I’m not really a fan of horror movies – I don’t generally find pleasure in watching something that’s likely just going to put me on edge and make it harder to sleep at night. Oddly, though I do find myself to be a fan of horror games  – I’m not sure exactly what the difference is – perhaps it’s the fact that I’m in control of the action, I’m not sure. I wouldn’t consider myself a “hardcore” horror fan, and don’t exactly go looking for freaky games – but there’s definitely an appeal, as long as it doesn’t mentally scar me for life.

I think to a degree that my love for horror in games is partly to do with immersion. In gaming, when your character feels pain, the player in turn feels nothing. I’m not worried about being shot, stabbed or beaten up in-game, as in reality I know there’s no danger. But with horror, the player can experience the fear first-hand – and there’s all the more satisfaction for conquering it.

My first memories of scary moments in gaming were probably playing Doom on PC when I was a kid. Using lighting to create a tense atmosphere, Doom could often be quite scary – going into a pitch black room while hearing the grunts of a dangerous pig-demon that was hunting me from the shadows. I always hated those parts – but looking back I think the facing the atmosphere of Doom was part of the appeal.

More recently, I’ve gotten into titles which have horror as a larger focus, rather than more of a sub-genre as my experiences had been in the past. The last gen was when I discovered a love for Capcom’s style of horror – starting with Onimusha on the PS2. Onimusha mixed samurai action with demons, yet using similar controls, inventory and exploration aspects to Resident Evil (a series I had yet to really discover). While not as scary as Resident Evil – largely due to Samanosuke’s powerful fighting abilities – there were definitely some scary moments in there, with demons smashing out of tanks and such – often sudden sound can be the thing that makes you jump, more even than visual cues.

That’s when I moved onto Resident Evil on the GameCube. Dubbed REmake, Resident Evil was a graphically overhauled remake of the original, and it really opened my eyes to the genre. The game used zombies, clever camera angles, and limited supplies (including requiring items to save!) to create a panicking experience, a single zombie being a formidable threat and making Jill and Chris feel full of human weakness. Another key factor I found was unpredictability – while going through a corridor at one time would grant safe passage, I’d later find myself jumping out of my skin as zombie-dogs smashed through the windows later on – in the same passage that I’d already deemed “safe”. Never knowing when or where you could come under threat is a key factor in making things tense, and Resident Evil did it amazingly well.

The idea of feeling human weakness is often a great way to make something feel scary to me – making your enemy feel more powerful that you, even invincible. This brings me to one last Capcom title that I’d like to talk about – Haunting Ground. While not as popular as some other titles by Capcom, I actually found this game to be one of their scariest. Nailing the aspect of feeling defenceless, Haunting Ground follows the story of Fiona, trapped in a creepy estate with no-one save for a handful crazy people who seem to want to hurt her. The unique thing about the game for me, though, is that at all times you are being stalked by a single, unkillable foe. Defeating the likes of Debilitas, the hulking man with the mental capacity of a toddler is impossible – your only option is to run and hide, else he’ll break you like a toy. The game also implements a type of panic feature – seeing something scary, be it blood on the walls, or being chased by Debilitas, Fiona’s mental state will slowly decline, making her stumble and trip, the games visuals becoming more grainy and choppy, until she eventually falls into a complete panic and loses control entirely – that is, unless you can find some way to avoid your pursuer and regain some self-control. The game is made a little more bearable by lovable companion Hewie - a dog that will help by slowing your opponent, yet even Hewie can only do so much. 

Over the last couple of weeks, however, I’ve been playing two current-gen games – Dead Space, and F.E.A.R. 3 (AKA F3AR). Now, I was a little anxious to play Dead Space – having heard several accounts of people having had to stop playing the game due to finding the horror a little too much to handle. The style of the game reminded me of Resident Evil, and in many ways it did remind me of it – having to worry about ammunition supplies, a great, dark atmosphere – with the feeling you’re virtually alone in a creepy environment. But while I loved the game, for its mix of horror, upgrade system and storyline, I was actually disappointed with the level of horror in the game. That’s not to say that I didn’t jump a few times – because I did – but I simply found the enemies more disgusting than scary. Once I could see my opponent, all fear vanished and I just carefully set about dismembering them routinely. A good game to be sure, but it just didn’t live up to the hype that had been built around it in terms of scares. 

However, it’s with F3AR that I’ve found a game that really gets under my skin. I’ve played the previous F.E.A.R. titles, so I had an idea of what to expect, but it was interesting to compare it with Dead Space, playing them so closely together. Alma is something I can actually fear – her reality-manipulating visions casting me into the depths of my own personal brand of horror, and once again I’ve found myself playing something that I refuse to play at night, or when I’m home alone. So what is it that makes F.E.A.R. such a winner in the genre for me?

