This material continues the brief history of the shooters, the conversation about which we started here. In the second part, we recall the dawn of the console FPS, the epidemic “Jokers about the Second World War”, the brilliance and poverty of studios from Eastern Europe, as well as the most significant representatives of the genre from zero.
And what's on the consoles?
Zero Tolerance
Today the shooters on the prefixes and on the PC do not differ from each other. A quarter of a century ago, everything was different, and at the first person they were so rare guests on the consoles that they can be counted on the fingers. One of the most striking prefixed FPS first half of the nineties was Zero Tolerance. Due to technical restrictions Sega Mega Drive Most of the screen was occupied by the identity certificate of the hero, the level of level and other uselessness. But there were blood splashes, several types of strokes and even multiplayer: two consoles can be interconnected and play with a friend – a unique chip at that time.
Only hardly the multiplayer regime in Zero Tolerance enjoyed great success. For him, it was necessary to have a couple of prefixes, a couple of copies of the game and a cable that was sold separately. But the next game in our story was the popular multiplayer.
Goldeneye 007
In the ninety -seventh year only on Nintendo 64 I went out Goldeneye 007 – Paradoxically successful project, for the prefix shooter, what for the license game. The main feature that could not be on other consoles, and on the PC, in principle, too, is Splitskrin: on four, without additional equipment and with just one copy of the game! Without a large budget and even without a sensible dizdok, a tiny young team Rare created one of the best shooters of the twentieth century and certainly the best shooter for consoles Nintendo. But initially it was generally a two-dimensional site in the style of a 16-bit era.
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter
The Nintendo 64 controller is broken for his time, equipped with one, but full -fledged analog stick, generally did a lot for the genre and, by and large, opened the shooters with a wide way on the console. So goldeneye 007 is far from the only cool prefix FPS of that era. Remember at least Turok: Dinosaur Hunter or Perfect Dark. And the same Doom , Quake And Duke Nukem They looked from the personalities.
The decrepiting Nintendo 64 staunchly held positions until 2001. It was then that the first Xbox And at the same time a supernova console star rushed – Halo: Combat Evolved.
Halo: Combat Evolved
The creation of the studio Bungie it became not just a brilliant game and not only just systems. It showed the whole world that playing shooters on prefixes can be as convenient as on PC. Most of the console FPS had previously suffered from terrible "tractor" control. In Halo, he was finally made comfortable, because there were as many as two on the Xbox controller, and the game fully revealed their potential.
Today, many hardcore lovers scold militants for health regeneration and power shields, which are restored themselves. In 2001, these tricks seemed an elegant way to get rid of the first -aid kits scattered everywhere. All this, coupled with an unexpectedly tactical gameplay, smart enemies, a cheerful multipleor, worked out the universe and charisma of the master of Chif, made Halo a real console icon. New parts of the saga still come out, and the next chapter is preparing to sell a new generation of Xbox.
Killzone
Resistance: Fall of Man
For eighteen years, past after the release of Combat Evolved, nor Sony , nor even more than Nintendo were found with a worthy response of the Microsoft franchise. Not that the Japanese did not try. In 2004 on PlayStation 2 It came out not bad Killzone, from which a whole series of science fiction militants were born. But neither she nor a little later Resistance: Fall of Man They could not get to the same level with Halo, which, it seems, will forever remain the main console shooter.
Haki color plague
Medal of Honor
It is curious that almost all the significant FPS took as a basis invented universes. But ordinary, uncomfortable, war – perhaps the most logical and obvious setting for games and generally for any action. In the ninety -ninth year, this proved this Medal of Honor, created under the leadership of Stephen Spielberg himself. Well, who definitely understood the question, is the creator "Save Private Ryan". Peppy and bright cinematic exclusive for the first PlayStation conquered critics, players and other developers. It is from here that the ears of endless conveyors grow Call of Duty , Battlefield And now the late series Operation Flashpoint. But the main thing is dozens, if not hundreds of other forgotten shooters, stuffed with cliches like mandatory landing in Normandy, a sniper duel somewhere in the trenches of Stalingrad, a infantryman's fight with a tank or shooting opponents from a stationary machine gun. With minimal efforts, the “Shooters about the Second World War” were converted into “Shooters about Vietnam”. At the beginning of the zero of these games there were quite a lot to get to everyone.
World War II Online
Probably the most ambitious of the military series FPS has become World War II Online. Its scale is still amazing. An endless war is on a map of Western Europe, recreated on a 1: 2 scale of satellite photographs. The area of the game world – thirty thousand square kilometers. For comparison, the size of the card in Far Cry 5 – a little less than fifty square kilometers, in GTA v – Only 108, in Just Cause 4 – A little more than a thousand. It is not surprising that World War II Online makes not only walk, but at the same time ride, swim and fly. In 2006, the game survived the restart and still feels good, although it looks, of course, so -so. Funny, but in Steam The game is still in early access, let it be in the column with the release date of release 2001.
