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I love First Person Shooter (FPS) games!

Here lie the rants and reasons why I love them so much. If you look to the right-hand side of the page you will see my current top 3 FPS games. You will notice that there is a seperate page for Half-Life 2 Deathmatch™ (HL2DM). The reason for this is because I am so hopelessly addicted that I need a whole new page to talk about it.

Where is Doom III™? Do you have something against ID?

Some might notice the lack of Doom III™ on my list. This is not due to some sort of bias I hold toward Valve™. But due to the fact that after playing Doom III™, I didn't want to play it again. The game turned out to simply be a linear sequence of scares. I have nothing against ID Software™. In fact. if it weren't for them. Half-Life™ would never have been the game it is. Those of you who read the Half-Life 2™ Deathmatch™ page will see what I mean in more detail.

Where is Halo 2™?? It's the best game ever!

Personally I didn't care for Halo 2™. The game did not seem fresh to me at all. Sure they added dual-weilding, playable Covenant, and more bump maps... but I just don't feel it worthy of a new game title. The game feels more like beating a dead horse to me. I thouroghly enjoy Halo 1™, but I saw no reason for Microsoft™ to make a sequel (except to make more money on the title name that is.)

Tell me a little about your FPS experience.

The first FPS I played when was Wolfenstein 3D™. I was instantly hooked. Not just by the excessive violence, but on the feeling of freedom the game grants to the player. I could go anywhere in this "realistic" world I wanted! (at least at the time, the graphics seemed realistic.) My next venture in the FPS universe was Blake Stone™, This one wasn't as fun for me as Wolfenstein 3D™, it had the tendancy to give me motion sickness. Then came Doom™. This game destroyed my expectations for an FPS, and took me to a whole new level of immersion. Doom II™ followed suit. Then came good ole' Duke Nukem 3D™ and its "successor" Shadow Warrior™. But it wasn't until I played a demo of a game called Heretic™ that I was awakened to something I didn't even know I had been missing, multiplayer! I spent countless hours playing Heretic™ over a serial cable with my brother. The demo only came with one map, but that didn't bother me one bit. Heretic lasted me until Hexen™ came out, which was a little fun, although I didn't like only having four weapons. The next game in line basically sealed my fate as an FPS-junkie. ID decided to drop the raycasting engine and sprite-based monsters for something a bit more realistic. The first true "3D" game I ever played Quake™, was a marvel. I played through single player over and over. Then I discovered a little service called MPlayer™. Back in the good old days, playing on a 28.8 kbps modem, pinging at least 400, there was nothing that could get me away from the computer when I was playing. It was over MPlayer™ that I began to hone my skills as a deathmatch player. I learned to be lethal with all of the weapons, learned all of the maps like the back of my hand, and for a time. I was ranked pretty high on MPlayer's ladder. Then someone went and made a mod (mod? what's that?) for Quake™ called "Q-Ball." I was instantly hooked. The idea of playing together as a team intrigued me. Shortly after a mod for Quake™ called "Team Fortress™" came out. I can still remember watching my download screen for 2 hours waiting for the mod to be sent to my machine. The readme had looked quite interesting: a class system, capture the flag, up to 4 teams at once! I spent most of my days through high-school playing Team Fortress™. Many ask what my best class was. I was always the best as a soldier. There is a skill I perfected in Quake™ deathmatch that was my biggest asset. I can't really explain how I do it, but this is how it works: Somehow after knocking an enemy into the air with the rocket launcher, I was able to instantly know (calculate?) where he would land, and by the time he would land, I was able to already have another rocket at that spot to pop him back into the air. I would repeat this action untill I got the frag. This trick would confuse most players long enough that they would not be able to even hit me while they were being juggled. Playing as a sniper didnt become a viable option for me untill my ping dropped to around 150 with my first DSL connection. I was out of high school at this point and spending all of my free time (away from work) playing Team Fortress™. Now we start a long list of games I played, but always ended up going back to playing Team Fortress on the newly released QuakeWorld™ system. Sorry if they aren't in chronological order, I wasn't paying as much attention to these games as Team Fortress™. Note also that all of these games were for PC. I don't play console FPS games due to lack of keyboard/mouse. In the case of Halo 2™, I have played it on several friend's Xbox™es.

It was around this time that Team Fortress began to wane. Mostly due to the fact that it's loyal players were all converting to Counter-Strike. What follows are the games I have played since then.

And this is where we are today! Sorry if this was a bit too lengthy, but as you can see I love them FPSes! And now I'm heading back to play DOD:S. Bye for now! (check out my Half-Life 2™ page for my Steam ID in case you'd like to play along with me.)



- Robert 1/09/05