Let me explain that the game isn’t “scary” the whole way through – there are many times where there are shoot-outs with enemy soldiers, which are generally my least favourite parts of the game (especially frustrating battles against mechs) - but at the same time, it helps. Sometimes you’ll drop your guard, and then Alma will suddenly appear, right in your face without a word of warning. One of the most important things about fear, for me, is that it has to be unexpected. Sometimes you’ll find yourself in a dark, chilling corridor that gets your heart pounding – only to find that there’s no big scare at the end – the game’s just toying with your emotions. But then you always know that something could happen, and you can rarely predict when it will. As with Haunting Ground, Alma provides an “unkillable” evil – you’ll see her, watching you, yet you can’t fight her. The game’s soldiers and Alma’s followers provide the actual danger, yet Alma provides the fear. But it’s how the two are mixed together that really works for me. Whenever I walk into a dark room, I don’t know what to expect. Will it be nothing? Will a refrigerator suddenly fly across the room? Will a genetically altered monster jump in my face? Or will Alma appear right in front of me, her creepy eyes staring deep into my soul?

And that… is what scares me. How about you?

-Leon

When it comes down to it there is always one genre I swear by when gaming wise. That genre is the first person shooter! Some people like myself adore them and cannot get enough, others either can’t get on with them or think strange things like, shooting games require no skill and blah blah blah, eventually remarks like that sound like white noise to me.

My love for the genre started back around 1994. I would have been about 6 years old. Yeah at the age of 6 I was murdering Nazi’s and zombie’s a plenty! What game am I talking about? Wolfenstein 3D of course.

This game was created by, who I love to call, the gods of FPS gaming, Id, they created a game which by today’s standards is very simple. Point, shoot and walk along.

As well as killing you could collect treasure and watch your score go up. Wolfenstein was an innovation in gaming because it was the first game from a first person perspective. But, let’s be honest here, the sound effects are still to this day truly amazing. Just the sound of ‘Guten Tag!’ coming from the mouth of a huge blond German guy with two machine guns who goes by the name of Hanns still cracks me up. Did I also mention Robot Hitler? This game still is awesome!

Then things for the FPS genre evolved slightly. With id spewing out another FPS gem called Doom! Now Doom for me is the FPS that brings back the most memories. To be honest my Dad kicks butt on it and has done for lord knows how long. I used to spend days trying to kill him over a LAN game but still to this day it can’t be done really!

Anyway Doom is where Id took it all to the next level with more guns, better sounds and of course the all important enemies! Doom offered us the knuckle dusters, chainsaw, pistol, shotgun, machine gun, rocket launcher and BFG. Doom 2 offered us all those with the addition of the double barrel shotgun. But the big change was the amount of enemies and variety of them. I mean who would blame id, they had hell demons from Mars to muck around with, and what they came out with was awesome. The story line was pretty engrossing too, but the beauty of the game still lies in the simple point, shoot run away design.

Then there was a couple of years of me playing Doom 2. Until I came across something which was new, grimy, dirty, had an attitude so awesome you could not help nut smile and at one point had the main character literally ripping a space aliens head of and shitting down its neck.

I’m talking about Duke Nukem 3D. One of the best innovations in FPS gaming. It had a brilliant array of weapons for people to choose from, but not just your bog standard ballistics it also had shrink rays and freeze guns, which, to be honest I had hours of fun with. The squelching noises when you blew up an alien were fantastic and the ridiculousness of some of the ballistic weapons just made you want to cry tears of joy! To this day I still take much pleasure in killing a horde of Pig cops with a akimbo rocket launchers, which also fired like five rockets at a time. OWNAGE!

Duke himself was a great character. I have said this before in a previous article and I will say it again. If a guy has the attitude to say ‘this sucks’, or ‘damn’ after he has been blown to kingdom come he must be cool.

The mixture of enemies such as octo-brains and pig cops just to name a couple was great and the whole concept of aliens stealing women just to piss off a guy like duke, simple but damn effective.

Whilst the craziness of Duke 3D was happening on the side another FPS was grabbing my attention. Earlier I said id were the gods of FPS, so there is no wonder that I would not skimp out on the Quake phenomenon!