Battlefield 1942
Making the player to feel like a piece of cannon fodder in a global meat grinder unexpectedly turned out to be a great idea. Only a year later than the World War II Online, it was born Battlefield 1942 – The first game in the super -popular line of military militants. A cyberpanic roeled shooter danced from a similar concept Neocron and science fiction series Planetside , But none of them managed to repeat the scale of World War II or the success of Battlefield. Apparently, in a real war on the monitor screen there is something special. Especially when it is shown at the appropriate technical level.
For the glory of technology
Far Cry
Crysis
In general, FPS is perhaps the most dependent on the technology genre of video games. As practice shows, neither super -choriginal ideas nor reimbursed to the brilliance of mechanics are optional to create a successful shooter. Let's say shooters from Crytek I never distinguished an impeccable gameplay, but purely technically they have always been ahead of competitors. At first she shot loudly Far Cry With her huge seamless world and limitless resort charm. Following for a long time became a universal benchmark Crysis. True, behind an impeccable picture for their time, villainous system requirements were hidden, capable of driving even the most powerful homemade PC. Actually, Crytek best succeeded in benchmarks. The same Far Cry under the wing Ubisoft He feels much more comfortable than in the hands of the Germans, and for 2019 remains one of the main living FPS series in the market.
Half-Life 2
In the same 2004, she was born Half-Life 2, Talking about which is completely pointless, because everyone who found the beginning of the zero is likely to know the adventures of a silent physicist by heart. It was a brilliant action movie: smart, dynamic, diverse, beautiful. That's just … completely linear. And this, curious, did not prevent many critics from calling Half-Life 2 games of a decade. It was she who showed that plot shooters are able to live in the same world with sandboxes and, moreover, easily bypassing them on “cinema”, the presentation of the plot and technological. It is not surprising that the references to Valve’s main brainchild is easy to find in almost every second major game, and a decent filmmaker can be made up of fan film adaptations.
Doom 3
Half-Life 2 is not the only continuation of the successful shooter of the XX century. In 2004, the studio John Karmak introduced the world Doom 3. And it was, of course, not quite a failure, but definitely not what fans were waiting for.
Instead of a thermonuclear Rubilov in hellish catacombs, we got a dark fiction horror dark, like Arabic night. Instead of demonic hordes – three and a half monsters per stage. Instead of cheerful races with a chainsaw – phlegmatically slow walks along narrow dark corridors. DOOM 3 was not a bad game – he simply was not Doom, as he was remembered and loved. Karmak once again proved that technology for him is more important than fans – he will show this more than once. Well, in 2013, after unsuccessful Rage with its "megatexture", the once great developer abandoned the games finally.
F.E.A.R.
But let's not talk about sad. Not only alchemists from a jerk and horror tried to cross the hedgehog in the face of a shooter and horror ID Software. In 2005 Monolith Productions Gathered in her F.E.A.R., everything seems to be from everywhere. As if in a third -rate anime, special forces, telepaths, combat robots, cybernetic ninja and little dead girls mixed here. It turned out surprisingly cool. In places – really creepy. The game was well able to scare and sometimes reminded Silent Hill from the first person. But the main dish here was still not fear, but dashing shootings with incredibly smart enemies. The enemy actively used shelters, skillfully coordinated actions and did not let him relax for a minute. In addition, the game looked just amazing. I had to pay for all this – F.E.A.R. Could kneel even the most powerful computers of her time. Subsequently, several sequels continued the case and even no one needs F.E.A.R Online, But today the series is firmly forgotten. And it’s a pity-a couple of good sugar-stones on the current Bezrybier would have happened by the way.
Small but proud
Serious Sam: The First Encounter
Before the start of the zero, all “serious” shooters who can influence the industry in general or at least the development of their genre were immigrants from the USA or Western Europe. This could not last forever. While the whole world has cut into Half-Life, Six friends from a tiny Croatian studio almost worked on one very serious project in a garage. Boys from Zagreb believed that fashionable intellectual cinematic action ate lost the whole drive and fun. They were not so wrong. The popular new products of that time were not enough alone – meat. And the Savior came. Samuel Stone. Cool Sam.
Large engine Serious Engine He was able to digest incredible hundreds of monsters on the same screen without brakes. This unique ability, complemented in a good insane design, made Serious Sam: The First Encounter a real hit. Authentic -headed kamikazes who climbed from everywhere, a ship gun with uranium cores as a weapon, bosses high with a nine -story house – all this merged into an unexpectedly harmonious symphony of destruction. Nothing of the kind in 2001 was in the market. A team that previously occupied only football simulators and children's toys hit the apple. Serious Sam was greeted from the nineties – an evil and fast meat grinder with a cool hero who spoke continuous quotes. Together with Spinoffs and reprints in the series, now near a dozen games, and she is not going to rest. It is no wonder that such a successful project has generated a lot of imitators.
Painkiller
So the Poles from PEOPLE Can Fly followed in the footsteps of their colleagues from Croatia. Their Painkiller worthy of continuing the case of "meat" shooters. Fun to dynamic Rubilovo added a relatively accurate physical model of enemy carcasses. To beat the villains with stakes to the walls under the roar of overloaded guitars, it was interesting even without a special plot.
