TX-Gaming's Top 10 FPS franchises of all time

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TX-Gaming's Top 10 FPS franchises of all time

Post by Ridley »

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Back in 1999 the very first Medal of Honor for Playstation introduced the world to a (back then) hugely innovative and fresh setting, which eversince has gone on to birth and entire shooter sub-genre: World War II.
What might sound ironic and maybe even cynical for us today, is that games about WW2 were actually a breeze of fresh air for people in the late 90s, a time in which almost all shooters were built upon high fantasy SciFi universes to get gamers hooked.
While the two PSone game that actually got the franchise started were masterpieces of it's time, it was not until the series was PC-bound that it really started to explode. Right on the brink of the new millenium, in the year 2000, newly formed Developer 2015 released Medal of Honor: Allied Assault , a game that recieved numerous game of the year awards and that was praised for it's exceptional never before seen cinematic display of World War II, a category in which it has been compared to the Oscar-winning movie Saving Private Ryan.
Since Allied Assault the series has lost a lot of steam, pumped out one mediocre WW2 shooter after another and even tried to reboot itself by jumping onto the modern shooter bandwagon recently, but never even got close to the bar it has initially raised by itself. But what cannot be denied is that the WW2 charge, which has been set off by the MoH franchise, was one of the biggest events in gaming history and that without it some of the games on this list would not even exsist, which grants Medal of Honor a well deserved No.10 spot.
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Released in 2007, Crytek launched its Crysis franchise pretty late in modern shooter times, but it still had a lot to invent and add to the genre. The most notable difference compared to any released game since then is the engine, which does not only add nearly photo-realistic graphics power but also some of the most realistic physics seen in gaming history. And Crysis 2 is just another game in the franchise to set new graphic standards in the gaming world, even though it only suppports DX9 so far, it easily beats games such as Call of Duty and Battlefield. Even the nanosuit brings another plus worth to be mentioned about this franchise, since i's very unique and has been tried to be copied tons of time since it was released. Open gameplay atmospheres are very barely seen in games, mostly because consoles fail at supporting them, but since the retail Crysis games were PC exclusive its one of the few games having an open gameplay. This is just another plus Crysis has compared to other games and making this franchise one of the most important in shooter history and earning it a very well deserved 9th place.
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Of course this list would have been incomplete if we did not include the grand-daddy of them all: Doom. While some may argue that Wolfenstein 3D (1992) was the very first first-person-shooter, it largely goes to credit of the one year later released Doom that we are even having this list right now. The game is responsible for popularizing the FPS genre, introduced the world to multiplayer, albeit only over local networks, showed groundbreakingly emersive 3D graphics and sparked a huge controversy over violence in video-games.
The game-concept could not have been simpler: You are a guy with guns in a locked down temple with monsters in it, now go shoot 'em in tha face! And of course Doom introduced us to one of the most badass weapons in gaming history: The BFG, the Big Fucking Gun.
While Doom 2 (1995) offered pretty much more of the same, Doom 3 (2004) was a revolution all over again. This time though, the revolutionized area was the visual department. Doom 3 stepped it up big time when it came to 3D graphics. The lighting, shadows, polygon count and texture detail of the brand new id Tech 4 engine was beyond anything that had ever been seen before, setting a benchmark for future games that remained unchallenged for over three years.
Unless the folks at id surprisingly announce Doom 4 anytime soon, it's safe to say that the franchise may not be dead, but layed on ice for an unsetteled amount of time. But that did not keep us from picking Doom for out no.8 spot.
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The System Shock franchise probably won't ring any bells with most people today, but back in the day, 1994 to be precise, it was the first shooter that actually made you think instead of just making you blindly shoot at anything that moves. Featuring a compelling interactive environment, smart enemies and mindboggeling puzzles all wrapped in an emersive SciFi universe, System Shock was a true hidden gem of it's time, probably the first FPS to carry that title. It wasn't until five years later though, that the series really gained momentum.
System Shock 2 pushed the franchise into the spotlite and today is considered one of the finest shooters of it's generation. It ditched the point and click approach of it's predecessor in favour of a real first-person-shooter engine, but it came with a twist: While it played like a shooter, the underlying mechanics were similar to a role-playing-game, complete with a player-managed inventory system, a leveling system and stat tracking. And instead of only shooting projectiles you got your hands on electricity and flesh eating nano-machines, a trend that would take on a major role in System Shock 2's (sort of) successor.
Eight years later, in 2007, Irrational Games delivered one of the best shooter experiences of this generation, maybe even of all time: Bioshock. Everything about this game can and must be described as pure brilliance. The alternate reality 1950s Jules Verne esque setting is a stroke of pure genius, the story centering around a clash of philosophies and morales is oscar-worthy and the gameplay, which leaves you shooting fire, electricity, ice, tornados or even bees more often than bullets, represents innovation at it's best.
Were it not for the under the radar status of the System Shock games and the mediocrity of BioShock 2, this franchise would have scored a whole lot higher. Nontheless, it's a great achievement managing to come in at No.7.
