Halo: Reach factoids have been popping up all over the place like decloaking Elites, thanks chiefly to the chaps at Edge and Game Informer but also, somewhat less officially, to EB Games, who let slip a few gameplay screenshots on Wednesday morning. You know what this means, readers? It means Whining Season has officially commenced.

We’ve had a good old gander at the material, and we’re ready to throw down a gauntlet or two. Brace yourselves for some serious subheadings.

What’s hot…

Six Spartans is a bit ridiculous now, isn't it. The Covenant really should have called in sick.

The return of the Elites

We got on well with the Brutes in Halo 3. Which is to say, we enjoyed blowing their shields away with our battle rifles and grenade-tagging the suckers to screaming submission. But for all their secondhand camo cloaks and jet packs the Brutes never quite lost the status of thuggish Covenant middle-management – glorified bully boys, giddy with excitement at their newfound prominence within the caste structure. For a game as solemn, as elegaic as Reach, we need an enemy we can respect. And with the Elites, it’s all about respect.

Crysis-style power-ups

Bungie is good with gizmos: slightly ludicrous though they appeared in concept and execution, the Bubble Shield and Grav Lift proved to be fantastic, highly tactical additions to Halo 3’s campaign and multiplayer. Reach tips its hat to Crysis in the form of recharging, one-at-a-time “armor abilities”, transforming your Spartan into a speed freak or a tank at the touch of a button. We like it. We also like what it implies for the game’s environments, which will probably need to be both larger and more abundant in secondary routes and landmarks to accommodate the greater range of run-gun possibilities.

Reach can handle up to 40 on-screen light sources, in contrast to Halo 3's two or three.

Bigger but not too big

Numbers are a much-abused weapon in the fanboy arsenal. Right now, for instance, there’s a lot of ballyhoo among the PS3 faithful about how the 256-player MAG is da biggermost online FPS everer, and so forth. While Halo has always gone heavy on modes and auxillary content, Bungie has never been in the business of feature overkill, and nothing’s changed with Reach. Online matches are still limited to 16 players – cosy affairs in which a man can be reasonably sure of walking two feet from a spawn point without taking a bullet through each of his major organs.

Which is not to say the game won’t offer more: Reach can handle double the AIs per area that Halo 3 can, we’re told. But the onus, as in past Spartan sequels, seems to be on providing more stuff to do within existing parameters, rather than piling on the bullet points.

1. Halo 3: the best of Forge Manny dips into the cream of Halo 3's user creations....
2. Halo 3: ODST Review Master Chief has some big shoes to fill. That's why it takes a whole team of grizzly, tobacco-chewing, alien-ass kicking, quick-shooting tough guys to do the job. And you, obviously....
3. Quickfire Q&A: Alien vs. Predator Predator. Survivor. Prey. Potential? Rebellion's revamp of the classic sci-fi horror franchise is appropriately conflicted....

The Killzone franchise is five years old today, and Eric Boltjes, Mathijs de Jonge and the rest of Guerrilla Games are accordingly sinking into mattresses of purest purple cotton-candy nostalgia over at the official site. The grimy shooter series has returned to headlines for other reasons of late, with the second iteration swiping a Golden Joystick and no less than three nominations for Spike’s Video Game Awards 2009. An appropriate time then to slip off those rose-tinted goggles, strap on some glowing Helghast varieties and do a little retrospective whinging.

I loved, and still love Killzone 2. Rather fortunate, that, as I spent close to 100 hours with it in the hysterical two or three months before its release. But the game had, and still has some definite shortcomings, and recent tidal shifts in the waters of first and third-person shooting have made one of these shortcomings especially evident.

Do you feel lonesome tonight, Sev?

If you’ve been keeping up with our reviews, you’ll know it’s a great season for cooperative gaming. (So great, in fact, that we’re going to publish an editorial on the subject in the next couple of weeks – but I digress.) Following in the footsteps of Insomniac’s Resistance sequel, Modern Warfare 2 and Uncharted 2 have boosted their respective co-op components from humble campaign add-on status to that of a full-blown separate mode. Left 4 Dead 2 is busily reaffirming the marvellousness of the original game’s signature four-players-against-the-world dynamic. I am utterly gutted that I didn’t get to grade New Super Mario Bros Wii, that peerless provoker of beery retrohead camaraderie. And all this occurs against a backdrop of mighty advances in multiplayer gaming generally, with the MAG beta asking unheard-of feats in team (or rather, army) management, and Demon Souls carving a wild, uneasy line between roguelike and MMO.

