Split-Screen :: The Game-Geek’s Daily Read

By Ravi Sinha

On May 27th 1982, Origin released the world’s first ever first-person role-playing game. Named Ultima Underworld, it was an offshoot of the legendary RPG series and the ancestor of other classics like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and World of Warcraft.

Incidentally, Ultima Underworld created a tiny ripple that would manifest into an enormous tsunami several decades down the line of game design evolution. It was not only the first FP RPG, but gaming’s first ever first-person perspective game. It influenced id Software’s Catacombs 3D, the precursor to Wolfenstein 3D, in the company’s garage development stages and Tony Gard when he laid down the principles of Tomb Raider, as he “wanted to mix that type of game with the sort of polygon characters that were just being showcased in Virtua Fighter”. It thus gave birth to arguably one of the most popular and controversial genres of gaming: the First Person Shooter or FPS.

17 years and hundreds of FPSes later, we take a long hard look and examine the ten absolute best first person shooters of all time.

#10 F.E.A.R: First Encounter Assault Recon

Synopsis:

Monolith Productions, veteran FPS developers who’s works range from the anime mech-inspired Shogo: Mobile Armour Division and spy spoof/psychedelic 70′s actioner No One Lives Forever, developed a title with enough action to “make the player feel like they are an action movie hero” and enough horror to “get under his skin”. Add to that a real-time shadow and lighting system to tank 2005′s PC architecture and artificial intelligence advanced enough to give the Marines of Half-Life nightmares. The result? The intense and eloquently named, F.E.A.R. That it has a full form elevates it even higher from the “most typical name for a horror game” category.

The Big Deal?

A popular approach to horror in most first person shooters was the “monster in the closet” technique, wherein monsters would appear out of secret locations, some times those a player unconsciously passed. Doom III is a prominent example of this technique. F.E.A.R. not only took a wholly different approach, but it intermixed mystery with paranoia, gut feeling with shocking twist to toy with the player’s mind. Simple devices such as Alma’s hallucinations- for that matter, the centrality of Alma herself to the very infrastructure of the scares illustrated the careful balance taken in evoking one’s implicit, psychological terror. Who could forget the Unidentified Signal warnings that preluded a simple passing of Alma past a door…and the sheer abruptness of her suddenly staring down on the player as he descends a ladder?

Monolith went far enough to utilize inexpensive and thus unique sound effects throughout the game, along with tailoring music to specific events rather than cut-and-paste compositions, to avoid the predictability associated with most horror FPSes. Combined with the lighting system, both a technological marvel and monstrosity at the time, it came to the point where the most terrifying scenes were those totally barren of other details save horror – like a Rorschach ink blot which invites the player to guess what is quickening their heart rates before evolving into a bloody portrait of bodily ruin, or even nothing at all. F.E.A.R. also distinguished itself from most horror titles by offering a hefty amount of tactical action. An incredibly ruthless A.I. in tandem with a stylish “slow-mo” trigger left mostly to third person shooters made for some of the heaviest fire-fights in FPS history. Level design, in many respects, maintained the requisite pacing and deliberative obstacles of top-rate shooters despite their starkness in overall detail.

And How Much Did They Milk It?

Two expansion packs, the bland though solid Extraction Point and blatant cash-in attempt Perseus Mandate, were released for the original game before F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin reset the canon and directly continued the mythos established in First Encounter Assault Recon. Despite receiving solid reviews for its gameplay and atmosphere, F.E.A.R. 2 was more of a long-awaited gift for F.E.A.R. fans than a total revamp or evolution of the series. However, it definitely gets our nomination for having one of the most shocking end game sequences this year.

What’s Next?

We can only assume another F.E.A.R. is on the way, if not an expansion and extra content for Project Origin, though it could be a long while before anything by way of announcements or details surfaces (F.E.A.R. 2 was just released, after all). Until then, invest a good few hours in both games and get acquainted with Samara and Sadako’s more anti-social yet immensely lovable clone Alma. A sound sleep may not be guaranteed afterwards, but nothing says “fun” like taking the next day off. Except playing F.E.A.R., of course.