigns with a strong emphasis on the multiplayer that the franchise owes its success to. Two games in particular stand out, Modern Warfare in 2007 and Black Ops in 2010, by Infinity Ward and Treyarch respectively, that spawned two different sub-franchises within the main franchise.
The series at this point spans 15 main games. 5 of them are set in WW2 (the first 3, as well as World At War in 2008 and WW2 in 2017), while the settings on the rest vary: for example Modern Warfare and Ghosts are based on a current-ish, alternate timeline, Black Ops started off during the Cold War and is currently set in the future, and so are Advanced Warfare and Infinity Warfare.
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| Advanced Warfare |
Despite a large fanbase, frequent guest star appearances (most notably with pre-sexual-misconduct-come-to-light Kevin Spacey in Advanced Warfare and Kit Harrington in Infinite Warfare) and powerful ad campaigns focusing on each game's new gimmicks, the appeal (and overall quality) of the series has been dwindling for a while, and -to me- it seems that it's an ad nauseum repeating, tired franchise dying out. Call of Duty, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, became what it set out to fight.
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| Battlefield 1942 |
The other series needs little introduction as well, being Battlefield.
Battlefield started in 2002 with Battlefield 1942 as a multiplayer-centric game, that featured huge maps and historically accurate vehicles. To this day, this remains the case for the most part.
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| Battlefield: Bad Company |
Developed by DICE as their own answer to MoH, Battlefield's primary focus has always been multiplayer, initially set in WW2, later on in the Vietnam war in Battlefield Vietnam and -sigh- the future in Battlefield 2142. Featuring an ever so slightly more realistic feel to the competition of CoD, the Battlefield series accumulated quite a fanbase itself. The series has had its highs and lows, with the developer and publisher competing with themselves in MoH, along with CoD) till about 2010. Most notable games in the series till then are Battlefield: Bad Company (2008) and Bad Company 2 (2010), which were a little more character and plot-driven.
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| Battlefield 3 |
But in 2010, Battlefield 3 changed the franchise and made it EA's primary cash cow, leading to the inevitable demise of the MoH franchise and the numerous Battlefield expansions, DLCs and sequels since then. Based on the Frostbite engine, BF3 opted for a modern storyline, beautifully mo-capped characters, destructible environments, jaw-dropping photo-realistic graphics (which let's be honest, are still impressive-looking today) and brought with it all the multiplayer elements mentioned above. Suddently, CoD had serious competition.
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| Battlefield 4 |
The formula continued more or less unchanged with Battlefield 4 in 2013. Behind the scenes, the MoH franchise had been officially shelved, and DICE and EA brought all of their resources to bear for this, and it shows. For many, Battlefield 4 is the epitome of the mainstream modern-era military shooter, and is a far more polished version of the same game Battlefield 3 was.
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| Battlefield: Hardline |
The series continued in 2015 with Battlefield: Hardline, that swapped the open war theatres and setpieces for a cops and robbers theme. Undoubtedly, games such as Payday (2011) were an influence here, however Hardline having to compete with the far more focused Rainbow Six: Siege (also 2015), not to mention the already established in the sub-genre Payday 2 (2013) didn't do it any favors and was generally poorly received.
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| Battlefield 1 |
But Hardline was merely a stop on the journey that would bring us Battlefield 1 (2016), which was also the first game of its ilk to be set in WW1.
Battlefield 1 sent us across several theatres of war: from the trenches in France, to the battle of Gallipolli, from the mountains of Italy to the sands of the Middle-East. Trying the tried and true method of world-hopping across different characters to showcase the scale and sheer variety of the war that worked so well for CoD, CoD 2 and Modern Warfare, Battlefield 1's overall campaign was nevertheless hit and miss: The English and American campaigns were amazing in tone and content, the Italian and Australian ones lukewarm and a little forced, the Middle Eastern one tedious. Battlefield 1's focus, however, as with all modern Battlefields, was in multiplayer, where it effortlessly dominated the competition, at least for a while.
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| Battlefield V |
The series (so far) is tied off with the boycotted Battlefield V (2018) that irked fans with PC historical inaccuracies, and pissed them off when EA told those fans "If you don't like it, don't buy it". The fans chose that one statement to take to heart, and largely didn't, apparently. I have yet to personally try this one (not for reasons of boycotting, mind, just prioritised buying other games so far), so there isn't much more I can say about it.
