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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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