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Battlefield is a great franchise, there is no doubt about it. Eversince they guys at Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment, or short DICE, overthrew the 8 vs.8 small scaled multiplayer conventions of the late 90s and early 2000s by introducing the world to Battlefield 1942,a World War II shooter that tried to actually mimick what a real war should look like by utilizing huge maps of several square miles and a player count of 64, the series established itself at the top of the quality bar and never dropped one bit. The game required all 32 players of one team to actually work together to achieve victory. The role one played however, was entirely free to choose. You could pilot planes, drive tanks, controll the artillery or hit the ground as a foot soldier as one of several different classes, equipped with different weapons and fitted with different abilities.
After a worthwhile interlude in Vietnam, DICE was the first developer to break the WW2 wall and bring carry it's franchise into the modern age with Battlefield 2. Taking the basics of BF1942, but improving the team tactics and introducing even more roles to play, plus having the X-Factor of modern age weaponary, BF2 quickly became the most popular multiplayer game on PC. But that wasn't enough for DICE...
Only one year later they decided to bring the Battlefield experience to consoles with Battlefield Modern Combat, a game that was unfortunately overshadowed by Gears of War and Halo 3, only to stay true to the PC again by releasing Battlefield 2142, a futuristic take on BF2, the very same year.
DICE didn't let loose though and wanted to proove that they really can make a succesful console Battlefield game, which turned out to be Battlefield Bad Company, a game that not only brought the franchise to a much wider audience, but kept innovating by putting a huge focus on destructable environments. While the single palyer campaign was totally forgettable, the multiplayer side was good enough to justify a sequel in Battlefield Bad Company 2, this time also on PC.
With so many top tier games and the already stellar looking Battlefield 3 on the horizon, the Battlefield franchise won't go anywhere anytime soon and looks to charge against Call of Duty head on this year. And anybody having the guts to do that deserves at least the no.6 spot on our list.
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It might seem strange to lots of you that Quake scored so high on our list, but stay with us here. In 1996 most shooter fans were busy playing Doom 2, either by themselves or over LAN with some friends, but then along came a game called Quake. Developed by the Doom creators id Software, it made something possible that gamers all around the world were craving for: Online multiplayer gaming. The single player campaign was great and all, but it quickly became second nature when compared to the fact that you were suddenly able to shoot your friends in their virtual heads when hundrets of miles were between you. Additionally to that Quake birthed the very first mod-community in FPS history. The incorporated mod tools were so popular that so many mods were developed and released that Quake stayed popular well over 10 years after it's release.
Only one year later Quake II came along and reminded us that Quake's story and campaign was actually worthwhile playing, but it did manage to bring about one very significant tweak: It moved the gun to the right side of the screen, instead of having it in the centre. And where are the guns positioned in today's shooters? Exactly!
Then again in 1999 id choose to skip the singleplayer part entirely and made Quake 3 an exclusively multiplayer game. Together with Unreal Tournament, which was also released that year, Quake 3 invented twitch-gaming, a term standing for fast-paced reaction-heavy multiplayer gaming that became the standard for all first person shooters to come.
After over a half-decade of silence the Quake series appeared again in 2005 with Quake 4, a launch title for the then brand new Xbox 360. Using the Doom 3 engine, the folks at id wanted to see what exactly the new generation of consoles was capable of, and aparently it was quite a lot. Quake 4 was one of the most visually appealing games of 2005 and one of the best Xbox 360 launch titles. One major downer though, was that the multiplayer side has not been payed as much attention as previous installments in the franchise, making the game, which was actually a very good one, a huge dissapointment for some. Still, it didn't keep us from ranking Quake at no.5.
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What most gamers know and love the Unreal franchise for, is fast paced, top quality and highly competetive multiplayer gaming. But what most people don't know is that the very first Unreal, released in 1998, was actually a singleplayer-only game, featuring only a campaign, not even LAN multiplayer options. Nothing really special, but it brought something with it: The Unreal Engine. Using the included mod-tools and level editor, both players and developers quickly came up with their own creations and expansions, making the seemingly small game incredibly popular in the process.
But of course, no FPS can survive without a multiplayer component, which is why one year later Unreal Tournament surfaced and brought exactly what we know the series for today. It was a smash hit and invented a little game-mode called Capture the Flag. Back then you were either on team Quake or on team Unreal and at least until Counter Strike came along, there were virtually no other relevant multiplayer FPS.
With the basic formular and groundworks already there, the developers at EPIC didn't try to revolutionize the franchise with every new iteration, but to improve it step by step. UT 2003 widened the spectrum by adding modes like Last Man Standing, Domination or Bombing Run to the mix, while UT 2004 introduced voice chat, vehicles and the now franchise staple Onslaught mode. Finally, Unreal Tournament 3 (also called UT 2007) brought the series into high definition by using the Unreal Engine 3 and successfully managed to make the jump to the consoles, something the game Unreal Championship has failed at before.
With so little innovation you might ask yourselves why Unreal scored so high on our list. It was the king of multiplayer for over half a decade and it's engine has been utilized by hundrets of games. Thats why.
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The importance of Half Life and what it brought to the table in terms of FPS development cannot simply be described by hammering down a few bullet points. You have to take your time and think about it for a minute to really understand. Back in the 90s game design was not really at it's best. The most common way to set up a first person shooter game was the so called "monster closet" deisgn, in which a level consisted of a large map inhabited by enemies and the way to complete the level was to simply kill all the enemies. Well, Half Life changed that.
