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

In my previous two blogs I revealed my top 10 of favourite first person shooters since 2004. To recap, here's the list again:

1. STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl
2. ArmA II
3. Cryostasis: The Sleep of Reason
4. Crysis
5. F.E.A.R.
6. Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath
7. BioShock 2
8. Metro 2033
9. Far Cry 2
10. Team Fortress 2

Undoubtedly, many of you may have expected certain other well-known and well-received shooters to have made it on the list, so I deemed it useful to explain a few of the most surprising omissions:

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Half-Life 2
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Half-Life 2 is considered a revolution not only in first person shooting, but in gaming as a whole. Its amazing physics engine, graphics and professional presentation were near unheard of at the time. The reason why I didn't include it in my list, though, is because I think Half-Life 2 falls a bit short of being an entertaining first person shooter. For one, the gunplay is very weak: the sound effects of the guns plain suck and the 'light' feeling (no recoil, etc.) of most of the arsenal makes it feel like you're shooting paintball guns rather than actual weaponry. The AI wasn't very good either, which may seem excusable given the game's age (it was released in 2004), but when you consider that FEAR was released a year later, the action sequences really seem primitive even for their time.

 

The game also contained a lot of boring sections. The Tridents are all bullet sponges that are no fun to fight, especially four times in a row, and the entire City 17 sequence late in the game is a strechted-out borefest that literally made me consider not finishing the game. Half-Life 2 still is a damn fine game with  lots of variation and memorable adventure sequences, but its weakness as a pure shooter prevented me from including it on my list.


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BioShock 1
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I already explained why I chose BioShock 2 over 1 in my first post, but I felt it deserved some extra explanation. BioShock 1, much like Half-Life 2, wasn't that strong as a pure first person shooter and relied more on its atmosphere, story and sense of adventure than on the shooting elements. BioShock 2 was a great game because it largely preserved the atmosphere and story, and added some very good combat to the mix, making the game much more durable as a first person shooter experience. Not only did I want to keep playing because I wanted to know how the story progressed, but also because I had a damn good time outsmarting enemies and trying out the amazing weaponry and the different ammunition types. BioShock 1, on the other hand, I only kept playing to get to the end of the story (which was disappointing as well, by the way), so it didn't particularly stand out to me as a shooter.


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Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
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I don't want to come across as a mindless hater, so I'll just make it clear now that Call of Duty 4 is a solid game that has provided me with quite some hours of entertainment. That being said, though, the game fell a bit short in terms of substance. The shooting was a bit too simple, the level design was a bit too linear, the set pieces were a bit too predictable and scripted... In the end, the game had just progressed too little from the previous installments for it to be surprising in any way. The multiplayer was pretty good, still, and introduced an RPG-like system that has since become standard in multiplayer games. After spending about 10 hours with the multiplayer mode, however, I was already starting to get bored with it. Had I cared more about multiplayer (see my description of Team Fortress 2), the game might've made it on my list.


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Shattered Horizon
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Shattered Horizon, like Team Fortress 2, is one of the few multiplayer-only games that I really enjoy. As such, this surprisingly polished Finnish indie game almost made it onto my list. Yet in the end, the game simply offers too little content in order to compete with more meaty multiplayer games such as the aforementioned Team Fortress 2 and Call of Duty 4. I love the shooting mechanics, and the concept of zero gravity combat makes SH one of the very few multiplayer shooters to truly innovate, but with only 8 maps and no unlockables, there's just not enough to keep coming back for. If a sequel were to solve this problem, it may become a sleeper hit in the PC online community.

 

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Halo (series)
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The reason why I didn't include any Halo game on the list is plain and simple: I barely played any of those games. I was into Combat Evolved for a while and I very briefly played Halo 2, so my recollection of those games is vague, and my knowledge of their successors pretty much non-existent. I always did find the overall look of those games interesting, but seeing as I don't own an Xbox 360, I am not able to try those games out. So sorry Halo fans, but my funds aren't as unlimited as my wits.

 

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That's all, folks. I'll hope you'll excuse me for not including your favourite game in my top 10, but as I said before, I encourage you to make your own list if you have better ideas!


Jesse Dolman, NoobFeed.