In that context, Killzone 2’s strictly solo ten levels feel a little bloodless, despite its artery-ripping graphical excess. This game needed co-op – needed it like a daffodil needs sunlight, Jade Raymond her hair straighteners or David Jaffe his sedatives. Its war-ravaged, multi-storey maps and the find-fix-and-flank nature of its action would have suited team play right down to the bullet-scoured earth.

1. Opinion: MW2’s genius shouldn’t blind us to controversies Price hiking, airport massacres, Activision's miserly attitude to review code - Modern Warfare 2 has a fair few blotches on its mark sheet. FPS Gamer takes stock....
2. Quickfire Q&A: Modern Warfare 2 FPS Gamer gets schizophrenic with Infinity Ward's epic shooter follow-up. Can you hear duty calling?...
3. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Review EA DICE is out to level the playing field a second time. FPS Gamer hunkers down in the woods with an Xbox 360 build....

I'm too young to die!

Poor old Left 4 Dead. Just over a year old, and already consigned to the backseat of history by Valve’s uncharacteristically headlong rush to sequel-dom.

Well we’re not quite ready to let go, chaps – as befits the PC version at least. Here are some reasons to put off uninstalling the original zombie co-op FPS for a few months longer.

Because Left 4 Dead wasn’t broken, hasn’t been fixed.

Bit of an obvious point, this one. Left 4 Dead is still utterly, utterly fantastic, and worth experiencing alongside its younger sibling. Those soggy North American forest, industrial and residential maps aren’t getting any less gripping or well-balanced. It’s a whole five quid cheaper than Left 4 Dead 2 on Steam, too.

Because Valve’s keeping its word as to downloadable content.

OK, they took their sweet time bringing out Survival mode, the new “Crash Course” campaign and Versus functionality for the original maps, but Valve seems to be building momentum on the DLC front. We downloaded a 4v4 matchmaking update only a week or two back. Watch this space.

Because Left 4 Dead now boasts hundreds of custom maps and campaigns.

There are plenty of prolific would-be Valve employees out there, it seems. This writer’s favourite custom maps include Claustrophobia, a cramped, two-storey Survival arena featuring some stunning broken wood geometry and shadows, L4D Dust 2, for all the Counterstrike freaks in da house, and Who’s Laughing Now?: The Evil Dead Cabin, a bastard hard homage to Sam Raimi’s stuffed-crust B-movie classic. Hunter Training is great for putting a little extra spring into your pounce.

Custom-campaign-wise, you might want to consider this Silent Hill remake, or this sequence ripped from Resident Evil Outbreak File#2. Cream of the crop, though, is Death Aboard, which takes you from the depths of a prison to a gloomy dockyard and onto a precariously balanced ship. Fans of the surreal should check out Night Terror and its daring hot-air balloon rescue. Gadzooks.

Because you can stuff all the original game’s content into the sequel.

Those lynch-pins of the underground code-breaking scene at L4Dmods have figured out how to transfer all Left 4 Dead campaigns (and, excitingly, custom campaigns) to Left 4 Dead 2 – well ahead of the release of Valve’s official SDK.

Hold on though, doesn’t this make the first game rather redundant, we hear you protest? Ah, my son, but you’ll need a fully paid-up, squeaky-clean legit copy of both games to pull the trick off. Plus a bit of technical know-how, naturally. And the patience to endure a fair few non-crippling bugs. Hit the link for a tutorial, and check out the video evidence below.

Because Zoey is way fitter than Rochelle, innit.

Look, let’s not beat around any bushes here (after all, one of them might contain a Boomer). If we had the chance to leap into the sack with either of the Left 4 Dead ladies, it’d be pasty girl-geek brunette Zoey all the way. Rochelle’s too respectable for our unhygienic, society-averse tastes. She’s a TV producer, for God’s sake. Plus she wears a Depeche Mode T-shirt (admittedly it’s got a stencil of Gordon Freeman on it). Stupid establishment chick.

So what’s keeping you glued to the original Left 4 Dead, oh well-informed reader?

No related posts.

Simultaneously the best and worst thing about the First Person Shooter genre is that there are so damned many of them. And because there are shooters appearing with such alarming regularity, the truth is that sometimes it’s difficult to keep up. You know what it’s like. Three games come out in the same week that you like the look of, you pick one of them, and by the time you’re ready to go back, something else shiny and new has distracted you.