Instead of making it about the killing, Half Life made it all about story driven level advancement. The game introduced the world to linear paths that were specifically designed with the player in mind, featuring scripted events that moved bot the story and the player emersion forward. The players loved it, the press hailed it sky high and the FPS genre never looked back. Modern games owe everything to Half Life when it comes to game design.
But that's not all. While Quake may have had the first mod-community, Half Life really made it it's own. Counter Strike, Team Fortress, Day of Defeat; just a few examples out of many that made the jump from player created mods to full-on games.
By the time Half Life 2 came around, the series was alredy a giant of it's genre and managed to go even beyond that. Half Life 2 is considered by many to be the best first person shooter of all time, and that fully justifies it coming in at no.3.
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A PC-like shooter experience on your couch with a console? That's completely impossible! Or at least, that's what people thought way back in 2001. But then, along came a game called Halo. Originally intended to be released as a third-person action game on the Mac, it quickly became the centerpiece of Microsoft's launch of their brand-new Xbox console and built up a never before seen amount of hype. People were going crazy about every little piece of media they got to see of this supposedly revolutionary shooter and critics started to doubt that Halo could ever deliver on these sky-high expectations. But oh boy, it did!
Halo: Combat Evolved not only single-handedly put the Xbox and console gaming on the line, it managed to entirely revolutionize the FPS genre as it had been known until then. The tride and true health bar has been replaced by a regenerating shield, the player could freely choose 2 weapons to carry with him, instead of always having the full arsenal equipped, grenades and melee attacks were mapped to hot-buttons and the game introduced the world to cinematic cutscenes and a full orchestrated soundtrack. By introducing all these game-changing aspects, Halo practically invented the modern FPS as we know it today and never looked back.
While the first game in the series showed that PC-shooter experiences are possible on home consoles, Halo 2 went even one step further and managed the impossible: By using the one year prior established Xbox Live online network, it made console multiplayer-gaming relevant. The countless multiplayer-modes, customizable matchmaking options and the superb balancing and gameplay have never been seen before on consoles and ensured that Halo 2's multiplayer was better than even that of most PC games that year. The franchises popularity exploded and soon over 5 MILLION people found themselves slaying their friends over Xbox Live.
With the franchise already well established, Halo 3 did less too innovate, but raised the overall gameplay quality even more. It even surpassed Halo 2 in sales numbers, making Halo 3 the biggest media launch in entertainment history, a record that only one other franchise was able to surpass later. The stand-alone expansion Halo 3:ODST went deeper into the universe even more, while Halo:Reach served as developer Bungie's swan song, making it the last Halo game produced by them. With Halo 4 on the horizon and millions of people still participating in heated online matches, the series is far from dead and only barley edged past our No.1 spot.
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Who would have ever thought that Call of Duty will become the biggest franchise in gaming history back in 2003, when the first game was released. The original Call of Duty was dramaticall different from what we are used to of the series today. It had the full arsenal of weapons always equipped, a health bar, medkits, no sprint function and a relatively lame multiplayer mode. It was the first game to feature the Russian WW2 front though.
The series rapidly gained momentum with CoD2 for two reasons: On the one hand it adopted many of the gameplay changes Halo 2 introduced, including health regeneration, hotbuttons for melee attacks and grenades and the two-weapons system, and on the other hand it made the jump to the consoles, better said THE console. Call of Duty 2 was a launch game for Microsoft's new Xbox 360 console, the most successful launch game to be exact. It became the best selling and most played Xbox 360 game of 2005 and 2006.
Call of Duty 3, the first game not to be developed by Infinity Ward, was more fo a backstep. While it stepped it up big-time in the multiplayer department by introducing classes and vehicles, the fact that it was still a WW2 shooter wa shugely dissapointing, making it basically the same as CoD1 and CoD2.
Luckily Infinity Ward saw that in time and made Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Fron that point on, Call of Duty became THE definitive multiplayer game. The singleplayer campaign was fresh and innovative, but oh boy, the multiplayer was the real deal. The RPG style XP system, class system and sense of progression, tackeled with the great gameplay mechanics, made Call of Duty 4 a smash hit among both gamers and the critics and is considered to be the best game in the series to this day.
Call of Duty World at War came across as a dissapointment again, mainly due to it being WW2 again. The game was good, but simply couldn't live up to it's predecessor, Zombie mode included.
But only one year later Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 redeemed it all over again. It broke all records, both in sales, hype and player appreciation. Less innovative, but more action packed and feature filled than ever before. The only downside was that the PC community got dumped really hard by abandoning dedicated servers in favour of a console style lobby system. Still, MW2 stands as a tremendous multiplayer experience and to this day still stands as the most played game in the world across all platforms.
Call of Duty Black Ops, albeit a great game in it's own right, seemed like a me-too experience to many, meerly copying what MW2 did before it. But with MW3 already on the horizon and the general quality of the games still being above almost everything that's out there, there is no doubt that Call of Duty truly is the greatest first person shooter franchise of all time.

