As PCs continue to compete with consoles in the gaming industry, PC gaming has still kept its roots in the form of first person shooters. Although the games have evolved since the days of Doom and CounterStrike, there are certain games that continue to play amazingly even after being out for years.
Halo: Combat Evolved is a direct port of its counterpart on the Xbox, and is just as good. Newcomers to the FPS genre will be able to pick this game up and quickly be immersed in its engaging storyline. The Microsoft title plays smoothly, and the graphics are decent even after nearly ten years since release. It can also be modded with the Halo: Custom Edition download, available for free with purchase of the original.
The Call of Duty franchise played great at first. It featured a group of AI-controlled characters surrounding the player, giving the World War II shooter a team feel. The single-player campaign was great, but the multiplayer was a bit lacking and could only hold up to 8 players. As the franchise expanded, though, it seems to have lost that original appeal. Dedicated CoD players would disagree, but the new titles just doesn’t feel as immersive as the original.
Battlefield: 1492 is more of a teamwork-oriented game than Halo or Call of Duty. Set in World War II, there are five classes in the game, all with their specific roles to fill. Originally released in 2002, it is still a popular mod platform. The battles are somewhat realistic, like Call of Duty, and are based on real historical happenings. The part somewhat lacking, however, is the single-player aspect of the game.
The multiplayer-focused, class-based Team Fortress 2 provides an endless amount of gameplay, long after other games would have worn out their appeal. Some players on Steam supposedly rack up near to 10,000 hours of gameplay on TF2 alone. Certainly it has an endless skill ceiling. After playing the game in public servers for a while, a new player will eventually pick up skills such as rocket jumping and airshots. And best of all? Free to play, with periodic updates and improvements by Valve.
Half Life 2, also by Valve, has an amazing storyline that serves as the sequel to the original Half Life. The game can be distinctly disturbing and scary at times, but that only adds to its appeal. There are also numerous Source mods, all of them impressive. A few noteworthy ones are Neotokyo, HL2:CTF, and Hidden.