I could go on for several centuries talking about Quake but the one that really got me and I still mark as one of the best FPS games is Quake 2. To this day I think the game the graphics, the attention to detail were fantastic for its time and still held the great, kill everything in sight game play which I love. Quake was the next generation from Doom so it still had some of Dooms’ characteristics. It still had the BFG and the double barrel shot-gun, but it brought to the table one of the single best weapons in FPS gaming. The Nail Gun! Shredding enemies apart this was pretty much and unstoppable giant of a weapon. Get in the firing line of this beasty and you would not last three seconds!

After Duke and quake I was at a bit of a loss for new FPS games. I tried Unreal Tournament at my mates house. Blinking awesome game I must say! I ended up owning UT 2004.

But this was kind of the end of my PC FPS gaming, I now turned to consoles and it was my mate over the road who had Halo: Combat Evolved. For me this game had it all, vehicles, good variety of guns. Everything! This is what kicked off indeed my love for Xbox and my love for console FPS games. The whole Halo series I can play time and time again and not tire of it. At the moment this is the pinnacle of the FPS gaming genre to me.

OK, I can hear you now, your screaming at the screen shouting WHAT ABOUT CALL OF DUTY YOU NOOB!!!! or words to that effect. To me Call of Duty is good and I have played it but it’s just the whole war thing that gets to me. Zombies and monsters I can quite happily kill no problem. Zombie Nazi’s on Call Of Duty: World At War. Awesome can do that for hours, but for me I am not too comfortable playing it as it seems to real. For me FPS games have to be unreal and that’s where you get the most wacky and awesome ideas.

Garv!

Final note, Wow I was a pleasant games journalist back then….

We live in a wonderful world. A world where technology is bringing people closer together than at any other time in our history. Gamers from the US can play against those in Japan and China, and even Welsh players can be heard. However, all is not well in this 21st century world. Apart from economic stagnation, the cold war in Korea warming up, Russia as a mafia state and the possibility of Sarah Palin being president, there is the trouble of how we play games together. I’m talking about XBox LIVE, or to put it another way, those who have it and those that don’t.

I was feeling stressed the other day and since almost all of my mates were not available for drinks down the pub, I decided to power up the Xbox and get some of my Plus XP pals in a good old frag session. So I ring up Garvaos and say “Hey dude, feel like killing some zombies with me? Or perhaps some terrorists?” Only for him to reply “I’d love to, but I don’t have XBox LIVE Gold.”

This would be Beanie and Garv right now if we didn't have to pay for gold...

This annoyed me greatly. Why is multiplayer reserved only for those who buy the XBox LIVE Gold service? Surely shouldn’t all gamers be able to play with their friends without discrimination? Of course, the answer is not straight forward, or rather it is but has many layers. Multiplayer today is of course, vastly different to that which we enjoyed 10 years ago. The split screen was a far more common occurrence, huddling you and your mates round your tiny telly playing Golden Eye, Mario Kart, Medal Of Honour you name it, most games had a split screen option for multiplayer.

It was the PC of course utilising a much more stable internet and OS that took advantage of online multiplayer gaming. Doom, Quake, and then Half-life were some of the first. The joy being you didn’t have to share a screen with 3 other guys trying to aim at them in poorly lit rooms. However, with this came the need for dedicated servers to host the games. This wasn’t too bad if you were in a small area like your computer lab at school, or a basement with enough power for all your computers. But stretching it out from house to house was more difficult, especially in the 56k dialup days.

Quake 1 multiplayer. Those were the days!

Nowadays, because the majority of multiplayer is done across the net, servers are required for hosting the various games being played from every branch of the gaming genre. FPS, RPG, Sports, racing, just to name a few. Of course, because there are so many players and also with varying degrees of internet speed, finding a good host is key to supporting a decent online game. Maintaining this takes time and effort and so, people had to charge for it. Which is not unfair, you offer a service you want to be able to support it, we all gotta eat and pay our bills.

World of Warcraft could not be free to play after the upfront cost because of the sheer size of it. Guild wars has an easier time having fewer players, but being able to maintain that must be a job and a half. I don’t blame Microsoft for charging for XBox LIVE Gold, you can still download updates for games without it, which is important. I just wish it didn’t cover every single multiplayer aspect of every game. But I guess if you want you have to pay for it. To be fair, the amount of extras that now come with the service make it much better value for money. Still I am jealous of PS3 owners who can play for free, but it is an expensive console.

-That Bloke In The Beanie

So what is Rage? Are we going to see if this is the next FPS marvel from the original creators of the FPS genre? Well sit back and find out.

What we know of the story of Rage so far is that an asteroid has hit Earth turning it to a barren waste land. You play a character that has been kept in an Ark. An Ark is a group of people who have been put into cryo-sleep so that when the asteroid dust clears you can get started on rebuilding civilisation and the world. When you wake up you realise that things have not gone to plan. Firstly the particular Ark you were in has malfunctioned and you are the sole survivor and secondly the Earth has turned pretty non salvageable, mutants in habit the waste land and civilisation has taken a turn for the worst just to survive.