~ Images by Soldy, Text by Ridley & Ironhide, Video by Ridley, Vote by Ridley, Ironhide, Penguin, Soldy & Nathan
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Re: TX-Gaming's Top 10 FPS franchises of all time

Post by TheSold3y »

Really great job! Thanks alot Ridley <3 :p
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Re: TX-Gaming's Top 10 FPS franchises of all time

Post by Aytsef »

nice :wink:
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Re: TX-Gaming's Top 10 FPS franchises of all time

Post by Shape »

Where's Republic Commando? :D



[jk]
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Re: TX-Gaming's Top 10 FPS franchises of all time

Post by Rory. »

lol'd about RepCom :ugly: ...
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Re: TX-Gaming's Top 10 FPS franchises of all time

Post by Ironhide »

Shape wrote:Where's Republic Commando? :D



[jk]
It's about franchises and not games. So we could have included Star Wars as franchise, but there just are not really good Star Wars FPS.
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Re: TX-Gaming's Top 10 FPS franchises of all time

Post by DC.LegenD »

What is franchises o.O?
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Re: TX-Gaming's Top 10 FPS franchises of all time

Post by Penguin »

A group of games, for example Call of Duty contains Cod 1,2,3,mw,waw,mw2,bo etc.
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Re: TX-Gaming's Top 10 FPS franchises of all time

Post by DC.LegenD »

aaaah okay now I understand thanks :)
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Re: TX-Gaming's Top 10 FPS franchises of all time

Post by Gratze »

Nice Job everyone!
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Re: TX-Gaming's Top 10 FPS franchises of all time

Post by Screy »

looks good :)
nice one!
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Re: TX-Gaming's Top 10 FPS franchises of all time

Post by TheSold3y »

What do you guys think on the placing? Do you agree with us? Tell us your opinions!
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Re: TX-Gaming's Top 10 FPS franchises of all time

Post by Ridley »

Seriously guys?
We show so much dedication and put so much time and effort into this and the only thing coming out of it are 3 people saying "nice" and one who asks what a franchise is at all?
Well I can tell you, I think it's safe to say that this was a failure and that we better never do this again :neutral:
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Re: TX-Gaming's Top 10 FPS franchises of all time

Post by Shape »

You really did a great job, awesome work, you put much effort in it.
Well the placing... I think Battlefield belongs some places up, but can agree with the rest! :D omg I just love some of those classics like Doom xD
the video's good as well! Keep it up, honey!
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Re: TX-Gaming's Top 10 FPS franchises of all time

Post by Barcode »

Really Great Job.

Battlefield shouls be like 4 but saying that the fist few games probs let it down. :rofl:
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