Over a period of time, it’s inevitable that we’re all going to have missed out on some great games – maybe the ones with a quirky premise that never quite got the recognition they deserved. So that’s where we come in with a round-up of some of the bona-fide Cult Classics of the genre that you may have missed out on the first time around.

A great FPS never dies.

The Operative: No One Lives Forever
Monolith (PC, PS2), 2000

For reasons that are not entirely clear, very few people wanted to play a game starring a sexy female spy in a catsuit, the buffoons. Evidently influenced by late 60s Bond movies and, more recently, the Austin Powers movies, Monolith created a superb premise where ex-cat burglar Cate Archer tip-toed around a plethora of memorable environments armed with a plethora of gadgets.

Exceptionally ambitious for its time, it gave players a great deal more opportunity to experiment than many modern shooters ever bother to offer. Players were afforded the opportunity to sneak past hazards with the aid of gadgets (such as the guard dog distracting electric poodle), dispose of corpses with body-removing powder, or just blast their way out of situations.

The overall look and feel of the game was memorable, too, with excellent swinging sixties-inspired music, and all manner of unusual locations and scenarios, such as a space station in zero gravity, a shipwreck, or a freefall from an aircraft. And yet despite scooping awards galore, it sold precisely bugger all – even a subsequent PS2 port and sequel didn’t do the job. Go and see what you missed.

A sight for sore eyes.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay
Starbreeze (Xbox, PC, Xbox 360, PS3), 2004

Precisely one month before Riddick came out, the press got to see the game for the very first time. Gobsmacked as we were by the visuals on display, it seemed incredible that publisher Vivendi wasn’t shouting from the rafters, but a combination of film-based restrictions and general PR apathy ensured that the Xbox-exclusive game limped into stores with a complete absence of hype.

A few sites championed it around release, but by then it was too late. The Vin Diesel movie bombed, retail didn’t put it in front of punters and few gamers put their money down, despite the game being arguably one of the best shooters of its era. Blending stealth, adventure, melee, shooting and even mech combat to quite glorious effect, it almost defied categorisation, and proved beyond doubt that this was how to treat a film license.

To compound the tragedy of it all, Starbreeze also managed to create one of the finest technical achievements of that console generation. No other Xbox title even came close to matching its ludicrously detailed, bump-mapped environments. The game’s subsequent ports to PC and, eventually, 360 and PS3 via the recent Assault On Dark Athena release have put it back in the public eye again, thankfully. Check it out.

1. Feature: The History of First-Person Shooters As FPS Gamer clears leather, Kristan Reed turns in the ultimate retrospective: the evolution of first-person shooting from Maze War to Modern Warfare 2....
2. Halo 3: the best of Forge Manny dips into the cream of Halo 3's user creations....
3. 1-on-1: Modern Warfare 2 vs Left 4 Dead 2 Can Valve's grab-bag of southern comfort and zombie goodness overturn Infinity Ward's steamroller of an action blockbuster? Click on for our pre-release feature face-off....

A quick disclaimer. Modern Warfare 2 is, in all probability, going to be one of the best-executed and most substantial shooters you play this year. I was very impressed by the game when I previewed it last month, and the fact that my name won’t be gracing our review when it goes live tonight is the cause of many a flung teacup at Kikizo Towers (the honour falls instead to FPS Gamer’s veteran duelist Kristan Reed, with whom I’m currently not on speaking terms).

Not every aspect of the game or its titanic marketing putsch is above question, however, and as the first pre-orders blast through letterboxes and all-night-queues sprout from the doors of HMV, we should take time to reflect on the controversies Activision and Infinity Ward have ignited in the run-up to release.

The furore over pricing needs no introduction, nor is it chief among my concerns. A £55 RRP (or $60 across the Atlantic) is pretty steep given the reported shortish campaign length (Kristan’s run-time is 7-8 hours), Activision’s refusal to supply dedicated servers and the absence of crucial new gameplay functionality (not to mention a host of minor compromises), but retailers haven’t turned a deaf ear to consumer complaints – you can now pick the game up for two-thirds to as little as half the RRP in most major UK supermarkets. Over on GamesIndustry.biz, Rob Fahey has commented with characteristic eloquence on the risk that Activision’s brash pricing strategies will find over-eager imitators, but in the near future at least there seems to be nothing to worry about.

Yours for just $150. Cheer up, it could be the PSPgo.