You may be thinking that this game is on the same sort of card as say Borderlands or Fallout 3. But this is id software we are talking about, and these guys know how to innovate games. Rage is more than a bog standard FPS game. It is an open world FPS which also relies on a lot of classic Quake and Doom style FPS game play coupled with the innovations to customise your own weapons, vehicles and gadgets. A perfect example here is that you can build and RC car bomb, meaning you can control a radio controlled toy car equipped with a bomb and detonate it into a pile of unsuspecting enemies. It’s little ideas like this that will make Rage fun and unique from all the rest.

That’s not all though, I did mention vehicles, and you get the opportunity to build vehicles from scratch meaning that your vehicle will be your very own creation. There is a lot of scope for customisation in this game which I am certainly looking forward too.

Rage is built on a brand new game engine built by id called the idTech5. id boast that this game engine is based on terrain and buildings that have literally been hand sculpted by the designers. What this means in literal terms I am not to sure but it seems to me that they may have imported sculptures somehow into the game engine. I’ll do some more reasearch into that and I’ll get back to you.

One of the things I am most excited about in Rage is the enemies. id are notorious for creating a variety of enemies. From what I have seen they have not skimped out here either. The AI in this game is amazing, there was some game footage I saw where the player was fighting against a clan ninja clan of sorts, and these enemies were jumping off walls and bridges to get to you, they were even wall running and doing back flips to dodge your bullets. This literally had me jaw dropped. There was also another piece of footage where the player was fighting against a gang of mutants and these enemies were more savage, animalistic types. So you will get a lot of enemy variety which I cannot wait for.

id have also said that they have incorporated a new pain mechanic into the AI system, meaning that enemies will generally react to where you shoot them. Why hasn’t anyone done this before? I am fed up of seeing some FPS games where an enemy is running at you and you shoot them in the leg and they are completely unphased by it. After seeing some gameplay and the pain mechanic in action I am actually pleased to see enemies holding their arms or legs in pain. Sure they are hard asses and will keep trying to kill you but it’s nice to see them experience pain.

So Rage looks like its going to one hell of a game. And before you guys out there say anything, this game was actually announced back in 2008 so pre dates Borderlands, so don’t start the whole Borderlands clone thing. Oh and unlike Duke Nukem Forever. Rage has a definite release date of September 2011. Thank god for that. It also got IGN’s game of E3 so its bound to be pretty good at least.

Garv

5. Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 – Asteroids On Acid

Anyone who is gamer out there is bound to have heard, witnessed or even played Asteroids. It is pretty much the great-grandfather of all games. So imagine Asteroids, mixed with some trippy colours and explosions with at least six different game variants. Sounds pretty cool right? Well let me introduce you to Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2. It does what it says on the tin, and has evolved the retro stylings of Asteroids and made a really cool,. and somewhat addictive game. The beauty here is that all six of the game variants aren’t necessarily shooting based.

The Pacifism game variant for me is the shining light here. Your main objective is to survive the horde of blue squares that are following you around the screen, your only line of defence are barriers you pass through, that explode, which in turn destroy the onslaught of blue squares. The longer you survive and the amount of blue squares that get destroyed the better. Yeah I know, in writing it sounds rather strange but this game is one of the most addictive titles I have on my hard drive.

The other game variants are just as addictive and challenging, waves is great if you just want to shoot the living pixels out of a load of shapes. And the simple Evolved variant is reminiscent to the classic Asteroids, nice to see they have stayed loyal to their roots.

4. Doom – The First Person Classic

FPS junkies who do not own this classic title deserve a headshot right between the eyes. This is the reason why you are playing Halo and Modern Warfare! Doom is the pinnacle of retro First Person Shooter gaming and the Xbox LIVE port is brilliant.

Like most of you out there, I am more familiar with Doom on the PC. The controls for this game have been converted well (a damn sight better than the GBA version of Doom II) and the level of challenge in this game has not been over looked either.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with this game, expect a really retro and basic FPS game. When I say basic, I mean basic in the way it plays, not in the difficulty setting. So take my advice and don’t plunge head first into Nightmare mode. You will most definitely have no more limbs attached to your computer rendered, pixellated torso.

3. Sonic 2 – Before The Blue Hedgehog Went Bad.

The platform genre is basically the forerunner of all video games. I’d say over half the games on the Sega Mega Drive and indeed the Nintendo systems were mainly platform based games of some incarnation or another. For me the Sonic series was the Platform game I first played, and of course stayed loyal to.