True, not all fellow countrymen Pan Sapkovsky got exclusively high -quality games. Rather, on the contrary. The dashing zero gave rise to a whole back of the Polish shooter. This is approximately like a Russian quest in its worst version – cheap, terrible and mediocre. This is in the next decade Techland will become successful authors of the zombie hits Dead Island And Dying Light. And in 2003, Techland was enough only for the Polish Deus Ex – Chrome.
The toy came out pretty, albeit boring. She was scolded for secondaryness and forgot, but another Polish studio had already climbed the stage. City Interactive It was still far from Sniper: Ghost Warrior – In the zero, this office riveted equally budget, boring and ugly crafts about the fight against world terrorism: all sorts Terrorist TakeDown, Code of Honor, Battlestrike And others like them. The latest representative of this inglorious genre company Akella published in Russia already in 2012-in one year with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Borderlands 2 And Dishonored! You can read more about the phenomenon of the Polish shooter here.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of chernobyl
Funny, but in the countries of the former union things went even worse. Our game industry has always developed neither shaky nor flowering, and there was a misfortune with the shooters. Do not count "Kremlin's dungeons" , In fact. The same “Polish shooters” made perfectly in Russia: to recall at least such garbage masterpieces as miserable "Gelian", disgusting "Nevsky Titbit", Miserable "Moscow Apocalypse" or unsuccessful "killer doom 3" Kreed. It so turned out that Ukraine was fought for all the CIS. Yes, speech about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of chernobyl.
Without mentioning this game, the history of the shooters would be incomplete. In the West, the project is not to say that I shot, but before the appearance World of Tanks No game made east of the Dnieper was so popular. Fans are still returning with the help of mods “The same S.T.A.L.K.E.R.". Novelizations of varying degrees of lousy still come out. Fanan music groups are still recording thematic songs. And the word "stalker" itself has long and, it seems, finally lost its original meaning. For this, a dense atmosphere of the post -Soviet devastation and a couple of interesting gameplay finds like a successful combination of shooting, hide, survival and even horror were enough. This unites s.T.A.L.K.E.R. with "not quite shooters" from Levin, spector and followers.
Hybrids of different stripes
BIOSHOCK
The unusual games of the synthetic genre, which we have already mentioned the last time, have finally formed in the zero in a separate variety Immersive SIM, that is, “immersion simulators”. The developers called this term the first Deus Ex (although it was more than RPG), but the concept was widely dispersed only in the twenty -first century. The most famous and most famous in this galaxy became, perhaps, a series BIOSHOCK. But in it, the study of the world, the plot, shooting and role elements were combined in very unusual, unexpected for the "stupid shooting" proportions. In addition to an unusual gameplay, Bioshock took a chic art design in the style of retro-futurism, a good history, an original universe, as well as an atmosphere of devastation and total hopelessness.
Call the "immersion" games of the future, perhaps a little premature. However, it is they who https://sister-site.org/red-lion-casino/ are most similar to those most – in more detail we will talk about them next time.
Left 4 Dead
What is the immersion simulators usually missing is multiplayer. But asymmetric network post-shooters would have fit perfectly that in the zone full of mutants and stalkers, that in the underwater city delight (where they still appeared in the second part). On an asymmetric multiplayer built Left 4 Dead. In this interactive zombie there is no sensible plot campaign at all. There is only a four survivor, a bunch of special infected and endless potential for network Mochilov in the scenery of horror films "BE". The main and, in general, the only LEFT 4 DeAD chip was a system called “Director”, which adjusted the complexity of the game to the skills of the survivors and, of its own will, changed the number of infected and places of their appearance. Valve was enough to make, perhaps, the best shooter of 2008. This once again proves that original gameplay finds and unusual genre hybrids often attract even more impressive pictures.
Borderlands
Let's say, Borderlands I never tore the roof with a “count”-Cel-showing in it was pretty, nothing more. But this hybrid of the shooter and Diablo (the concepts of "Luther-Shuther" in those days did not exist yet) never suffered from a lack of attention of players. He clung to the kilotons of accidentally generated guns, an idiotic plot to a trash and a completely frostbitten world inhabited by psychopaths of all stripes. Although the first part was scolded for rehearsal and uniformity of scenery.
What is noteworthy, Borderlands was not even the first in its own way. Two years before it came out Hellgate: London, But the same faded gray-brown environment and lousy shooting did not make her a hit. But Borderlands managed to hook the audience, perhaps partly due to the fact that she had never taken herself seriously. The success of games like Borderlands clearly demonstrates that graphic technologies are nothing without clockwork gameplay and cool game design.
XIII
Postal 2
It is impossible to tell about each zero shooter in one material – it has already switched to indecent. But there were still spectacular XIII, marginal (but definitely cult) Postal 2, technological Red Faction with a destroyed environment, brilliant The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay – Almost the only decent “game in the film” … all of them only a little lack of significance for the industry to get their personal paragraph in this article.
Next time we will talk about what the FPS genre has become by 2010, and try to imagine what awaits it in the future.
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