The infamous playable airport massacre sequence leaked online a few weeks ago deserves less forgiving attention. Right-wing tabloid rants concerning the effects of such (100% skippable) material on the hearts and minds of young people are as predictable as they are groundless, but why, we might ask, did Infinity Ward feel obliged to provoke such reaction at all? Considered (admittedly) out of context, the decision to let players slaughter civilians in callously unhurried style seems little more than a shock tactic, a morbid attempt to one-up the previous game’s hostage execution intro, rather than a sensitively judged trot into the realms of ultra-realism.

1. 1-on-1: Modern Warfare 2 vs Left 4 Dead 2 Can Valve's grab-bag of southern comfort and zombie goodness overturn Infinity Ward's steamroller of an action blockbuster? Click on for our pre-release feature face-off....
2. Killzone 2 look-back: sorry, still needs co-op As Guerrilla's sometime Halo-killer reaches the grand old age of half a decade, we kick a little post-coital dirt at the sequel....
3. Battlefield team play “has always been deeper”, says DICE producer Karl-Magnus Troedsson says other multiplayer shooters are "still actually in team deathmatch mode", fail to nurture real teamwork....

The once populous combat arena of Winter 2009 is an echoing shell. A few notable action franchises still circle in the shadows, IPs like Assassin’s Creed 2 and Pandemic’s plucky original The Saboteur, but the vast majority have migrated to the over-subscribed stomping grounds of Spring 2010. There in the centre of the unspoiled, uncontested sand stands the usurper, M16 dangling absently from one hand. Despite contentious server support and pricing decisions, Modern Warfare 2 seems to have won the struggle for Christmas revenue before it even begins.

But has it? There are inhuman shrieks from the auditorium, a confused surge of rotting bodies against the barricades. Left 4 Dead 2 has had its own battles to fight on the road to release, against Australian ratings boards, disgruntled fans and over-sensitive US newspapers, and the Infected are in no mood for further upset.

The face-off between Valve’s necrotic B-movie homage and the military shooter’s military shooter turns on more than their simply being released a week apart: the two games are in most respects polar opposites. So which one should you be taking home with you (or at least, which one should you be taking home first) come mid-November? Let the tournament begin…

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Review It's the biggest release of the year. Will it get the biggest score? FPS Gamer's Kristan Reed takes on Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare 2....
2. Battlefield team play “has always been deeper”, says DICE producer Karl-Magnus Troedsson says other multiplayer shooters are "still actually in team deathmatch mode", fail to nurture real teamwork....
3. Opinion: MW2’s genius shouldn’t blind us to controversies Price hiking, airport massacres, Activision's miserly attitude to review code - Modern Warfare 2 has a fair few blotches on its mark sheet. FPS Gamer takes stock....

Welcome to FPS Gamer. Round here, we mostly shoot stuff.

Not in a because-I-had-to, point-of-last-resort sort of way, but in a cackling, dropped-a-cheesy-punchline-afterwards sort of way.

We’re slightly mental like that. So are lots of you people, if sales of games like Call of Duty 4 are any indication. The FPS is big business nowadays. Why, then, the absence of a fully-fledged FPS-focussed editorial site? Did Rupert Murdoch skip that part of the marketing report? Is Future Publishing too peaceable to step up to the plate? We don’t know. We don’t care. We’ve come, we’ve seen and – given a handy ammo cache or two – we’re going to conquer.

But just who are “we”? FPS Gamer’s launch staff include the cream of Kikizo talent – Valve fanatic Adam Doree (if you’re unfamiliar with Adam, just go to any Sega event and follow the sound of swearing), network editor Edwin Evans-Thirlwell (possibly the poshest man in the business, and the chap behind such coverage as this Killzone 2 blowout), the legendary Kristan Reed of Eurogamer fame and eloquent review-o-matic Rupert Higham. A big hand too for our bloodthirsty army of freelancers.

Besides incisive reviews, previews and interviews, we’ll be running the following unique FPS-flavoured features:

Quickfire Q&A – Our schizophrenic antidote to over-worded, boringly constructed articles, giving you all the key info plus a joke or three in snappy question-answer format. Here’s one for Modern Warfare 2.

Weapon Drop – Short, sharp homilies to new, old and upcoming FPS weapons. If it blows shit away plenty good (and sometimes even if it doesn’t), you’ll find a corresponding entry here. Anybody fond of sticky grenades?

One-on-One – Wavering over a purchase? These itemised “versus” articles pit near-contemporary shooters against one another in a life-or-death struggle for your pocket money.

Match Report – A breathless write-up of a memorable multiplayer session. Games featured range from the yet-to-be-released (e.g. Modern Warfare 2) through the massively popular (e.g. Halo 3) to the criminally neglected (e.g. Quake Wars).