The downloadable version of Sonic 2 (and indeed the version on the Sega Megadrive Ultimate Collection) is the perfect nostalgic brick to the face, that will make any gamer smile and quite frankly be proud to be a gamer. There are no stupid voices, or annoying teenage angst in this game. You get the true sonic that has attitude, that will get annoyed if you put the controller down and walk away. The true sonic who’s arch-enemy is DR ROBOTNIK! (mumble mumble bloody Egg Man mumble mumble).

Gameplay wise you are looking at a fantastically fast paced side scrolling platformer that tests your reactions as well as you ability to collect coins and pass the level. Boss battles are a nice challenge if you don’t know what you are doing and it is a must play for anyone who loves Sonic and platforming. Pfft, who needs and italian plumber when you have a lightning fast blue hedgehog.

2. Peggle – Puzzle + Pegs = AWESOME

I started playing this game when a legion of people on my friends list banded together and started having Peggle parties. To this day I still think the name of the game is a tad strange. But as they say, don’t judge a book by its cover. Peggle is a fantastic puzzle game which is bursting with content. Lots of levels and challenges and a nice selection of characters to unlock and play as.

So what do you do in this game? Shoot balls at a load of pegs. Once all orange pegs are eliminated you are a winner. There is a nice rainbow and everyone leaves their console happy in the knowledge that they have superior peg eliminating skills. Straight forward enough, but the challenge is in the level design, and I am a sucker for level design. Peggle is uniquely designed to make you think about your next shot as opposed to shooting aimlessly and hoping to zombie Jebus you get that last orange peg.

It is a well thought out game that you must get your hands on. Believe me, once you start playing, you will realise a solid week of your life has disappeared in an instant.

1. Portal Still Alive – First You Will Be Baked, Then There Will Be Cake

When I first got hold of the Orange Box, I was easily bored of Half Life 2 (I know, shock/horror) but Portal grabbed my attention for hours. I then became very skint and sold my Orange Box. I felt a part of me die when I physically could not look deep into the heart of my beloved companion cube.

When Portal: Still Alive came out of Xbox LIVE and I jumped for joy, before quickly downloading it to my Hard drive.

This is a first person puzzle game where you have to use and deploy portals using your trusty Portal gun. The puzzles are completely mind-bending and very, very well thought out. But where it stands out in exceeding level design, it also stands out in brilliant story telling and character design. In my opinion Portal has one of the best villains ever. If you are not familiar with GLaDOS. I suggest you download this gem right now, and get ready for some fantastic level design, mind bending puzzles and a game that will truly test your brain power.

So there you have it, my top 5 downloadable games. Now I will leave this up to you, am I right? Or do you have a different top 5?

Garv

Step 1 – Arm yourself 

If Fallout and Left 4 Dead 2 are anything to go by, pretty much anything can be used as a weapon. Whether its a magnum you have managed to stash away somewhere on your person, or a frying pan you have found just lying about, anything can be used to beat down the dangers that lurk on the Earth’s surface. Also, if games are anything to go by, you can hold a lot of weapons at any given time. According to DOOM II you can stash up to nine weapons on your person at once. Or, if you really wanna analyse your games for the Earth’s inevitable doom, play some GTA IV and see what clothes Niko Bellic is wearing - because you can stash a whole array of weapons from pistols and sawn-off shot guns, to full-blown rocket launchers and sniper rifles… handy! Which brings us to step 2.

Step 2 – Finding the right attire

As I said in step one, a good route to go here is the GTAIV route because, lets face it; it has magic pockets to store your whole armory in. But defending yourself is also key to survival, and a good armored suit is the way to go in most cases. Unless you are Duke Nukem of course, then you can just wear a tank top and watch the bullets bounce of your huge pectorals.

Taking a look at Halo, Quake 4, Aliens Vs Predator and Doom, I think they are onto something here. Green and brown is this season’s Apocalypse colours, and are definitely good for camouflage whatever terrain you are in. and make sure it is well armored.

But then there are probably those of you out there who didn’t pack an Apocalypse bag before the earth was destroyed. So my advice to you (well more Fallout’s advice to you) is to grab anything you can and wear it, regardless if it’s a silly sack on your head or huge armour that probably weighs about a ton.

Step 3 – Finding shelter

You need somewhere safe to stay when any sort of Apocalypse strikes. In the case of zombies, if you manage to find a huge door that bolts shut then you’re in for a win. These doors can be found on any building - whether it is a block of flats, a country house or indeed an old wooden shack you will be just fine, once said door is bolted shut there will be a plethora of supplies and weapons for you.