This non-segue brings us to the third military shooter here we will expand on here: Arma.
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| Operation Flashpoint |
I have precious little to say about Arma, if I'm being honest. The very first game -albeit unofficially- in the series was Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis (2001, and re-released as Arma: Cold War Assault in 2011 from the same developer, Bohemia, but a different publisher). Operation Flashpoint also had several expansions and two sequels by the original publisher, Codemasters, in Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising in 2009 and Operation Flashpoint 3: Red River in 2011.
Operation Flashpoint focused on a much more realistic depiction of war than any shooter had until then, with huge, open areas, vehicles and realistic scale and ebb and flow of conflict. As a result, the game may have come across as boring, but for fans of realism and simulation it was a boon the likes of which they had never dared hope for.
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| ArmA |
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| Arma 2 |
But while Codemasters retained the rights to the Operation: Flashpoint name, they didn't retain the team behind it, or indeed the actual game design, hence the aforementioned re-release in 2011. But Bohemia Interactive did more than just re-release their former breakthrough title. Way before that, in 2006, they came up with ArmA: Armed Assault, which, more than a spiritual successor, was what OF was and more. That patern continued with Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead in 2010 (complete with the wildly popular Day Z mod).
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| Arma 3 |
But it was the third iteration, Arma 3 in 2013, that made headlines even before its release, with Bohemia staff taking real-life mapping pictures of a Greek island to develop their fictional Altis game map and being arrested and charged with espionage by the Greek authorities. Being Greek myself, the sheer stupidity of it all stung a lot.
Their sacrifice however, paid off. Not only did the game look absolutely beautiful with one of the most believable terrains we've seen so far, not only it brought the realism we had come to expect from the franchise in its most polished iteration, it included the utterly brilliant ZEUS mode that let one player direct the action from a bird's eye view while the other players lived it, like a military DnD simulation.
Of course, these are only the big ones, and these are only the "realistic" war shooters. We are excluding -for now- games such as the Battlefront series, the Killzone series and the Resistance series, as these will be covered on a latter blog entry. I feel I should also give a -token- mention to the Brothers In Arms franchise (started with Brothers In Arms: Road to Hill 30 in 2005 and shamefully ended with Brother In Arms 2: Global Front in 2010 and Brothers In Arms 3: Sons of War in 2014, both on phones only), but I haven't actually played these and only mentioning them for posterity.
But for now, let's step away from the horror of war, and into actual horror.
And we can't start speaking about the horror sub-genre without mentioning Clive Barker. Specifically, Clive Barker's Undying, in 2001.
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| Undying |
Now, you may not be familiar with his work, but trust me, Clive is a seriously sick puppy. While not exactly of H.P. Lovecraft or Stephen King fame, he is one of the greats in horror literature nonetheless. So when EA got him to write a game, fans of horror shuddered with anticipation.
The result was Undying, a game set before WW2, taking place in the Covenant family estate, with the main character Patrick going there to investigate strange going-ons to placate his friend of old and one of the Covenant heirs, Jeremiah Covenant. However, to his astonishement, Patrick uncovers that not all is as he thought: Jeremiah isn't crazy, and something is indeed very wrong with the Covenant siblings. Something that has to do with a ritual they performed as children years ago, a monk order scattered around the world, and someone known only as the Undying King...
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| Undying |
Undying was different to most games before it (and most after) by not having a horror level here and there: System Shock was pretty scary throughout (as was System Shock 2, and as the literally just announced System Shock 3 looks to be), Thief had its genuinely scary levels, and Thief: Deadly Shadows' Shalebridge Craddle remains one of the most scary levels of all time in any game. But Undying, at its core, was meant to unsettle you, fill you with dread and hopelessness, and it aimed to do that through plot, lore and atmosphere. The gameplay in itself was, for the most part, standard shooter fare, with its shooty bits, its explorey bits, and its puzzle bits. One main difference: apart from standard weapons, the character was able to use the Gel'ziabar Stone, an artifact that allowed you to cast spells in conjunction with using guns and other weapons. This lead to a physical/mystical dual weilding system that would be re-shaped and re-used later in the Bioshock games, as well as Skyrim.
While it didn't quite sell like hotcakes (there's a good chance you never even knew this game existed), it did well enough for the people involved to try to catch lightning in a bottle again in the future, with Clive Barker's Jericho back in 2007.
