Top 10 Favourite First Person Shooters (Part 2/3)

A couple of days ago, I revealed to you numbers 6-10 of my top 10 list of favourite first person shooters. And while the introduction to that article already mentioned everything you needed to know, let me just repeat a few basic points:

- This list is personal and therefore biased, so if you disagree, the best thing you can do is to make your own list.

- I will only include games released in 2004 or after, as I find it both unfair and borderline impossible to compare modern shooters with games released like 15 years ago.

- This list (and I actually forgot to mention this the first time around) will only include one installment from a series, as I fear that this list would have otherwise been dominated by games from my favourite series.

Now, let's crack into the top 5:

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5.  F.E.A.R.
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One of the most important aspects of a first person shooter is its gunplay - how the guns feel, how the AI behaves and how the action relates to the environment. In this sense, there are still very few shooters out there that can match 2005's horror-styled FPS F.E.A.R. The game featured gory violence inspired by the likes of Soldier of Fortune, combat A.I. that is still advanced by today's standards and a kind of cliché - but therefore no less enjoyable - horror plot inspired by Japanese movies such as Ringu.

 

Even though the nature of the plot was what set the presentation of F.E.A.R. apart from other modern shooters - making it the game's main selling point - what really distinguished it was the constant sense of joy derived from the numerous encounters with the enemy clone soldiers. Their combat behaviour was almost human-like at times, with them being able to use cover effectively, try to sneak around you and even retreat if that turned out to be the most viable option. The impeccably designed combat areas also added to the dynamicness of the encounters, with there often being multiple entry points and various objects and structures that really allowed both you and your enemies to use the environment to your/their advantage.

F.E.A.R. also showcased some excellent pacing, with each level having exactly the right length and there being a good balance of action sequences and horror/storytelling moments. Granted, the level design was a bit monotonous and the game designers were reluctant to introducing new enemy types, but F.E.A.R.'s campaign still stands out to me as one of the most streamlined, smart, overall awesome FPS campaigns in recent memory.


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4.  Crysis
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The name 'Crysis' has almost become synonymous with 'amazing graphics', but to be honest, I'm at a point where I consider the graphics a nice bonus, as it's the versatile, slow-paced, and occasionally zany action that keeps me coming back to this title. Crytek's ambitious sandbox game takes place on a tropical island and can be considered the spiritual successor to the original Far Cry, developed by Crytek in 2004, after which they sold the IP to Ubisoft.

 

In comparison to Far Cry, the most notable new addition to Crysis in terms of gameplay is the Nanosuit, a futuristic full body armour suit that allows its wearer to use superhuman powers, such as jumping several meters into the air, reflecting bullets, running at extremely high speeds and even temporarily becoming invisible. What this means for the gameplay is that you are capable of using your powers to play with your opponents like some kind of god. At your disposal are the means to stalk and fool the enemy Korean soldiers, for example by murdering entire platoons without them even seeing you (made possible by the game's very functional stealth system).

Each level in Crysis does have a start and a finish, but it is possible to navigate through each of the early maps in whatever way you want, making for a very enjoyable sandbox experience that is very hard to put down. Later in the game, the island freezes over and your main foes become aliens, and the levels also become considerably more linear. While this annoyed some gamers, I thought it was a smart move that allowed the developers to showcase the potential of Crysis as a more fast-paced action title of epic proportions.

Crysis still is one of my go-to games for first person shooting, both when it comes to a quick action fix and longer playing sessions with more well thought-out combat.


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3.  Cryostasis
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If titles like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Heavy Rain have taught us anything, it's that a heavier focus on storytelling in video games often goes at the cost of interactivity. Quick-time events try to give us the illusion that we're in control of the action that unfold on-screen, and lengthy cutscenes just take the controller/mouse/keyboard out of our hands completely. Cryostasis is one of the few games I've played that manages to tell an intriguing story without marring the interactive aspect.

Stuck on a nuclear ice breaker, you play as Alexander Nesterov, a meteorologist tasked with finding out what caused the demise of the ship and its crew. It quickly turns out that many of the crew members have turned into demonic creatures, often symbological reflections of their former selves, and the only way to break the curse is to relive the last memories the crew members had before their tragic death and correct their mistakes. This puts the player in an interesting cycle of flashbacks, which, being the main storytelling device, largely serve as the game's cutscenes. The player is thus enabled to identify himself with a wide array of characters, ranging from one of the ship's prisoners to a stuffed polar bear (!).