Here’s a summary of what we’ve published so far. Kristan’s titanic History of First-Person Shooters takes point, ably supported by Manny Brown’s Worst FPS level and Best of Halo 3 Forge mode features. Reviews-wise, Rupert has the lowdown on Metroid Prime Trilogy and Halo 3: ODST, Richard Walker came away shell-shocked but smiling from Operation Flashpoint, and Edwin’s made short work of Wolfenstein and Dead Space: Extraction.

We don’t want to presume, but we think you’re going to like it here. All comments and criticisms are welcome. To get you started, how about some trigger-happy quotes?

“Too close for missiles, I’m switching to guns.” (Maverick, Top Gun)

“Guns are the crutches of the impotent.” (Arthur C.Clarke)

“When you absolutely, positively have to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitute.” (Jules Winnfield on the AK47, Pulp Fiction)

“If you are going to stick to your guns, make sure they are loaded with fact and not fiction.” (Joseph Cubby)

No related posts.

It’s a painful admission, but I was a late recruit to the guns ‘n’ ammo brigade. A shameless fantasy buff, most of my juvenile computer time was devoted to classic Middle-Earthly shareware RPGs like Spiderweb’s Exile series. On the console side, it was all about Sega, Sonic and the platformer at large.

But one day I got my hands on a simple 3D flight shooter, homely ancestor to the likes of G-Police. Curiosity piqued, I proceeded to delve into LucasArts’ Dark Forces, died frequently, learned the importance of looking up and fell for the genre hook, line and sinker.

There was a lot I’d missed – my first stab at Doom was on the GBA, for crying out loud! And there still is. Which is why it’s fortunate we have devastatingly well-informed people like Kristan Reed knocking around.

What Kristan doesn’t know about machine-gunning Nazi demons in the face isn’t worth knowing, and you certainly won’t be reading about it in the following, formidable, five-part FPS retrospective…

Part 1 deals with the birth of the beast way back in 1974, the gradual bulking up of home gaming technology over ensuing decades, and the paradigm-fragging arrival of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom in the early nineties.

Part 2 tackles the period 1996-7, with 3D graphics acceleration finding its footing, the Duke kicking ass and Quake storming the online scene.

Part 3 casts an eye over 1998-2000, which saw Valve announce its existence in spectacular style, while Epic threw down the gauntlet to id in the form of Unreal.

Part 4 covers 2001-2005, Valve’s ability to make lightning strike twice, the increasing centrality of the console (largely on Bungie’s account) as FPS platform, and World War 2’s revival in the name of online multiplayer.

Part 5, finally, takes us from 2006 to the present day, with Crytek holding a candle for PC gamers while PlayStation and Xbox advocates debate the merits of Halo 3, Killzone 2 and co, EA pushing into the free-to-play market and the Wii fumbling for a straight aim.

Hope that coffee’s still hot. You may turn over your exam papers… now.

- Edwin

1. The History of First-Person Shooters: Part 4 2001-2005. The war between console and PC reaches its height, Valve excels itself, World War 2 becomes the setting of choice and Bungie gives birth to a big, helmeted baby....
2. The History of First-Person Shooters: Part 1 The origins of the genre. Maze War, Castle Wolfenstein and (of course) Doom....
3. The History of First-Person Shooters: Part 3 1998-2000. Epic and Valve hit the scene, online multiplayer explodes and important sub-genres begin to establish themselves....

The fifth and final part of Kristan’s epic retrospective.

2006 was, to say the least, a strange year for the FPS, with Microsoft’s determination to get the jump on its rivals in the next generation leaving the market in a state of flux. The highly successful release of the Xbox 360 the previous December had brought development of Xbox 1 titles to a grinding halt, with most publishers flocking to the upscaled Promised Land of next generation gaming.

The PS2 era wrapped up with a healthy dose of gun porn.

Nevertheless, the first few months brought the FPS crowd a few interesting ‘last gen’ console shooters. Criterion’s Black was a particularly timely reminder that, actually, the last gen still had legs. It proved that PS2 and Xbox could produce fantastic-looking shooters in the hands of a supremely talented console developer.

Elsewhere, Commandos Strike Force demonstrated that RTS brands don’t translate particularly well to first person, while the ex-Argonaut crew at Rocksteady put a promising arcadey spin on the genre with their super-violent swear fest, Urban Chaos: Riot Response – but few would have bet that the same team would return with a game as amazing as Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Tazer to the nipple. Even Batman would have winced.