The game is set into the fictional resurfaced city of Al-Khali, where the 8-man Jericho team is sent to investigate strange going-ons. Jericho is part of an occult paramilitary organization created as an allied answer to Hitler's Thule Society, and is unique in all members having different paranormal abilities and strengths.
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| Jericho's Firstborn |
But Al-Khali is far from normal itself, serving as a nexus of paranormal shit throughout the ages, most notably as the prison door that keeps the Firstborn out of the mortal world. What is the Firstborn? Well...it's the failed project of God before he abandoned it, locked it away and created Adam and Eve instead. The Firstborn has tried several times to break back into the mortal world so far, and each time it has been sealed away away. It's powerful, it's seemingly evil, it can't be tamed by God Almighty Himself, and it has a purpose.
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| Jericho |
So far, so...formulaic. Nevertheless, Jericho has s seriously creepy atmosphere, level and enemy design. But where it shined was the gimmick it brought to the table, like Undying's spells. Only this time, it was...possession. You see, -spoiler alert-, your character, the current Jericho team leader, dies very early in the game. But his soul/ghost lingers, and is able to take possession of any other Jericho team member for the rest of the game. This lead to strategic character-hopping, both for combat, puzzles and exploration: remember, each character has different strengths and abilities, not to mention arsenal.
Despite all this, Jericho is mostly remembered as wasted potential: it didn't do too well, for very valid reasons (timing, quality and lacklustre marketing being the main ones). It's unlikely Clive Barker's work is coming back to gaming soon.
Clive Barker isn't the only meastro of horror on our screens, though. Since 2004, there's been a resurgence of horror in videogames, thanks to a large part to Doom 3.
Doom 3 stands alone of all the other Doom games, in that it genuinely wants to scare you rather than being a shooter based on adrenaline like the other games in the franchise are. Story-wise, Doom 3 is both a prequel and a reboot of the invasion of the forces of hell into our world.
Most of the enemies you know from the previous games return - in one way or another- as do the weapons. But this time, they are all tweaked for jump scares and atmosphere rather than action, with enemies bursting through the environment, the slow buildup (resembling Half-Life in that regard), the initial inability to hold a flashlight and a gun at the same time (something addressed in the BFG Edition).
From a technical standpoint, Doom 3 stood out mostly because of its lighting system: dark, crisp shadows created moody environs that were designed - and succeeded- in instilling a sense of impending dread. The need for a flashlight only made this worse.
I was expecting to go on and on about Doom 3, as for its time it was quite extraordinary, both as a technical achievement and a paradigm shift. But the truth is, it hasn't stood the test of time as well as, say, Doom 2 did, graphics aside. Let's be honest: it's Doom in name only, and only bears superficial resemblances to the franchise as a whole. It was a great experience, but nowadays it has little to offer that hasn't been done several times and in better ways, despite the Doom 3: BFG Edition in 2012. The DOOM reboot in 2016 brought the series back to its roots, but more on that later.
The rest of the decade saw en explosion in the horror genre in general, with classic franchises and games such as Obscure in 2004, F.E.A.R. appearing in 2005, Condemned (also in 2005), Call of Cthulthu: Dark Corners of the Earth (also in 2005, and based on H.P. Lovecraft's work), Penumbra is 2007 and the Dead Space franchise in 2008. However, we will only be exploring the first person shooter variety of those (otherwise it would have been nothing short of a sin not to have mentioned the Resident Evil/Biohazard and Silent Hill franchises so far).
For clarity's sake, we won't be focusing on horror segments or levels in games (otherwise the Ravenholm level of Half-Life 2 would have its own lengthy paragraph here), but rather on games that had an overall horror tone.
Out of these, the most notable one is definitely F.E.A.R.
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| F.E.A.R.'s Alma |
First Encounter Assault Recon, as it stands for, came out of nowhere in 2005, and its recipe was brilliant: a clever, dark and twisty storyline, along with the bullet-time mechanic of Max Payne, with clear spoonfulls (or, rather, shovelfulls) of the stuff that made films like The Ring, Dark Water and The Grudge such hits for their time: the blood-curdling, bone-chilling "ghost" of a little girl called Alma.
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F.E.A.R.