 

Like many Eastern-European games, Cryostasis unfortunately runs exceptionally poor, especially for people who don't own a PhysX-enabled nVidia card. But even with the poor performances, Cryostasis left a deep impression on me as it showed that video games can indeed tell a fascinating story without it necessarily affecting the interactivity.


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2.  ArmA II
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ArmA II is the evidence that a game doesn't have to be perfect in order to become one of my favourites. Bohemia Interactive's 2009 military simulator is deeply flawed in many ways, ranging from its uncanny system requirements to the many bugs in the gameplay itself. But even if ArmA II does a lot of things wrong, it also does a lot of things right. The variety in weapons is amazing in itself, but their authentic handling, complete with recoil, bullet drop and other influences (such as fatigue) makes it very addictive to just go out an experiment with all the guns, fire modes and ammo types. The same goes for most of the other equipment, which includes a huge collection of both Russian and NATO cars, tanks, helicopters and jet planes.

The combat can be immensly satisfying as well, as the AI doesn't resort to the same predictable behaviour as in most other games. Enemies will not fall into easy traps by trying to flank you in open fields, but instead it's you and your squad members who have to take the initiative most of the time. This can lead to some frustrating moments, as the AI can resort do downright cowardly behaviour at times, but the satisfaction of winning an immense battle is all the greater this way.

 

Players of this game will also have to be prepared to create their own experience using the in-game mission editor. This means that you can create pretty much any scenario you want, but also that you will have to acquire some basic knowledge about how the editor works and how you can script events and such. There's always the armory mode and one of the game's 2 campaigns to resort to, but not using the editor to create your own scenarios for both single and multiplayer is probably ignoring the most important and viable aspect of the game. As a result, I was initially intimidated by the complexness and unrefinedness of this game, but now I find myself resorting to ArmA II more than any other game when I need a fix of thoroughly complex action, and that's certainly commendable.


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1. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
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My fascination with the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series began as soon as I bought Shadow of Chernobyl along with Crysis right after I had acquired a gaming PC about a year ago. Shadow of Chernobyl, the first game in the series, is a sandbox first person shooter developed by GSC Game World and it was released in 2007. It is set in the Chernobyl Zone of Exclusion after a second, fictional blast occurred in 2006. The Zone has since become inhabited by a few illegal tresspassers who call themselves Stalkers. Their motives for entering the Zone vary from personal redemption to opportunistic treasure hunting. You play as Marked One, and when you wake up in the bunker of Zone trader Sidorovich, you remember nothing (as the video game storytelling cliché dictates).

 

What makes this game so intriguing is that it absolutely nails the immersion: the game does everything to make sure that the player feels like he is in the Zone instead of just playing a video game. The difficulty is pretty intimidating due to the generally great combat AI and the player's unusually weak starting equipment as compared to the enemies' weapons. In addition, the wastelands of Chernobyl are haunted by roaming packs of wild dogs, as well as mutants and even anomalies, that bend space in such a way that they may severely injure or even kill anyone who walks into them. You'll really have to spend time in the Zone and learn its secrets if you are to survive for more than 5 minutes.

This process binds the player with the environment, a feeling that is strengthened by truly excellent sound design, realism-focused artistic design and some amazing use of lighting effects. The result is an incredible sense of immersion that really puts the player in his own little world whenever he plays S.T.A.L.K.E.R., which also happens to be the main reason why I love S.T.A.L.K.E.R. so much. As a shooter, though, it also showcases some excellent combat mechanics, terrific gunplay that rivals F.E.A.R. at some points, and a great variation of different enemy types and weapons really makes the long campaign of Shadow of Chernobyl an exciting journey that left a lasting impression on me. In fact, since I first beat the game in the summer of 2010, no other first person shooter and indeed no other video game in general has managed to make a similar impact on me and how I view the emotional potential of video games.

 

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That wraps up my top 10 of favourite first person shooters from 2004 until now. But wait, we're not done yet! In an upcoming entry, I will explain why I left out a couple of games you might have expected in this list.

 

Jesse Dolman, NoobFeed.