In case of Nuclear Apocalypse however, it gets a bit more tricky… mainly because most things have been blown to smithereens. That said, you will find some places that have remarkably stayed in tact, or you can just find a load of corrugated metal and build yourself a quaint little town, just make damn sure there isn’t a nuclear warhead in the middle of it. It could either explode or have crazy people worshipping it.

With an alien invasion however, you’re probably not going to have any shelter at all - you will mainly find yourself running around lots, shooting anything that moves. But having said that, I have heard space stations are a nice destination this time of the year.

Step 4 – Finding Sustenance and/or medical supplies

You want to stay alive, right? Well if games are anything to go by, food and drink will heal your broken bones within seconds. Fallout and Wolfenstein have both proved this theory. Weather it is a hot meal or a nice cool bottle of radiated cola you will feel better, and in no time that bite you got from a crazy dog will heal right up.

In other cases such as Left 4 Dead, you have to scout around for medi-paks. These things are stashed with bandages and well… bandages. You will feel right as rain in no time after you apply these magical fabrics. Having said that, if we take a leaf from Halo’s book, then simply stepping on medi-paks will automatically heal you, or if your feeling hardcore like Duke Nukem then simply kick a toilet in and drink the water. You will feel ready to kick some more butt in next to no time.

 Step 5 (The Most Important) – DTA

Common practice for a post apocalyptic earth is to DTA - Don’t. Trust. Anybody. Look after number one at all times. Left 4 Dead teaches us that crying humanoid creatures really don’t want our help, they just want to rip our faces off, F.E.A.R. has shown us that small girls can really be mind-controlling, crazy things that can scare the living Jesus out of you and will also rip your face off. Lets face it, everything out there in post apocalyptic earth is just wanting to rip off your face. Dogs, zombies, zombie dogs. It’s pretty dangerous out there.

And that is it, Plus XP’s five step program to surviving doomsday and post apocalyptic earth. If you haven’t gathered by the way, Earth is the number one target for anything, so be warned.

There is one slight problem though…I haven’t played a game that tells me what to do when the ice caps melt… bugger.

- Garv

Let me lay down some facts here, as you are all aware by now I grew up with the FPS genre - so when I say Classic FPS I mean games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. The principle of the single player - and indeed co-op - campaign in these games is simple. You run through the level gunning down everything that moves, until you get to the end of level goal - usually a big button that says end of level, and finally you get your level statistics. It was very simple gameplay back then, but hell was it damn effective; nothing compares to unloading a clip of ammo into any unsuspecting demon, nazi or indeed alien.

First Person Shooters nowadays have evolved. When you pick up and play the campaign mode in Halo, or Modern Warfare you are thrown into a different kind of gameplay that is more objective based. Instead of just gunning you way through hordes of enemies to get to your one and only goal, you have to fulfill objectives that go towards obtaining that end level goal. Now this is definitely a more in depth style of gameplay that most gamers have come to expect these days, but I find that this new style of first-person shooter is less of a stress reliever that Doom and Wolfenstein were.

The original Doom had the option of punching demons to death, now that's what I call an FPS.

Ever since the first Halo, I have come to accept this objective base style of First Person Shooter. The Unreal Tornament franchise tried to keep to the classic style with its tournament based killing spree, but for me it just wasn’t the same. Then Serious Sam came along, which was damn good for just non stop killing, but in my mind it lacked something, (AKA Story) and wasn’t the serious survival FPS I wanted. I was about to say goodbye to the old style FPS, but then I played Left 4 Dead 2.

Now I have got my hands on this demo I have been kicking myself quite hard. Mainly because I should have been bitten by the Left 4 Dead bug a while ago with the first game. Granted I had a little go on the first game over my mates house but I really didn’t take it in and I regret doing so. To my mind Left 4 Dead is the next generation FPS game I have been hunting for. It returns to the classic FPS game genre with its simple, run, gun and get to your goal in one piece, but not only that, it brings lovers of this type of FPS game play together. Being mainly a co-op driven game, it somehow gets the balance of single player action and team based survival just right, meaning you can either play this on your own or with friends, no problem. Kind of reminds me of the Doom Co-op campaign days, ahhh memories.

The one thing I love about the ‘kill everything that moves’ game design is that pretty much anyone of any skill level can pick up and play it, not only that, they can also get good at it. To be honest I did struggle a bit with my first encounters with a Tank and a Witch, as I hadn’t played the first L4D much, if at all. I really didn’t know what to expect when a Witch was around. Basically I heard the crying, saw a sobbing zombie, thought it would be great to put her out of her misery with a shotgun shell to the back of her head. Next thing I know I am on the floor screaming AHH MY FACE!!! Can anyone say N00b!1!