Normal service was resumed in June with the PC release of Half-Life: Episode One, a download-only experiment which Valve initially hoped would usher in a new episodic age where four-hour slices of content emerged every six months. Although it reviewed well on release, time has been less kind to it, with most preferring the pace of the previous epics to this more frantic chain of action flashpoints.

At this point, episodic gaming was undoubtedly the Big Thing – a point underlined by the arrival of Ritual’s SiN: Episodes over Steam. Sadly, rather than heralding a bold new digital era, it failed to excite critics and flopped badly. No further episodes were released, despite nine being planned.

Dimensional portals were among Prey's USPs, but the reality was a little bland.

Of the remaining FPS releases that year, none stand out as classics, even if most promised that they would be. After an on-off development period of almost a decade, 3D Realms (with the help of Human Head) finally released Prey to mild acclaim, while Techland debuted the intriguing if system-sapping Wild West romp Call of Juarez on PC.

Undoubtedly the most hyped release of the year was Insomniac’s PS3 launch title, Resistance: Fall of Man. Hugely popular in the States, many European critics were less bowled over by its ‘Call of Duty with aliens’ gameplay and slightly underwhelming visuals.

No Gears-killer, but a perfectly respectable shooter in its own right.

Even less interesting was the actual Call of Duty 3, which Treyarch dragged into formulaic mediocrity; the developer also riled PC owners by withholding a version for the platform the franchise originated on. PC gamers could, at least, be content with a steady supply of exclusives in the shape of the futuristic multiplayer-oriented Battlefield 2142 and the flawed action-RPG/FPS gem that was Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, but in general, these were fairly lean times for mouse and keyboard marksmen.

1. The History of First-Person Shooters: Part 4 2001-2005. The war between console and PC reaches its height, Valve excels itself, World War 2 becomes the setting of choice and Bungie gives birth to a big, helmeted baby....
2. The History of First-Person Shooters: Part 3 1998-2000. Epic and Valve hit the scene, online multiplayer explodes and important sub-genres begin to establish themselves....
3. The History of First-Person Shooters: Part 1 The origins of the genre. Maze War, Castle Wolfenstein and (of course) Doom....

The fourth part of Kristan’s epic retrospective.

2001 was a real turning point in the evolution of the FPS, with major developers starting to devote serious attention to consoles for the first time.

While most publishers and developers were content to commission console ports of successful PC titles, others bucked the trend by debuting titles on the new wave of living room hardware. Volition’s Red Faction hit PS2 to sizeable critical and commercial success in May of 2001, fully four months ahead of the PC version – a release pattern PC gamers would have to get used to.

Microsoft went even further than THQ when it bought Bungie Studios and made Halo: Combat Evolved exclusive to Xbox, prompting massive outcry among desktop shooter enthusiasts.

Here's Chiefy!

The system’s killer app at launch in November 2001, Halo introduced an entire generation of gamers to the genre, as well as tempting over a significant proportion of the console’s detractors – chiefly PC gamers still cherishing the belief that the joypad was an unworkable substitute for keyboard and mouse.

Halo’s influence on the genre cannot be overstated, largely thanks to its groundbreaking AI and dynamic combat system. It genuinely felt less scripted and predictable than competing titles, with breathtaking visuals, compelling narrative hooks and hugely addictive split screen multiplayer in the bargain, and scooped top marks across the board. Combat Evolved, indeed.

The early days of Halo multiplayer.

Despite all the attention elsewhere, the PC was still very much the proving ground for most titles in the genre, with high profile titles such as Clive Barker’s Undying, Tribes 2, Alien Vs Predator 2, Command & Conquer: Renegade, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Unreal Tournament 2003 remaining exclusive to the PC.

The latter, in particular, demonstrated that the PC was also still very much the proving ground for new tech, with Epic Games’ delightful Unreal Engine 2 the first major next gen engine of the decade by late 2002, boasting superior texturing alongside new ragdoll techniques.

1. Feature: The History of First-Person Shooters As FPS Gamer clears leather, Kristan Reed turns in the ultimate retrospective: the evolution of first-person shooting from Maze War to Modern Warfare 2....
2. The History of First-Person Shooters: Part 3 1998-2000. Epic and Valve hit the scene, online multiplayer explodes and important sub-genres begin to establish themselves....
3. The History of First-Person Shooters: Part 1 The origins of the genre. Maze War, Castle Wolfenstein and (of course) Doom....