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F.E.A.R. was pretty smart in that it didn't tire you out. It kept alternating between action parts and the exploration/horror parts with clear conventions of which was which. As a result you weren't on edge all the time, and the action bits served as a cathartic tension-release, with players safe in the knowledge that they were safe from fear during them (except when the game decides to betray you and scare you shitless when you least expect it later on). And aside from the very solid gunplay and graphics, aside from the clevel game and level design, aside from the bullet-time mechanic working beautifully, more than anything F.E.A.R. banks on its story and its twists: your identity, your connection to the main villain, both of your connections to Alma, and who (and what) Alma really is.
It was followed by two expansions (Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate) and two sequels, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin in 2009 and F.3.A.R. in 2011 before dying an undignified death with F.E.A.R. Online in 2014. The second game in the series has a lot to offer, more so than the third, but both suffer from sequel-itis: they didn't manage to match the third in quality or appeal.
Despite a large number of first-person horror games since then, we won't really go into detail on the rest. The reason is simple: no matter how good these are in the horror aspect, they fall behind -mostly intentionally- on the shooter aspect.
So, rapid-fire honorable mentions go to:
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| Amnesia: The Dark Descent |
Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010) and its sequel Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (2013) stand as possibly the most accomplished (and definitely the most mentioned) horror games, and for good reason. In many ways borrowing tricks and concepts from great horror literature (including Lovecraft) and D&D's Ravenloft module, these are probably the defining horror games.
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| Alien: Isolation |
Alien: Isolation in 2014 has been mentioned earlier, and unlike the other games based on Giger's creature, you are well and truly hunted by a single, extremely smart Xenomorph (that try as you might you cannot defeat) that learns your patterns, uses its senses and intelligence effectively, deduces your location, uses the environment to its advantage and has you spend an abnormal amount of time hiding into supply closets, quietly wimpering.
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| Outlast |
Outlast, also in 2014, had a similar concept, but this time instead of a spaceship, you are in an asylum, and instead of a Xenomorph, you are hunted by a bunch of different homicidal crazies while you are making your way through the asylum. Like the game above, you are unable to fight back: you need to run, you need to hide, you need to outlast them. It received one expansion/major DLC in Whistleblower and one sequel in Outlast II (2017). There is an upcoming Outlast III sequel, as well as a side project on Outlast II.
The next -and final- three entries are all smaller studio endeavours, but somehow managed to gain a fervent fanbase despite mixed reviews. I am of course talking about Agony, Lust for Darkness, and Call of Cthulhu, all released in 2018.
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| Agony |
All three games draw heavy inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft's works, despite all three revolving a different plot and overall gamefeel. Agony, for example, has your amnesiac character literally exploring Hell, trying to uncover clues about your identity, getting acquainted with Hell's nature and inhabitants, with your main goal to find a way out. If you aim to play it, it's recommended you go for the Agony Unrated version.
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| Lust for Darkness |
By comparison - and closer to a Lovecraft-ian vibe-Lust for Darkness has your character, still mourning over the loss of his wife, follow clues seemingly left by her to find her again. The journey begins at a manor where a weird, ultra hedonistic cult is meeting. The meeting quickly turns into an Eyes Wide Shut-type orgy, and shortly after the character is left exploring both our world and the demonic dimension Lusst'ghaa, where sadistic, hedonistic, vile creatures have crossed from into our world, with the borders between the two words blurred and the realities bleeding into each other. The game is focused primarily on horror and delivers it with very adult sequences and iconography, with graphic sex and genitalia, and even more graphic horrors, disturbing imagery and gore. If you aim to buy this as a sex game: don't.
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| Call of Cthulhu |
Then, finally, Call of Cthulhu, the one actually based on Lovecraft's works, was very much anticipated but when it landed it did so with a plop. Despite not being specifically based on any one of Lovecraft's works (rather, it's a mix and match of ideas and concepts), it somehow managed to be conceived as generally predictable and boring. Its 67% rating on Metacritic (7/10 from fans) summarises its receipt pretty well. Too much ado about nothing really special.
In the next post, we will resume our first-person shooter history lesson from 2003 and onwards. Grab a crowbar, you will need it.
I was expecting to go on and on about Doom 3, as for its time it was quite extraordinary, both as a technical achievement and a paradigm shift. But the truth is, it hasn't stood the test of time as well as, say, Doom 2 did, graphics aside. Let's be honest: it's Doom in name only, and only bears superficial resemblances to the franchise as a whole. It was a great experience, but nowadays it has little to offer that hasn't been done several times and in better ways, despite the Doom 3: BFG Edition in 2012. The DOOM reboot in 2016 brought the series back to its roots, but more on that later.
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