The beauty of this game and indeed style of First Person Shooter is that you can attack it in any way you see fit. Some people like to stay behind and pick enemies off. I personally love to grab the nearest melee weapon, smother myself in Boomer Bile and shout something along the lines of “Here Zombies!! Lunch Time!!” and see how many of the undead buggers I can decapitate, it was the same with Doom, find a horde of pinky deamons and hack them down with the chain saw.

I gave the Left 4 Dead 2 demo to GuitarGirl to try, seeing as we did the expo coverage together I thought why not. She had a go, and her approach to the gameplay was somewhat different to mine. I love to lead the group and kill as many zombies as possible, where as she likes to hang back and pick them off. Both methods are effective. It’s just I remember GuitarGirl playing the demo and accidently setting a car alarm off. It happenes to all of us in L4D at some point. So the zombie horde came in their thousands and she survives it. Thing is, her team mates were on the brink of dying and she remarkably still has pretty much full life and was standing on a table. Then she says “I think I pissed my friends off because they’re nearly dead - But I’m OK because I am standing on the table!”….Facepalm.

As you can see. Left 4 Dead to my mind is a welcome return to the classic style of First Person Shooting. With simple controls, non-stop killing and one goal in sight; to survive the zombie apocalypse. I will no doubt be putting both Left 4 Dead games on my christmas list, and now I breathe a sigh of relief that the classic, kill-everything-that-moves style of gaming is back. I welcome it with open arms, lets just hope a charger isn’t going to mow me down in the process.

Garv.

My love for the genre started back around 1994. I would of been about 6 years old. Yeah at the age of 6 I was murdering Nazi’s and zombie’s a plenty! What game am I talking about? Wolfenstein 3D of course.

This game was created by, who I love to call, the gods of FPS gaming, id, they created a game which by today’s standards is very simple. Point, shoot and walk along.

As well as killing you could collect treasure and watch your score go up. Wolfenstein was an innovation in gaming because it was the first game from a first person perspective. But, lets be honest here, the sound effects are still to this day truly amazing. Just the sound of ‘Guten Tag!’ coming from the mouth of a huge blond German guy with two machine guns who goes by the name of Hanns still cracks me up. Did I also mention Robot Hitler? This game still is awesome!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGnZKq4EipA]

Genius!

Then things for the FPS genre evolved slightly. With id spewing out another FPS gem called Doom! Now Doom for me is the FPS that brings back the most memories. To be honest my Dad kicks butt on it and has done for lord knows how long. I used to spend days trying to kill him over a LAN game but still to this day it can’t be done really!

Anyway Doom is where id took it all to the next level with more guns, better sounds and of course the all important enemies! Doom offered us the knuckle dusters, chainsaw, pistol, shotgun, machine gun, rocket launcher and BFG. Doom 2 offered us all those with the addition of the double barrel shotgun. But the big change was the amount of enemies and variety of them. I mean who would blame id, they had hell demons from Mars to muck around with, and what they came out with was awesome. The story line was pretty engrossing too, but the beauty of the game still lies in the simple point, shoot run away design.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC3fOEcSAFQ]

Then there was a couple of years of me playing Doom 2. Until I came across something which was new, grimy, dirty, had an attitude so awesome you could not help nut smile and at one point had the main character literally ripping a space aliens head of and shitting down its neck.

I’m talking about Duke Nukem 3D. One of the best innovations in FPS gaming. It had a brilliant array of weapons for people to choose from, but not just your bog standard ballistics it also had shrink rays and freeze guns, which, to be honest I had hours of fun with. The squelching noises when you blew up an alien were fantastic and the ridiculousness of some of the ballistic weapons just made you want to cry tears of joy! To this day I still take much pleasure in killing a horde of Pig cops with a akimbo rocket launchers, which also fired like five rockets at a time. OWNAGE!

Duke himself was a great character. I have said this before in a previous article and I will say it again. If a guy has the attitude to say ‘this sucks’, or ‘damn’ after he has been blown to kingdom come he must be cool.

The mixture of enemies such as octo-brains and pig cops just to name a couple was great and the whole concept of aliens stealing women just to piss off a guy like duke, simple but damn effective.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksf8D1_1qtc]

Whilst the craziness of Duke 3D was happening on the side another FPS was grabbing my attention. Earlier I said id were the gods of FPS, so there is no wander that I would not skimp out on the Quake phenomenon!

I could go on for several centuries talking about Quake but the one that really got me and I still mark as one of the best FPS games is Quake 2. To this day I think the game the graphics, the attention to detail were fantastic for its time and still held the great, kill everything in sight game play which I love. Quake was the next generation from Doom so it still had some of Dooms‘ characteristics. It still had the BFG and the double barrel shot gun, but it brought to the table one of the single best weapons in FPS gaming. The Nail Gun! Shredding enemies apart this was pretty much and unstoppable giant of a weapon. Get in the firing line of this beasty and you would not last three seconds!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faHVZwvWAUo]

After Duke and quake I was at a bit of a loss for new FPS games. I tried Unreal Tornament at my mates house. Blinking awesome game I must say! I ended up owning UT 2004.

But this was kind of the end of my PC FPS gaming, I now turned to consoles and it was my mate over the road who had Halo: Combat Evolved. For me this game had it all, vehicles, good variety of guns. Everything! This is what kicked off indeed my love for Xbox and my love for console FPS games. The whole Halo series I can play time and time again and not tire of it. At the moment this is the pinnacle of the FPS gaming genre to me.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4ImlA_gvnE]

OK, I can hear you now, your screaming at the screen shouting WHAT ABOUT CALL OF DUTY YOU NOOB!!!! or words to that effect. To me Call of Duty is good and I have played it but its just the whole war thing that gets to me. Zombies and monsters I can quite happily kill no problem. Zombie Nazi’s on Call Of Duty: World At War. Awesome can do that for hours, but for me I am not too comfortable playing it as it seems to real. For me FPS games have to be unreal and that’s where you get the most wacky and awesome ideas.

Garv!

The first ever game i played was Wolfenstien 3D on the PC. Then closely followed by doom I and II. From an early age i was playing over a LAN network against my dad on Doom. As  grew up I was playing Mainly FPS games such as Quake, Duke Nukem, doom, wolfenstein etc. I was pretty muc bought up asa PC gamer. But as soon as I played my Mums PS1 I had been converted.

So pretty much i have grown up with FPS game. They have been the genre I have sworn by since a very early age and today i still do. I have been asking myself recently what is the Best FPS game of all time. And i Have narrowed it down to 3:

Doom: Its the game i grew up with and still play to this day. Got it on GBA and pc and Xbox live Arcade. Still a joy to play

Halo: The first real 3D First person shooter i really gt into and stiill swear by. Sure quake, UT and return to castle wolfenstien were good but i don’t come back to them as i come back to halo.

Bioshock: The sheer atmosphere, coupled with the plasmids and weapon upgrades make this game a cut above any FPS i have played? Why isnt it up my fave one of all time? No online multi player

So as you can see I swear by FPS games. Well up until a point when i had my PS2. It was coming up to my 18th birthday sill playing the ps2 and original xbox. My ps2 was starting to gather dust with the countless am mount of halo i as playing on my Xbox, until a shinning light came from above that granted my PS2 new life.

Leon got Me devil May cry 3 special edition for my birthday. Not big on 3rd person games back then i trusted his judgement and stuck the game in. If there were clouds in my room that day hay would have parted and spread a beam of light over my PS2 that day. DMC 3 has me glued to my PS2 it was awesome! The combos, the weapons the sheer coolness of Dante amazed me! This was a game to go into my all time top 5 for sure.

Ever since playing Devil may cry i sought after more 3rd person hack and slash games. Not too far behind, keeping the ps2 alive was God Of War. Absolutely amazing, i was starting to think why i ever doubted the 3rd person action genre. Then the 360 came out as did dmc 4 and ninja gaiden II Both awesome games but NG2 had the upper hand on this one. Which (as you would have probably guessed by now) got me thinking.

As you can see my top 3 3rd person hack and slash games! What do these 3 have to get into the top 3?

Ninja Gaiden: This game is big on challenge, big on graphics and big on variety. But I don’t really have a big connection with ryu. to me hes just another ninja.

God Of War: Greek mythology, bloody battle and combos you will sing and dance about this game is a worthy contender fr the top 3. But why oh why dos kratos have to be such an angry monkey all the time?

Devil May Cry: Almost nails the top of the top 3 if you don’t mention DMC 2 or 4. not doing the series justice at all, Even if Dante is the coolest half daemon ever.

So all of  his begs the question. Is the 3rd person hack and slash the new FPS? The new genre i swear by? Well yes and no. Yes because you can cause an ultra violent blood bath with out much ducking and covering but at the same time. You can’t get the multiplayer freedom like you can with an FPS.

And guns seem to work better from the first person.

Garv!